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World of Warcraft Arena Tournament 2010 registration open
It's official: registration for the 2010 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament is now open! Like last year's arena tournament, players will participate on regional tournament realms -- separate from live realms -- for a spot to play at the live events. The arena tournament will use the 3v3 arena format for teams, and the regular arena season on live servers will not be interrupted by this event. The cost of registration is one payment of $20 per eligible World of Warcraft account. For more information on eligibility and restrictions, check out the Arena Tournament rules page. This year's cash prizes, including prizes awarded at both the regional finals and world championship, amount to over $200,000. But even if you don't win the big prizes, there's still something out there for participants -- players who have participated in at least 50 rated tournament games on one character with the same team will be eligible for Murkimus, the gladiator murloc pet that players may remember from last year's tournament. Please note that as of patch 3.3.3, Murkimus is an account-wide pet that will apply to all WoW characters on your Battle.net account. Players who have a character in one of the top 1,000 teams and have participated in at least 100 rated tournament games during the last four weeks will also receive the Vanquisher title for their live characters level 71 and over. While the news may be good for players that missed out on last year's games, some have expressed disappointment that there was no new pet and title for this year. Zarhym addressed this in a post on the Arena Tournament forums: Zarhym While it would be cool to provide a new pet, we're not necessarily trying to encourage as many people as possible to pay $20 and sign up for this tournament ultimately because they want a new pet. It's a nice perk to encourage people, but we don't want the Arena Tournament to be a more complicated version of the Pet Store. We want players who are serious about competing to sign up for the tournament, not just a reason to take in more money through offering a new vanity pet with each new tournament. source So for those of you looking for a new pet -- sorry, looks like that's not in the cards this year. But for players who missed out on the pet last year and players who would like a chance at the cash that Blizzard is paying out, you can sign up for the fun and games on Blizzard's website.
BlizzCon 2009: TSG wins WoW Arena Tournament World Championship
This year's World of Warcraft Arena Tournament Finals had an extremely good attendance despite some hiccups on the tournament stage, leaving the hosts cracking space-filling jokes until the teams were finally ready. Actually, this happened between every match, which was one of the few dampers in an otherwise decent tournament. The strong attendance at the Finals might also have something to do with the presence of a US/Canadian team, TSG, consisting of David Kovacs, Bennett Lynch, and Fabian Siffredi, otherwise known as Valrath, Veex, and Zilea, who ran a strong Death Knight, Warrior, Holy Paladin cleave comp all the way to a $75,000 purse. The last team to stand in their way was Shipit from Korea, consisting of Soonjae "Coilmaster" Cha, Jaemin "Tsukiyomi" Lee, and Janghwan "Kamiu" Bae with a Warrior, Hunter, Holy Paladin comp that never really posed a challenge for the new World Champions.All throughout the Finals, TSG played extremely aggressively, bringing Shipit's Hunter, Tsukiyomi, to dangerously low health within the opening moments of every match. The Koreans faced an uphill battle coming from the consolation bracket, needing to defeat TSG twice in a best of five, but it was clear that the North American team's aggressive style and double melee comp were too much to handle.The Korean contingent walked away with a respectable $30,000 and third place team x6tence from Europe took home $15,000. The awards were handed out by Blizzard's Tom Chilton, who described this year's Arena Tournament as "the best ever". We also saw the defeat of RMP -- as even Mage hero Orangemarmalade couldn't advance within the consolation bracket. It reaffirmed the power of Holy Paladin heals and Death Knights, however, in an environment that saw zero Shamans. It'll be exciting to see what 2010 holds as Cataclysm is likely to change the entire face of World of Warcraft PvP.BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there's some great looking costumes.
[UPDATED] Arena Tournament has begun!
The 2009 Arena Tournament officially begun yesterday, kicking of a six-week qualifying period to find the best Arena players who will earn the chance to win prizes totaling over $200,000. Registration was opened a little over a week ago, with Blizzard enticing aspiring Gladiators with the Vanquisher title and a Murloc vanity pet that will translate over to the live realms. The tournament will consist of one round of regional qualifiers, followed by the regional finals, and winners of those finals will compete against each other for the top prize.Registering for the tournament, which costs $20 or €15, will grant players access to the tournament realms where they can create Level 80 characters of any race and class. These characters will be outfitted with the best Arena gear available -- Deadly Gladiator items from Season 5 -- and will have access to other epic items as well as enchants, gems, and glyphs allowing them to customize their character as they see fit.Players whose teams finish in the Top 1000 at the end of the qualifiers will receive the Vanquisher title for all their characters over Level 70. Casual players who don't play Arenas seriously still have some incentive as the only requirement to obtain the Murloc pet -- Murkimus the Gladiator, according to the Patch 3.1 files -- is to play 200 games over the six-week qualifying period with one team regardless of record. [UPDATE: According to this post, the first two weeks are considered a practice period and thus do not count towards the 200 ranked games required to qualify for the pet.] Players must have an active subscription in order to register.
Highlights from the 2008 Arena Tournament and TTR
Last year's arena tournament was a lot of fun. Prior to the 2008 tournament Blizzard has a Tournament Test Realm open for everyone to log on and play with. The test realm let them get the mechanics for the real tournament realm ready before hand, allowing Blizzard to work all the kinks out.We had a lot of coverage of the event, and some of it is pretty interesting to go back and read.There were two main tests, called stress tests. These were where as many people as possible logged on and attempted to play. You can check out our coverage of Stress Test I and Stress Test II.And of course, the highlights of the stress test were the GMs that came and spawned all sorts of terrible creations. %Gallery-18020%
Gotfrag releases videos of the MLG 3v3 WoW Tournament
Remember the MLG San Diego 3v3 WoW Arena Tournament we reported on a while back? If you missed the live streaming video of the event, you now have a second chance to watch, as GotFrag has begun posting videos of various matches and interviews with team members at their website. If you have any interest in Arena PvP, these videos are definitely recommended watching. The commentators obviously know what they're talking about, and explain both teams' actions in terms that your average WoW player should be able to understand. A lot of us at WoW Insider watched, and we all agree that we learned something valuable about life, love, and learning to play Arena PvP from it. You may even pick up some tricks to kick off your Season 4 playing from them.
