The new ParentDish: helping raise kids of all ages
Posts with tag tournament-realm

Tracking the Tournament Realm rankings from the armory

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.

Vhiari posts Tournament Realm ratings data


Vhiari has released some interesting stats about the Arena Tournament realm over on his Blogspot site. What he did is take the top 5000 (due to "Armory limitations," he says) personal ratings in each bracket, and then charted them according to classes. Keep in mind that this is the Arena Tournament realm (the live realm data is also available separately), so this is more an indication of what players are doing so far on the tournament realm rather than class viability in day-to-day situations.

But keep in mind also that Blizzard is watching the Tournament realm closely for PvP balance, so what we see here could have some hints into the future of Arena changes. Mages especially don't make out too well on the 5v5 chart, and Hunters don't appear to fare much better. Warriors, as you might expect, are off the charts, but comparably on 5v5, Druids aren't at that level. Rogue placement is a surprise, too, but Vhiari just says in the comments that that's more an indication of how many people rolled rogues on the TR rather than a signal that Rogues are rocking 5v5.

Interesting stuff. Unfortunately, the data is a little too fuzzy to pull off any serious conclusions (even if Mages aren't getting high ratings, this chart does nearly nothing at all to help us figure out why that might be), but it's an interesting look at what's happening on the TR so far.

[via WoR]

WoW Insider Arena team thoughts and tinkers


Let's get one thing out of the way: this isn't an epeen-stroking session. When you go into the Tournament Realm joining a 1382 team that went 3-11 on its debut week, you have to set your expectations right. Aside from Amanda Dean, or Mandy, who's professed an enjoyment for Arenas, the WoW Insider team is composed of people who don't have extensive Arena experience. We also have Adam Holisky, who doesn't consider PvP to be the 'real' game (whatever that means), and Amanda Miller, who covers our Sunday Morning Funnies. I do a fair amount of Arena on live myself and our team is rated enough to garner us Season 3 swag every two weeks or so. You do the math. But here's the thing -- Arena is a team game. Like every team sport, it relies on synergy, teamwork, and communication. The top players in the world know this, and team leaders replace underperforming members regularly with a dose of nerd rage for good measure. That's just competitive Arena play.

On the other hand, WoW Insider's venture into the Tournament Realm is more of a journalistic exercise than anything else. For one thing, I'm not even eligible to actually participate in the actual tournament because my country isn't on the list, so my expectations of going far in this tournament is nil. To be perfectly honest, that's a good thing. Ironically, I feel a lot less pressure to perform on the TR with the WoW Insider Team than I do on live. In fact, I even ventured to play as a Retribution Paladin only because I can. I had initially created a Restoration Shaman named Insiderzach but since Mandy was running with a Restoration Druid, I thought I could have a little fun with running double melee with Adam so I made a Paladin. After all, it is my favorite class.

Continue reading WoW Insider Arena team thoughts and tinkers

Fun with the Arena server



I had the opportunity to play on the Tournament Realm with Amanda Miller and Adam Holisky on Friday night. Yes, we got schooled but we had a great time. As Amanda mentioned I rolled a Resto Druid, but I specced short of tree form. I was most interested in mobility. I usually heal arenas as a Resto Shaman. I really enjoy the mobility of the druid, and I'm afraid I would lose that in tree form. Take a look at my spec, for those of you who know Druid better than I, tell me where can I improve?

I absolutely love the tournament realm. I've really enjoyed the opportunity to play Druid, and it encourages me, and I may very well level one on my live realm. I think I will try a Warlock next. I've enjoyed the tournament server so much that I haven't even logged into my home realm. I would probably get bored with just playing WoW as an E-sport full time on an arena realm, but I've found the realm to be worth the price of admission.

Continue reading Fun with the Arena server

Arena Tournament: Tales from day one


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.

