Major League Gaming, which is apparently the parent company of WoW Insider favorite MMO-Champion, have announced that there will be a new PC gaming circuit, featuring our favorite MMO. The circuit will have events in San Diego, from June 13th–15th; Orlando, July 11th–13th; and Dallas, October 3–5. Each event will have $22,500 in prizes -- it's no Blizzard Arena Tournament, but that's still a lot of money.

The circuit will be played on HP Blackbird 002 computers, so I guess you won't have to worry about frame rates (that thing has 1 GB of VRAM). The competition will be 3v3, just like Blizzard's tourney. Only 32 teams will be allowed to register, and you need to have an account set up on MLG's site first; registration opens May 15. They say "more details on rules and the official format will be released on May 15th" -- maybe Blizzard will let them use a special tournament server? At any rate, it looks like Blizzard may have been more successful at turning WoW into an esport than we thought.

[Thanks, Jeff]

In what could be the biggest change in 2.4.2, Hunters are getting a pretty generous buff to the spell Scare Beast. Not only is the range ballooning from 10 yards to 30 yards, but it will have an instant cast time as well. Well it does have limited application in PvE, this will be huge in PvP, for one simple reason: It will work on Druids in forms.

If you're interested in keeping track of the 3v3 Arena Tournament, You can look at Vhiari's breakdowns, sure, and good ones they are. But there's also another resource that should come in handy: The official ladder listings right on the official Armory. By choosing the Coliseum 1 battlegroup, you can see the rankings for the Tournament Realms. The current top 3v3 team, Outrageously Better Pros, Is a Priest/Rogue/Druid team, although the Druid has no games played. Maybe they used to be Priest Mage Rogue, which is a pretty strong combo these days.

It should be fun to watch these rankings as the tournament progresses, both to see what class and spec makeups stay near the top, and to see what outrageous and silly names people can come up with for their teams -- without breaking the naming policy, that is.

What's interesting to me is that despite the fact that the Tournament itself is 3v3 only, the 2v2 and 5v5 brackets are still in full swing, with quite a few teams. I suppose this is a sign that people really do like the idea of a good solid PvP only realm to duke it out with high powered characters to prove their worth. I have to wonder if Blizzard is watching those brackets as closely as they're watching the 3v3 bracket, or if this is a sign that they may make these arena practice realms more permanent in the future.

Either way, all this activity should be fun to watch. Keep your browser pointed to WoW Inside for all the latest Tournament Realm news, including the escapades of our own WoW Insider Arena Team.

Here's some arena page trivia too, while we're on the subject: Mike pointed out to me that the blade that Draenei chick on the arena ladder page is holding is known as The Hungering Cold. Its model was used for the Infamous "Sword of 1,000 Truths" in the South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft." It currently drops in Naxxramas, so chances are we'll see it again come Wrath of the Lich King.

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.

I guess I spoke too soon when I said that Druids were being mature about the Cyclone nerf. Balancedruid of Tichondrius demanded on the public forums that Blizzard reconsider the reduction of Cyclone from thirty to twenty yards. He states that although Resto Druids are very powerful in arenas, this form of crowd control is the most appealing aspect of a Balance Druid for most 5v5 arena teams. This change was notably absent form previous patch 2.4 Public Test Realm Build notes.

Several threads have been started on this topic. At least one was mysteriously deleted within five hours of its creation. Snuffymcmoo of Terokkar has begun a petition to rescind the change. Druids are flocking in protest to the change. I can honestly say that I'm not surprised at expressions of outrage. I was just expecting a little more- They're Druids, not Warlocks after all. I apologize for my earlier statements about Druids rolling with the nerf-hammer.

With the upcoming 3v3 PvP tournament, Blizzard has rolled out a new feature on the Tournament Test Realm server: NPC collision detection. This will mean that it is now not possible for players to walk through some NPCs. Players will no longer be able to crowd, or block, the NPCs. This virtually guarantees that players will always be able to access the NPCs.

V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.

This progressive patch is turning out to be quite an event in itself. We are seeing some pretty important changes in every PTR build and the community is watching every change with bated breath. One thing's for certain though: many of the changes are Arena-driven, as Blizzard tries to get the PvP aspect of the game in gear for the 3v3 tournament.

You remember that 3v3 Arena tournament we told you about? The one with $200,000 worth of prize money, that's going to be played on private servers full of premade characters and paved with free epics? Well, today Blizzard announced which items you're going to be able to choose from, should you decide to cough up the $20 entrance fee. Let's take a look.

