Update 3: Looks like things are finally fixed. If you been napping through the lag, now is the time to get your gear/enchants/gems!

Update 2: 4 Hours later, now the realms are crashing none stop.

Update: Tournament Realm is now up and LAGGING! Enjoy shopping for the next 4 hours.

The launch of the Tournament Realm will be delayed for a few hours as the final preparations are completed. We are still scheduled to begin today and will provide further details as they become available. - Bornakk

Hopefully by ‘few hours’ and ‘begin today’ doesn’t = 11:59pm…

Update: Looks like EU got similar delay…

As we’ve moved into Daylight Saving Time since the publication of the Arena Tournament Official Competition Rules, we’d like to clarify that the intended opening time for the Arena Tournament is 10:00 GMT, i.e. 12:00 (noon) CEST (Paris time) and thus 11:00 BST (London time).

Update 12:20 CEST: There has been a delay in opening the tournament realms. We will update you with new information as soon as possible. - Slorkuz

Tags: PvP · News

Finally, the new faces I have promised, Hazek and Sac. Hazek has mastered the marksmanship of a Hunter while Sac practices the art of Druid at the highest level. Both of them are very excited to join us and will bring you PvP essence from deep inside the core of the upcoming 3v3 tournament! Without further delay, here are some words from themselves.

Hazek:

Whats up, this is Hazek. I’m 23 years old and I live in Texas. I did the high warlord grind and used to throw traps at people while in combat at level 60. I earned gladiator in season 1. I’m addicted to pvp. Heres Sac with the weather.

Sac:

Well met, PVPsource readers! This is Sean Aaron Carriveau, a new writer here, but you can call me Sac. Yes, my initials… Quite a bit of time has passed now since the beginning of Arena and it seems we are at standstill, or not much of anything new is happening. Players are dodging queues, better people are losing interest, doesn’t matter what I say, you name it. Well, fortunately Blizzard has done something great, and I’m sure you know what it is! You’re right (or for those of you new people you’re wrong, but no worries I’m here to help), it’s the 3v3 Blizzard Tournament. Now I believe this is a huge step to make arena more exciting, but also to help with World of Warcraft as an e-sport.

Now here is where I come in and what I will be doing. My team, Brutal Banzai Bonanzas, will be giving you all the action up front. What does that mean? It means a lot. Fortunately, we are a pretty good team and we plan on doing well in the tournament. And that means an insane amount of information at a top level for us to give to you. You can almost think of us as a reporter on the sidelines of a basketball game waiting for halftime to speak with the star player and give you, in a sense, inside information. Our coverage on the arena tournament will mostly be about us, our 3v3 team, but we will also be giving the good side of the sport in general at that high level. PVPsources plans for us include commentary on clips from our matches to help some people out with exactly what happens. Not necessarily strategies, which we charge 1000g for each strat or $50 paypal(wink wink, who wouldn’t try making money on a video game?), but we will be showing you key moments in fights to why we either win, or lose.

Keep a lookout for us when the tournament starts. We will soon be working on fraps and clips to give you readers some enjoyment along with the walls of text.

Here’s a little preview clip of what we got in store (I wish people would stop using clips of me getting beat up tho…):

Tags: Site

Tournament registration is open and you should be registering! The tournament will start on March 31st, 10AM (next Monday after the weekly maintenance sounds about right). Oh and here’s the link, scroll down and hit that register button.

Looks like some States will not be eligible, so hope you’re in one of the eligible States or have relatives in one. I also found the following to be particular interesting:

Canadian residents are not required to pay an Entry Fee in order to enter. Instead, Canadian residents may enter by submitting a 250 word typewritten essay comparing the video gaming culture in Canada to the video gaming culture in the United States on 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper and mailing their essay to Essay Entry for The North American Blizzard Entertainment Arena Tournament, P.O Box 18979, Irvine, CA 92623. Essay entries must be received no later than March 31, 2008 in order to be eligible.

Tags: PvP · News

Below is a list of all the PvP related changes (LONG), important changes are in BOLD. You may view the full notes here.

General

Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.
Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.
Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.
Non-self % based haste spells will no longer stack with each other.

Read More

Tags: PvP · News

With Druid’s Cyclone tuned down to 20 yards untalented, the state of 3v3 Arena is quite interesting. Even through there are still teams that clearly have the advantage against another, most of the proven team lineups can usually still pull out wins when odds (team lineup) are stacked against them.

I very much look forward to the upcoming 3v3 tournament as it will push the Arena aspect of WoW to another level. Up until recently, Arena strategies have been formulated without backup in mind, most strategies are assume to work under every circumstances vs said lineup. I believe this will change very soon - proven strategies will soon have proven counters to them, and counters of the counter strategies will be created as well. Teams will have to act and react fast enough to different paths of strategies and adopt through the matches. This will be the height of sports like competition, something many of us have been looking forward to.

With the 3v3 Tournament around the corner and 2.4 patch releasing soon, we too have some things in store. We have prepared to shift focus and have in-depth coverage of the upcoming 3v3 tournament in detail from the best of the best as well as providing new format of videos 10 times more useful than the current commentary ones!

I won’t give more out tonight but trust me, excitements are on the way.

Tags: Rants