Continue reading Arena Tournament: Tales from day one


RESOURCES

Class Columns
Pimp My Profile (1)
(Druid) Shifting Perspectives (40)
(Hunter) Big Red Kitty (33)
(Hunter) Scattered Shots (14)
(Mage) Arcane Brilliance (35)
(Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It (47)
(Priest) Spiritual Guidance (20)
(Rogue) Encrypted Text (33)
(Shaman) Totem Talk (44)
(Warlock) Blood Pact (26)
(Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors (48)
Gameplay
(Arena PvP) Blood Sport (22)
(BG PvP) The Art of War(craft) (21)
(Casual) WoW, Casually (17)
(Engineering) Hoof and Horn Research and Development (17)
(Guild Leadership) Officers' Quarters (55)
(Professions) Insider Trader (55)
(Raid Healing) Raid Rx (17)
(Raiding) Raiding 101 (2)
(Raiding) Ready Check (19)
(Roleplaying) All the World's a Stage (36)
Hybrid Theory (13)
AddOns and UI
AddOn Spotlight (79)
Macro Anatomy (12)
Reader UI of the Week (25)
Reader WoWspace of the week (28)
The Creamy GUI Center (11)
Lore and Stories
Around Azeroth (472)
Barrens Chat (2)
Know your Lore (51)
Tales from the Lion's Pride Inn (14)
WoW Moviewatch (466)
Features
15 Minutes of Fame (18)
About the Bloggers (24)
Ask WoW Insider (55)
Azeroth Security Advisor (1)
Back In The Day (3)
Breakfast topics (675)
Build Shop (34)
Gamers on the Street (19)
Guildwatch (76)
He Said She Said (4)
It came from the Blog (25)
Phat Loot Phriday (86)
Two Bosses Enter (61)
Well Fed Buff (22)
World of WarCrafts (19)
WoW Insider Show (52)
WoW Rookie (35)
[1.Local] (6)
Classes
Death Knight (54)
Druid (264)
Hunter (252)
Mage (156)
Paladin (266)
Priest (219)
Rogue (160)
Shaman (245)
Warlock (172)
Warrior (182)
News
Account Security (10)
AddOns (231)
Analysis / Opinion (2695)
Blizzard (1471)
BlizzCon (184)
Bugs (212)
Burning Crusade (358)
Contests (204)
Economy (183)
Events (366)
Expansions (562)
Fan stuff (821)
Features (605)
Forums (244)
Guilds (461)
Hardware (25)
Humor (723)
Interviews (136)
Lore (265)
Mounts (128)
News items (1403)
NPCs (186)
Odds and ends (1590)
Patches (1112)
Podcasting (73)
Ranking (50)
Realm News (274)
Realm Status (226)
RP (159)
Rumors (32)
Virtual selves (610)
WoW Insider Business (278)
WoW Social Conventions (135)
WoW TCG (49)
Wrath of the Lich King (262)
Strategy
Alts (85)
Arena (167)
Battlegrounds (104)
Bosses (311)
Buffs (114)
Cheats (67)
Classes (285)
Enchants (29)
Factions (146)
Guides (323)
How-tos (361)
Instances (614)
Items (790)
Leveling (245)
Making money (163)
PvP (691)
Quests (342)
Raiding (670)
Talents (120)
Tips (539)
Tricks (215)
Walkthroughs (74)
Media
Comics (63)
Fan art (34)
Galleries (136)
Machinima (541)
Podcasts (52)
Polls (55)
Screenshots (610)
Races
Alliance (103)
Draenei (61)
Dwarves (15)
Gnomes (39)
Human (15)
Night Elves (42)
Horde (102)
Blood Elves (68)
Orcs (25)
Tauren (42)
Trolls (22)
Undead (21)
Professions
Alchemy (75)
Blacksmithing (55)
Cooking (66)
Enchanting (70)
Engineering (106)
First Aid (16)
Fishing (57)
Herbalism (44)
Inscription (10)
Jewelcrafting (78)
Leatherworking (58)
Mining (42)
Skinning (27)
Tailoring (63)
Retired
Azeroth Interrupted (24)
World Wide WoW (8)
/silly (14)

RSS NEWSFEEDS

Powered by Blogsmith

    Featured Galleries

    Magisters' Terrace walkthrough
    Patch 2.4 Sunwell Isle
    Kil'jaeden loot
    It came from the Blog: Mother's Day Event
    It came from the Blog: Children's Week Gallery
    Children's Week: Stormwind
    Children's Week: Orgrimmar
    M'uru loot
    Children's Week: Dornaa's quests

     

    Most Commented On (30 days)

    Recent Comments

    Weblogs, Inc. Network

    Other Weblogs Inc. Network blogs you might be interested in: