3v3-arena
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Encrypted Text: Three's a crowd
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we talk about how to play a Rogue in 3v3.As part of the new design for the upcoming Arena Season 7, Blizzard is planning to remove the ability for a player's 2v2 rating to count towards their eligibility for the current season's rewards. This means that unless you're playing in the 3v3 or 5v5 arena brackets, you won't qualify for any of the newest gear. As a class who's dominance has always been most prominent in the 2's bracket, I believe this change hurts the Rogue the most. We're one of the worst classes in 5v5, and that's a trend that has continued since Season 1. Luckily, we do have viability in 3v3. When combined with a caster and a healer, Rogues provide the leverage it takes to give their teammates an opening to unload powerful spells into the target while stunned and their healer is Blinded. While our problems with low survivability are more evident when there are 2-3 DPS pounding on us, with intelligent cooldown usage and an aggressive playstyle, Rogues can conquer the 3's bracket.
College Gaming League 3v3 Arena Tournament
Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft 3v3 Arenas are part of the new College Gaming League, the first official amateur league partner of the Championship Gaming Series. The Dell-spearheaded venture works with Intel and Microsoft to offer educational discounts and PC bundles for students, faculty and staff at numerous partner schools all over the United States. Students and faculty at Dell University partner schools can register and receive benefits like special offers on games and systems, access to public game servers, and compete in tournaments.Among the tournaments -- which include Xbox 360 and PC games -- is the World of Warcraft 3v3 Arena competition. Registration began last August 21 and closes on September 11, while the official matches span from September 15 to October 5. Loot up for grabs are three Alienware m15x notebooks as Grand Prizes, three Microsoft Zune players as First Prizes, and three $50 Dell gift cards for the runners-up. It's an underwhelming selection past the Grand Prizes, to be sure, but registration is free and members can participate in other tournaments with a host of other prizes to be won. Initiatives like these certainly give students something to while away their time... after they've submitted those term papers, of course.
2nd Qualifying round of the official 3v3 Arena Tournament ends
In the midst of the hubbub over the Worldwide Invitational 3v3 Arena tournament and the MLG PC Circuit tournaments in San Diego and Orlando, the official 3v3 Arena Tournament seems to have fallen by the wayside -- At the least, people don't seem to remember it much. It looks like it's looking to burst back onto the scene in a big way, though, as Blizzard announced the end of the 2nd qualifying round of the tournament today. The next round will see the winning teams from the 1st and 2nd qualifying rounds facing off in live matches in Boston, Madrid, Seoul, and Taipei in the coming months. The list of first round winners has some familiar faces in it already. MLG San Diego winners Frag Dominant will be competing in the Boston event, WWI winner Council of Mages will be competing in Seoul, and WWI runner up Improved Clicks will be headed to Madrid. There's no word yet on which teams won the 2nd round, or when the next round's matches will take place, or whether we'll get live streaming from the events. We'll be sure to let you know all the details right here as soon as they're available though.
Arena Tournament: Tales from day one
Last night, the WoW Insider arena team stepped into battle for the first time on the arena tournament realms, and it was immediately apparent that things were going to be quite different from our experiences on the tournament test realms. For starters, there were way fewer people. I also noticed that, contrary to my expectations that everyone shelling out an extra $20 to play here would be a hardcore arena-goer, there were many people on just to have fun. General chat was full of people who didn't know where to go, how to allocate their talent points, and even people who hadn't formed teams yet!Still, despite the fact the vendor areas had a drastically reduced population, the queues were amazingly short, as Adam points out. Often, I was reading that my team had joined the queue at the same time I was clicking to enter the battle.
WSVG coming to Dallas this week
The World Series of Video Games is making their stop in Dallas, Texas starting tomorrow, July 5th and ending on Sunday, July 8th. And as always, World of Warcraft 3v3 arena tournaments are on the agenda! I'm afraid registration for the event is closed (though if you show up you can register for a chance at a competition spot opening up), but if you're in the area, you can certainly attend and watch some skilled arena players at work (for the $10 cost of admission). The real question is whether the pros at Team Pandemic will win again: so far, they've won both of the WSVG's WoW arena tournaments. And remember -- one lucky arena team will be winning an all-expenses paid trip to BlizzCon 2007!