First off, there's high-quality ammo, reagents, bandages, poisons, food, and water. Boring enough. In case you feel the need to look really bad-ass, or to get from place to place faster, you can grab Reins of the Black War Tiger/Horn of the Black War Wolf. All that is fine, but what about actual gear? All the Season 2 Merciless Gladiator gear is available, and all the Tier 5 class sets. There are also selected other items from the tier 5 raids (SSC and TK), as well as some badge loot to fill in the gaps. I'm even seeing the odd T4 raid item, like the Eye of Magtheridon and of Gruul, and some Heroic drops like the Scarab of the Infinite Cycle (these seem to be limited to the accessories).

V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.

Looking at some of the upcoming class changes in patch 2.4, I can't help but feel that many of them are driven by PvP - particularly Arena - issues. Blizzard is undoubtedly trying to level the playing field for the classes before the 3v3 Arena Tournament, tentatively set to begin in April. That's a very short time to iron out problems and further imbalances that the patch will bring.

A design philosophy that Blizzard has insisted on from the beginning is that each class should play similarly in both PvP and PvP. Tom Chilton (Lead Designer, or Kalgan) said at last year's Blizzcon that the game "shouldn't have significantly different rules for spells in PvP vs PvE."

"Slower" water in Arenas is the latest change that depart from this philosophy, in addition to PvP-only diminishing returns, and PvP-oriented stats like Resilience and Spell Penetration. However, since many class changes apply to both PvP and PvE, PvE players seem to be "dragged" along by changes meant to tune their classes' PvP performance. Shamans and druids seem to be most affected this patch with changes to Nature's Swiftness, Elemental Mastery, Call of Thunder for shamans, and Lifebloom for druids.

Blizzard announced today that they will be hosting a 3v3 Tourney beginning in April with international qualifiers and some pretty hefty cash prizes at the end. After paying an entrance fee, teams will compete in qualifying tournaments with other teams from their region for cash prizes totaling $27,000 before proceeding to the global championship, where the grand prize will be $75,000. The twist is that this tournament will take place on dedicated servers in which participants will play with pre-made level 70 characters. You can read the FAQ here.

It sounds like this Tournament will be something that PvP Enthusiasts will want to watch with interest. The entrance fee should ensure that most of the field is made of dedicated players, or at least players who are somewhat sure of their ability, and the establishment of pre-made characters to ensure a "level" playing field should definitely lead to some exciting matches in which we'll see how differences in skill can make or break an arena match. However, It may also bring to light class and talent discrepancies as we watch which team make-ups rise to the top and which fall. Since we already know that additional class changes will be coming to 2.4.0, we certainly have to wonder if Blizzard will try to make some last minute class adjustments to this patch in preparation for this tournament, or if they'll use data from this tournament in making further decisions on class balance.

But either way, if you fancy yourself to be pretty decent at 3v3 Arena play and think you're willing to part with a bit of money to try and win a lot MORE money, it sounds like you'll want to keep an eye out for the sign-ups for this.

Bornakk revealed a welcome bit of future patch info on the general forums recently, announcing that there is an incoming improvement on a future 2.4 update that should lower arena queuing times across the board. This is definitely welcome news for many of us, although those who counted on getting chores done during the queue might get a little disappointed!

We've heard in the past that blizzard didn't want to rush in to any quick fixes and was considering the queue time issue carefully, so hopefully that means they've found a solution that will stick. Thus far, aside from the occasional mishap from a sneaky warlock and the lack of certain expected class changes, they seem to have had a smooth and well received patch on their hands.

While some people were asking for a hot fix in the thread, Bornakk assured them that the change was complicated enough that needed a patch. Being someone who often ends up running his 2v2s on Saturday or Sunday evening and experiences queue times that sometimes climb to 10 minutes or more, I'd say the wait will be worth it if it means I don't have to wait around quite so long in the future. Faster queue times, at the least, mean I can fit another daily or two in.

You may already be aware that SK Gaming has a listing of the top arena teams in the US, Europe, and Korea, all ranked against one another. Now SK Gaming has added another feature to this listing, which shows both the most "popular setups for high ranked teams" and the "average rating for popular setups." You can see very clearly the top five class combinations in each category of the arenas, from 5-vs-5 to 2-vs-2, all right above their regular listing of the top teams in each category.

