The premiere 3v3 Arena team from Europe of Cherez, Beasteh, and Hydra -- aka Nihilum Arena -- won top honors at the recently concluded Championship Gaming Series Arena Tournament. This win comes after their notable absence from MLG Orlando despite a 2nd place finish in San Diego. Considering the purse for the MLG series is $12,000 (and an HP Blackbird for each team member), Nihilum fortunately participated in this tournament, winning a whopping $25,000.

Frag Dominant Duelists continued their strong showing on the pro circuit, finishing 2nd again after falling to Orz in MLG Orlando about a week ago, and placing first in MLG San Diego. FD-DGFG ran a double healer Rogue, Druid, Priest comp, taking home $12,500 after their defeat to Nihilum Arena's Hunter, Druid, and Priest. Two runner-up teams took home $6,250 apiece. The tournament used a format that pitted Europe's against the United States' best in the finals.

The coverage was different from the MLG series, being much more friendly to viewers not overly familiar with the game or Arena tournaments, with extensive previews of the characters used by the players, and an overview of the Arena maps prior to matches. The shoutcasting was also much more casual-friendly, at a significantly slower pace than the MLG coverage. The choice of the infamous Leeroy Jenkins to commentate was definitely a marketing move, with more than a few mistakes (calling Scatter Shot Distracting Shot, saying Ice Block's cooldown as 2 mins vs. the correct 5, being fooled by Cherez' Feign Death, etc.). The level of analysis wasn't as deep as MLG's, which featured Arena pros for commentating. Camera view was also an overhead style as opposed to the third person view used by MLG. Both tournaments had good points, and it's exciting to see Arena play gaining a stronger foothold in the pro gaming scene.

On Saturday, July 19th, the four finalists in the CGS 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Championship will meet in the squared circle of pixels to duel it out for glory. The four finalists are MoB Gaming (US), Frag Dominant (US), aÄa Agïta (EU), and Nihilum Arena (EU). The US teams will fight first, then the EU teams, and then the winners will face-off up to determine the final champion.

The matches run in a best-of-five format, ending when one team reaches three victories. There is a 15 minute time limit for each round, and the show will be live streamed by the Championship Gaming Series. The matches will be shoutcasted by none other than the infamous Leeroy Jenkins. No, really.

The show starts at 4PM Eastern, with aÄa Agïta versus Nihilum. MoB Gaming versus Frag Dominant kicks off around 5PM Eastern, and the US Finalist versus the EU Finalist will fight it out by 6PM. That schedule's going to shift a bit, obviously, if any of the match ups finish especially quickly. At any rate, we'll let you know who wins.

All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, suggestions, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening.

You've probably heard that no story is completely original, that everything is copied from somewhere, and nothing anyone ever thinks or says is really unique. It's an awfully pessimistic way of looking at the creative endeavor, but there's a degree of truth in it.

Any time you make up a new character, you are sure to be inspired by something you observed somewhere else. Perhaps you wondered, "What if there were a dwarven rogue, whose personality was a mix between Sherlock Holmes and Jack Sparrow?" or "My undead warrior is a lot like Frankenstein's monster, not evil so much as tragically neglected and rejected. He also likes to play with dolls." All this is fine and good for roleplaying, as long as you recognize the essential differences between your character and his or her inspirational anscestors.

After all, every creative endeavor basically consists of mix-and-matching pre-existing knowledge in new and useful ways. In the same way a painter doesn't need to invent new colors, color palettes, or even new color matching techniques to make an beautiful, a storyteller doesn't need to create entirely new characteristics for each character in his or her story, only mix-and-match qualities real people already have in order to create someone compelling and interesting for other characters to interact with.

Jump on in to find some great inspirations for WoW characters.

Stratics has posted their own Nihilum interview (here's ours, from last week), and while the piece doesn't actually appear to be in interview format (?), it does have some good info from Awake about how to manage a huge guild, whether PvE players will be able to go professional in the future, and how Nihilum stays on track and GTD.

Not too much is new since last week, but Awake does offer up some new info about Nihilum's PvP plans-- they're trying to bring at least two teams into WSVG. Also, Awake mentions that they'll be at Blizzcon in some form (so will WoW Insider, of course, and if you don't have your tickets yet, be sure to watch for our contests all week), and hints that it might have something to do with... Leeroy Jenkins?

So there's not too much to learn if you read last week's interview (or if you're just tired of hearing about Nihilum-- yes, I know there are some of you out there), but if you just can't get enough Nihilum, go check it out.

Reader DrDiesel of Blade's Edge (thanks!) pointed us to this Denver Westword article about none other than the star of UBRS and Jeopardy, Leeroy Jenkins. Sure, the reporter is a few years late on the phenomenon of Leeroy and this wacky "emerging form" of Machinima, and yes, the article suffers from the same naive cluelessness it seems all mainstream reporters suffer from when they're writing about WoW ("I typed a message into the 'chat window,' a window for chat, and was astounded when a real person typed 'STFU noob' back!"), but on the plus side, there's some interesting stuff in there about Ben Schulz and what it's like to be Leeroy ingame.

Schulz (that's him in a professional looking photo on the right) is the son of a theatrical director and a set designer who works at an industrial lighting company, and who's gotten famous for playing a videogame character for 30 seconds for free (the article doesn't mention if Blizzard ever paid him for putting his likeness in the card game, or if any of those t-shirt companies ever offered him anything for his name). He takes a pass at setting allegations to rest on whether the video was staged or not (who cares, at this point), and he generally seems-- surprise-- like a guy who just likes to play WoW. Who'd have known.

There is a rumor in there, however, that the World of Warcraft movie people were thinking about putting him in the flick as a cameo, and have since blown him off. Blizzard, Legendary Pictures, whoever's listening, I think I speak for the WoW community when I say: this must be done. You've got to get him in that movie. We want Leeroy!

We've got a winner for the day 4 Leeroy t-shirt contest: commenter 170 wins the lucky need roll, and we wish March and her boyfriend a happy unwrapping.

You've still got some time to get your four word entry in to win a 60-day prepaid time card, and do join us later this afternoon to check out what today's Countdown to Burning Crusade contest will be.

Alright folks, it's that time again -- time to announce the day's Countdown to BC contest. Yesterday you were faced with the difficult task of Photoshopping this image to win the original Warcraft book trilogy (stay tuned for the winner announcement later today for day 2 and day 3 winners). Today we're going to make it easy on you again -- all you have to do is comment in this thread to win a Leeroy Jenkins t-shirt in your choice of size. You have until 3:45 pm EST tomorrow, January 5 to leave your comment, and we'll /Need roll to determine the lucky winner.

On your marks... get set... go!

I know what you're thinking. You've been playing World of Warcraft since release and the Leeroy jokes are starting to wear just the teensiest bit thin. But I have to say that even I laughed at this video (a promo for this year's Video Game Awards) and I'm not sure I found Leeroy terribly funny the first time around.