Newslist For MMOValue

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.

Castro World of Warcraft Arena, blizzcon

Bornakk has just announced that the end of Season 6 will come as early as Tuesday August 25th. You’ll want to be sure that if you’re eligible for arena rewards that you don’t transfer your character or generally screw with your arena team. Just relax and let the rewards happen.

After Season 6 ends, there will be one week of downtime where no rated matches can happen.

Season 7 will begin after this week of downtime, at which time all team and personal ratings will be wiped, along with your arena points. According to the announcement matchmaking ratings will remain (as well as honor points). None of this should come as too much of a surprise, as we’ve known about it all for a while.

This roughly places the start date for Season 7 at Tuesday September 1st. However these things can change, so just pay attention to the news and watch out for the exact date.

Kocherberg World of Warcraft Arena, News items

Blizzard has announced that they’re streaming most of the tournaments at BlizzCon this year yet again — even if you don’t sign up to the DirecTV feed, you can still watch most of the Arena, Starcraft, and Warcraft III matchups online on the BlizzCon site. And this year, for the first time, you’ll be able to watch them in full HD quality (assuming that your connection can hold up). There will be one full stream dedicated to Arena matches, and one stream split between Warcraft III and Starcraft tournament coverage.

And what you see should be some of the best players in the world — all of the qualifiers from North America, Korea, Europe, and Taiwan will be in attendance to vy for the top spot and the $25,000 per-player prize. The stream will be running both days of BlizzCon, coming up in just a few weeks on August 21st and 22nd.

MMOvalue World of Warcraft Arena, blizzcon

Despite his sometimes-crass way of getting his point across, Ming is one of the best PvP bloggers around these days. When the Patch 3.2 patch notes revealed the upcoming change to resilience, I was hoping to hear his take on it. He delivered! If you haven’t seen the patch notes, Resilience in Patch 3.2 will lower incoming damage across the board in addition to its protection against critical strikes. By Ming’s estimates, after all other factors have been taken into consideration, the change will bring a net difference of an added 10% damage reduction in the upcoming Season 7.

That number probably doesn’t seem like a lot to people who don’t set foot into the arena at all, but for people who arena seriously and competitively, it will be a game changer. The developers’ stated goal is to slow down the pace of the arena, and this change will do exactly that. An extra 10% buffer on survivability has the potential to absolutely be the difference between a one minute game and a five minute game. It has the potential to be the difference between a gib and a last second defensive save. As has been stated, it’s possible to die in the span of one GCD, and that’s not fun. If this change can extend one GCD to two or three GCDs to allow for reaction time, the arena just might end up more balanced than it has ever previously been, unless you pretend Mace Stun didn’t exist in the middle seasons of The Burning Crusade.

You really shouldn’t take my word for it, though. I PvP, but I’d never claim to be a highly rated anything. There’s a reason I was waiting for Ming’s take on it. Go read what he has to say, and be bolstered by it. The arena might actually be truly fun again.

Castres World of Warcraft Arena, PvP

The dominance of Rogue/Mage/Priest continues as SK Gaming defeated eMazing Gaming’s faceroll Unholy/BM/Holy comp in the Major League Gaming Columbus Grand Finals 6-3 (best of 11 counting previous matchups). SK Gaming took home the $9,000 Grand Prize in the first leg of the MLG 2009 pro circuit, proving that the US still has a competitive RMP team. Europe’s RMP contingent, Ensidia, barely missed the Finals after dropping to eMG in the prior round.

Some of the teams didn’t do so well despite expectations, such as two-time MLG winners Fnatic, who were playing without their Warrior, Rhaegyn. Fnatic did rather poorly, playing a Rogue/Warlock/Shaman comp that simply couldn’t match up against the dominant RMPs or even eMG’s Death Knight/Hunter/Paladin. Evil Geniuses also played below par, but there really have to be teams that occupy the bottom of the standings. The good news is that teams collect points through all MLG legs to tally at the end of the season, so we might see some changes in the next MLG stops.

All the matches were streamed through three different sites via Octoshape, but the streams were choppy and often stalled more than it did in the first two days of the tournament. It came to the point where the matches were simply unwatchable, which is a shame because there were some pretty good games on the last day. The shoutcasters did an excellent job commentating on the matches but camerawork and the pace of the games were just too fast at times to appreciate. Arena Tournaments could benefit greatly from instant replays, slow motion, and camera angles beyond the third person view. Replays should be available on GotFrag soon.

Kocherberg World of Warcraft Arena, Events, News items, PvP

The World of Warcraft Trading Card game has released its latest expansion, but it’s a little bit different than what’s come before. It’s called Arena Grand Melee, and it actually changes the gameplay of the TCG just a little bit, including some very different mechanics than those players have seen before. For instance, there’s a card called “For the Fallen” that will grant additional cards to players when they act out their melee strikes in real-life. Another card called “Steamwheedle Casino” has players playing a quick game of Blackjack with their WoW TCG cards to win an extra card. Arena Grand Melee sounds it puts a very strange twist on the current TCG game.

