Posts tagged Tournaments at WOW Insider

Posts with tag tournaments

Blood Sport: Tournament Time

Posted Apr 3rd 2008 10:50PM by Amanda Dean
Filed under: Events, Blizzard, PvP, Contests, (Arena PvP) Blood Sport, Arena

V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed has been bound with copious amounts of duct tape and is currently suspended by his toenails in the basement of the WoW Insider headquarters where he is currently serving as a practice piñata for the rest of the crew. Amanda Dean has temporarily hijacked his column to bring you this important announcement.

The servers are live and Blizzard's $120,000 arena tournament has begun. This is your chance to prove that your team is the best in the world, or at least among eligible participants. The first two qualifying rounds are divided into Asian, European and North American Regions.* You have to place among the top four teams in one of these rounds to qualify for the big bucks. Before you sign up, be sure to check out the official tournament rules.

Players must have their accounts upgraded to tournament status in order to view the tournament realms. Entrance into each of the qualifying rounds will run individual participants $20 USD. Qualifiers run from March 31-May 20, 2008 to June 3-July 15, 2008. Players may use user interface modifications in the qualifying rounds, but will be limited to the default UI and custom macros in the live stages of the tournament.

Continue reading Blood Sport: Tournament Time

Blizzard working with ESL on offline tourneys

Posted Jan 28th 2008 3:00PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Realm News, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, PvP, Contests, Arena

Lots of people (including MMO Champion) reported over the weekend that according to this interview with David "Shawn" K of the Electronic Sports League, Blizzard is lending their support to get offline tournaments up and running. Blizzard apparently gave ESL a special event realm to run their tournaments in (Upper Deck has also used an event realm to run online tournaments and instances at their TCG events), accounts on those servers with tons of gold and PvP gear per player, and has also implemented special UI modifications for observers.

Interesting. So it seems that the ESL might be stepping up to fill in the space that the WSVG abandoned when they fell apart. In our interview with then-WSVG president Matt Ringel, he also mentioned that they were getting support from Blizzard in the form of special realms and UI mods. So it looks like ESL is now benefiting from the work Blizzard did there.

Of course, the other question we have about these types of updates is when, if ever, they'll be placed in player hands as well. Players have wanted an observation system for PvP, especially in the Arenas, for a long time, and it's not a stretch to think that if Blizzard is developing tools for professional tournaments, they might also have a plan to get those tools into player hands in some form. But even if we don't see them in the game for a long time, it's good to know that tournament development on Blizzard's end didn't die off completely with the WSVG.

Upper Deck's WoW TCG World Championships coverage begins

Posted Nov 30th 2007 2:52PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WoW Social Conventions, Blizzard, WoW TCG

Upper Deck has begun their live coverage of the biggest event the TCG has ever seen: the World Championships. They are live from San Diego, as a few hundred players are battling it out in the card game for a $100,000 prize. There are other tournaments going on there as well this weekend-- the Darkmoon Faire is in town and giving away tons of great loot. And Blizzard is there as well-- they're even giving away a Dinner with the Devs, where winners of a certain tournament can sit down and talk shop with the devs: Chris Metzen, Shawn Carnes, J. Allen Brack, Lee Sparks, Scott Mercer, Cory Stockton, Travis Day, and Tom Chilton. Artists are in the house, too: Samwise, Glenn Rane, Alex Horley-Orlandelli, Jonboy Meyers, and Dan Scott will be signing cards and doing sketches for attendees throughout the weekend. Pretty rad if you happen to be as big a fanboy/girl as we here at WoW Insider are.

Ben Drago, the manager for Organized Play (who we interviewed a while back) is also blogging live from the event, and been posting updates, both small and big, from his hotel room and the tournament floor. Expect to see lots more coverage, including photos and results, from Upper Deck on the tournament over the weekend.

And we'll have more here at WoW Insider, too-- our coverage started yesterday with an interview with one of the top TCG players, and we'll be keeping an eye on the results all weekend. And even if you're not in the tournament at all, you still have a chance to win something-- watch WoW Insider all next week for results of the tournament and our very own consolation prizes.

Upper Deck giving $100,000 to winner of WoW TCG World Championship

Posted Nov 1st 2007 5:30PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Items, WoW Social Conventions, Blizzard, News items, Expansions, Contests, WoW TCG

Upper Deck has announced that their final WoW TCG tournament this year, the World Championship, will offer a whopping $100,000 prize. Yes, you read that right-- the top winner will take home a hundred grand. There's already a long list of people invited to the tournament, mostly from previous Nationals and qualifying tournaments, but there is still one chance left to get into the tournament, which starts on November 29th at the San Diego Convention Center. If you can come up with an Honor Ranking of 4 by then, you could enter the Honor Grind tournament on November 29th, and the top four winners of that will be invited to compete in the World Championships. So if you really want that $100,000 prize, and have never played the TCG in your life, better get playing.

But even if you don't plan on winning, the World Championship sounds like a lot of fun-- TCG artists (including Blizzard's Samwise Didier) will be there to sign cards and meet players, and there will be lots of other events and tournaments. The Crafting Redemption metagame will also be happening for the first time-- players will be able to turn in "extra" material cards to "make" special exclusive item cards for the game. And this "Thunderfury" card is an exclusive participation card for the tournament, too. Very nice.

And Upper Deck also reminds us that November is release month for the upcoming March of the Legion expansion, and they're going to hold a sneak preview of all the new cards on November 17th at a store near you. Supposedly there's a list of stores hosting the events over on their site, but I don't see it yet, so hopefully it'll be up soon. And keep your eyes open-- we've already been told the new set will have three brand new loot cards, and we've got our ears to the tracks on just what they might be.

BlizzCon tournament brackets announced

Posted Jul 30th 2007 2:36PM by Elizabeth Harper
Filed under: PvP, BlizzCon

We knew that there Blizzard was going to be holding tournaments for StarCraft, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft Arenas at BlizzCon, but until today we didn't know who would be participating. The BlizzCon site has been updated with a list of participating players along with brief player profiles. The Arena tournament will includes the top two teams from Korea's regional finals, the top two teams from the European regional finals, the top three teams from the American regional finals, and the winner of the 2005 BlizzCon Invitational. (Don't ask me how that works, since I'm quite sure we didn't have arenas in 2005.) And for those of you curious about worlds beyond Warcraft, check out the StarCraft and Warcraft III brackets.

Senior CM interviewed about eSports

Posted May 29th 2007 12:59PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Blizzard, PvP, Leveling, Interviews

This story comes from the somewhat unusual source of Amped eSports. They have an interview up from Blizzard's Paul Della Bitta, whose title is Senior Community Manager. He says he "oversee[s] our community teams for all franchises as well as the eSports team," so that's who he is in case, like me, you hadn't heard of him before.

The interview mostly talks about "how did WoW become an eSport" (with the introduction of the Arena system in BC) and "how do you feel about the tournaments this year" (very excited). If you're interested in WoW as a sporting event, you should definitely give the article a read. However, there is at least one juicy item of interest in there for all WoW players:

We know that pro players need to practice for hours a day; they can't practice and grind out levels and farm for items It is something we're aware of and we're going to hope to address in the future.

Is this a sign that there will in the future be a meaningful way to participate in PvP without leveling a character to 70? How would you feel about that? Personally, I think I'd welcome it, as it would give further distance between the PvE game and the PvP game, which BC already does pretty well and which I think is very needed. I see the argument for rewarding players who put in the effort to level (as does Paul Della Bitta: "we wanted to reward the players who had taken their characters from 1 to 70"), but on the other hand I don't see why it should take hundreds of hours spent in PvE in order to compete in PvP. Your thoughts?

Another arena team goes pro: The Fighting Mongooses of Mug'thol

Posted Apr 5th 2007 1:30PM by Mike Schramm
Filed under: Events, Guilds, Blizzard, News items, PvP, Contests

This is getting to be a habit-- maybe WoW will thrive in the professional gaming arena yet. Curse is reporting that Enervate Gaming has picked up The Fighting Mongooses, an Arena team on Mug'thol (they've got a 2536 rating, which I guess is kind of good and stuff). They're currently first in their battlegroup Vengeance (and Overrated is running second place, so they may get picked up soon as well). AmpedeSports has a short piece up about both TFM and Power Trip, who we reported a little while ago were one of two other teams who've been picked up by progaming agents.

There's a few interesting things to be learned in the sound bites of the Enervate guy as well. As for actual tournaments, he says plans are still up in the air, but he confirms that Blizzard will supposedly be "paying for some of the top teams to attend Blizzard sponsored events." (Enervate says they'll be paying to send the sixth man along.) And when asked how he chose The Fighting Mongooses, he says ~~Power Trip and ZERG IT DOWN just weren't available~~ that he spoke with players and "community leaders" to find out which were the teams to watch, and then listened in on some of TFM's matches. The team is a group of close friends-- two of them have known each other since elementary school, and there's a pair of brothers as well.

So grats to The Fighting Mongooses for picking up a sponsor. With all this support flying around, we're going to have to get these guys together in an arena pretty soon and see what they can do. How about it, Blizzard?

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Blood Sport: Tournament Time

Blizzard working with ESL on offline tourneys

Upper Deck's WoW TCG World Championships coverage begins

Upper Deck giving $100,000 to winner of WoW TCG World Championship

BlizzCon tournament brackets announced

Senior CM interviewed about eSports

Another arena team goes pro: The Fighting Mongooses of Mug'thol

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