I originally found this new interface via World of Raids, and they have their own summary of the most popular class setups. However, clicking through some of the options on SK Gaming's site, you can clearly see it's not just a simple matter of having the right classes in order to win. In 5-vs-5 it seems that, for the most part, the warrior and the paladin provide the backbone of a good group, while after that, you need a balance of some hybrid healing and dps classes.

In 3-vs-3 and 2-vs-2, however, you can find many groups doing very well without any warriors or paladins at all. The traditional roles of "tank, healing, damage" we see in PvE obviously don't always apply in the arena, where the balance of your team's abilities working together is what matters most. Druids, rogues, and warlocks in particular seem to shine much more here than in 5-vs-5.

So if you're a serious arena junkie, and you like analyzing these things, head on over and see what you make of these various class combinations. As always, our regular Blood Sport column can help you, as V'Ming has lots of information about how the classes are balanced together as well.

We usually don't realize it, but there is actually an upper limit to the number of instances that can be created in WoW at any given moment. If all the players on your server somehow decided to run Karazhan at about the same time, you'd find that after a certain number of raids had gotten started, some players would be stuck at the loading screen, waiting for the others to finish. Normally, of course, it's not a problem, because people don't all go to Karazhan at the same time. But at prime time, the 2-vs-2 arena instances are as popular as can be, so the 2-vs-2 arena instance slots get full, and frustrated players sometimes find themselves waiting a good long time for one of their turn to fight.

Last month, Drysc said that the Blizzard team still didn't know what to do about it. But now, he says that they do have a special change planned to help solve this problem. It's going to require a patch, though, and not the upcoming patch 2.3.2, either, but it is scheduled for some point in the future, "as soon as possible." Patch 2.4 perhaps? "The change," Drysc says, "will make it so that more instances can kick up in a shorter amount of time. Which doesn't necessarily mean there can't ever be a wait again, but it should drastically decrease them." However much "drastically" is, shorter is always better than longer, when it comes to queues!

With the popularity of the new arena season, queue times across the servers are getting pretty long. This is especially noticeable in the 2v2 bracket, which is the most popular team size. When a player posted his complaints about the long queues today, Drysc chimed in to give indication that there will be no quick fix incoming. Instead, the devs are going to wait to get the big picture on the influx of PvPers instead of making rash decisions.

I don't know what your experiences have been like lately, but the queues on my main server seem to be getting longer and longer rather than diminishing. The new season has only been out for about a week now, so perhaps it's too early to expect interest to be fading, but I hope there is some sort of solution soon. I've contemplated moving up to the 3v3 bracket, but I've heard via word of mouth that those queues are getting pretty lengthy as well. Perhaps it's time to give 5v5 a chance once again, if I can corral some of my guildmates to chose a specific time to do our matches and stick with it.

What has your experience with the arena queues been like since the new season began?

Nestled in a hokey thread (as important as the overpowered McRib is, it's not something I'd really expect a blue to be commenting on), Kalgan has dropped some insight about how Blizzard is viewing the very strange 2v2 Arena lineup. 2v2 is the weirdest balance of all, because not only is WoW not a dueling game, it's not a 2v2 game either. It's very possible for there to be two classes within four players that don't have balances against each other.

And Kalgan says that Blizzard realizes this, and as a result, they are still not happy with the way 2v2 is balanced out-- Kalgan says that there are a lot of classes "left out of having a reasonable chance" to compete in the format, because of the "endurance" nature of the game. In fact, Blizzard almost went with a 4v4 Arena instead (in addition to the 3v3 and 5v5 teams now in the game), and abandoned the 2v2 idea entirely. The reason 2v2 stayed is that Kalgan agrees that players should be able to grab a friend and play. So Blizzard apparently took on the bigger challenge of balancing 2v2 just to keep players who didn't have lots of great PvPing friends in the Arena game.

Was it worth it? I've played both 2v2 and 5v5 formats, and I'd have to say that 2v2 is an interesting format, but the players angry about balance are right-- there are just some fights that can't be won in 2v2. I don't know if that's reason enough to have decided against it and gone with 4v4 instead (and I also don't think that there are lots of players that have friends enough to play 2v2 and not one of the bigger brackets), but Blizzard does have a long road ahead of them if they want to make 2v2 seriously balanced. Depending on how many people they've got playing there (my hunch is that 5v5 is much more popular, but that's just a hunch, I haven't seen the numbers), that may not be a road worth traveling.