The WoW TCG site has been highlighting some of the new cards in the game — there’s a new ability called Preparation, which allows you to use a card twice in quick succession, and there are cards that boost your hand size and beef up your allies, as well as cards that offer up some other new heroes and abilities. It sounds like an interesting addition to the game, but on the other hand, this doesn’t seem like a pack for newbies — experienced players will get the best thrill from these twists. Pick up the eighty card sets in either of the Horde or Alliance versions at your local gaming store.

MMOvalue World of Warcraft Arena, talents, wow-tcg

Vaneras has posted the latest EU Arena tournament rankings over on the forums (after the latest phase ended), and it looks like PMR has found their way back on top across the pond: Priest/Mage/Rogue teams have taken over the top three spots. The Death Knight/Paladin/DPS teams, formerly dominating, have fallen down to just two spots out of ten, and two Shamans have made an appearance, one partnered with a Druid and a Mage, and the other with a Lock and Hunter. Very interesting.

We should see the US standings posted soon. You can see the rest of the EU teams in the big listing over on the Armory if you want. Phase 4 of the tournament, Vaneras says, will be an invitational, and will start next week on April 14th. Congrats to all of the winners so far, and good luck in the rest of the tourney!

Catelet World of Warcraft Arena, eu, paladin, teams, vaneras

Bornakk posted a tentative date for the announced end of Arena Season 5, indicating that the season can end “as early as April 14″ or a week after. It should be noted that the first four Arena seasons had no breaks in between, with one season beginning immediately after the last ended. Arena seasons were only suspended upon the release of Patch 3.0 leading up to Wrath of the Lich King, with the first season of Level 80 Arena play beginning on December 16. This time around, however, Bornakk makes it clear that the next Arena season will not begin immediately but have at least a one week break before Season 6 begins.

This should also be taken as an indication of when Patch 3.1 will be released. Blizzard has stated that they plan to unleash Season 6 almost simultaneously with the new raid content, so if Season 5 ends within two or three weeks, it should be expected that Patch 3.1 is just around the corner. It might even come sooner rather than later, as Blizzard has noted that Season 5 would “end with or shortly after” Patch 3.1 goes live. All of the necessary files such as Season 6 items are contained in the patch, so this only makes sense.

Bornakk reminds all players who feel they will be eligible for end of season rewards, such as titles and the Deadly Gladiator’s Frostwyrm, should refrain from transfering their characters to another realm until after Season 5 ends (or until rewards have been handed out to be safe). During the break between seasons, all ranked matches will be disabled and all Arena points and ratings will be wiped [EDIT: Arena points and ratings will continue to be available during the one week break to allow players to spend their points, but will be wiped when Season 6 begins.]. However, players will retain their matchmaking ratings and Honor points.

MMOvalue World of Warcraft Arena, patch-3.1, Season-6

This one has been in the game files for a while — the screenshot above has been with MMO Champion since November of last year — but the latest PTR Build reveals that the Arena Season 5 reward mount is a Frost Wyrm. Just as the otherworldly Armored Nether Drakes were representative of Outlands, the Deadly Gladiator’s Frost Wyrm is the perfect symbol of Northrend. As with past seasons, the mount is expected to be a 310% speed flyer awarded to the upper 0.5% of Arena participants in each of the three brackets.

With Arena Season 5 expected to close soon, perhaps as early as the release of Ulduar, players now have a small window in which to earn that Gladiator title and what might arguably be the coolest-looking mount in the game. In mount-related news, the Coralshell Turtle was renamed to Sea Turtle, whose tooltip reveals it as the first aquatic mount in the game: “This mount can’t move very quickly on land, but she’s a great swimmer.” Better practice that fishing…

MMOvalue MMOValue news Arena, Mounts, patches

So maybe you don’t have the kind of name recall as Leeroy Jenkins, and maybe you don’t have the street cred of GotFrag TV’s Kintt or the British accent of ESL’s Joe and Zalmah — but if you think you can commentate with the best of them, Blizzard’s got the right contest for you. Blizzard is looking for the best people to do play-by-plays on Arena matches (dubbed Shoutcasting), so if you think you’ve got the chops, head over to the contest page and see what it’s all about.

If you think you’re the Dick Vitale of eSports (that’s an interesting thought), go ahead and download the stock Arena tournament video on the contest page and dub over the best color commentary you can muster. The best entry will win a Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC Monitor as well as the code for a cool BlizzCon 2008 Polar Bear mount. Runners up will receive BlizzCon shirts and the mount. Contest ends on April 17, so get a-shoutin’, just be sure to read the rules first.

admin World of Warcraft Arena, blizzcon, Contests

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. Players must have an active subscription in order to register.

Castille World of Warcraft Arena, Deadly-Gladiator, News items, PvP, Season-5, Vanquisher