Ziss: Will you be joining the 3v3 tournament? Vote here!

2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament!!!
Another tournament has crept into the picture and most importantly, this one is from Blizzard itself. This 3v3 tournament open to anyone with a World of Warcraft account (plus $20 registration fee). Much like the 5v5 tournament from last year, the qualifying rounds will be online but this time on an event realm with premade characters. The top four teams in the two qualifiers will then go on to compete in a live regional event. Then the regional champions will face off in a global championship.

Total prize money is a cool $200,000, so Blizzard has both feet in this tournament. Definitely a step in the right direction. Full details here.

Resilience And Mana Drain
On a side note, new build is up on the PTR and one major change for PvP is that resilience now affects mana drain spells. The change is not yet in the patch notes, but shows up on the resilience tooltip. The amount of mana drain reduction is roughly 1% per 20 resilience. That amounts to a huge 20-25% reduction in mana drain effects for a well geared (400-500 resilience) arena player.

Tags: PvP · News

Bunch of blue popped up this week — pertaining to PTR and upcoming changes — with some PvP implications. Here’s a quick roundup:

As discussed in our forums, the drinking mechanic has been changed on the PTR. Hortus states that this is intended and not a bug:

“This is an intentional change to how drinking works. The amount of mana regenerated now ramps up, so you will see little or no mana regen the first few seconds and then it will increase as the duration continues.” -Hortus

Bornakk announced that there will be a fix for arena queues that should help with queue times across the board. Needless to say this change will be greatly welcomed.

“You should see it updated in the patch notes soon, but there is an improvement set for patch 2.4 which will result in lower queue times across the board for arena matches.” -Bornakk

And with the back and forth saga of class changes in 2.4, Nethaera now says that there will be more class changes introduced for Patch 2.4:

“We do have class changes planned for patch 2.4.0. Essentially, with the changes to classes in 2.3.2, we wanted to give the changes some time to see how they played out and we didn’t want to put more changes into 2.4.0 immediately with all the other additions and changes we’ve made. We will be adding more though as we go along.” -Nethaera

New PvP Honor Rewards
Along with the new PvP badge pieces, three new honor pieces will also be introduced in 2.4… Read More

Tags: PvP · News

If you are one of those (like me) who skip over the launcher news, you might have missed this interesting announcement:

The 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational is a two-day event bringing together the company and gamers in a convention atmosphere, featuring Q&A panels with Blizzard Entertainment developers and hands-on opportunities with the company’s latest games. The Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational also showcases the skills of top eSports gamers from around the world as they compete in invitational StarCraft, Warcraft III and World of Warcraft Arena tournaments.

The event will take place on Saturday the 28th and Sunday the 29th of June, in Hall 5 of the Porte de Versailles Exposition Center in Paris, France.
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Tags: PvP · News

Update: I was able to secure a nice clip as well as commentary notes from Pronne of SK Gaming, showcasing a fight between Rogue(Shs) Druid(Pronne) vs Warrior Druid. To check it out, simply click on the it under Featured Media or here. -Ziss

Well, it’s that time again. A new PvE content patch is coming out and all the “newer, better and shinier” gear is being mined and posted. I won’t lie, some of that stuff looks damn spiffy — but when you see that most of it takes PvE rep, tokens and badges, it all gets bittersweet.

We all know that Blizzard has always been PvE first and that PvP gear and loot is usually half-a-step behind PvE. So is it time to get ready to get back to raiding and chant that “PvE to PvP” mantra all the while to keep us feeling hardcore? or suck it up til Season 4?
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Tags: PvP · News

Well, they are finally here. Not as exciting as the supposed “leaked notes”, but a few of the items from there popped up. Expect more changes to 2.4 from Blizzard as it goes through its PTR iterations.

One interesting change to the PTRs that should liven up the ‘testing’ was also added:

“With the 2.4.0 PTR, we will be allowing US, EU and Korean players to access all available PTR realms. Players will be able to choose which test realm they wish to play on without being restricted by region. We currently plan to make all PTR realms available in this way for all future patches.” -Bornakk

Click read more for the PvP specific items from the notes.
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Tags: PvP · News