Arena Junkies - World of Warcraft PvP Strategy and Discussion

eSports at Blizzcon This Year

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:41:37 +0000

We're excited to see the official announcement that there will be both WoW Arena and Starcraft tournaments once again at Blizzcon this year. This year there will be a total prize pool of $300,000 to be had.

Of course, we'll be there covering the tournament as we do every year. Hope to see some of you guys out there!

Official Blizzard Quote:

BLIZZCON® 2011 TO FEATURE WORLD-CLASS PROFESSIONAL ESPORTS COMPETITION

July 12, 2011 -- Blizzard Entertainment announced today that the 2011 Global Battle.net® Invitational and the 2011 GSL (Global StarCraft® II League) October Final will both be held at BlizzCon® 2011. The action will be live at BlizzCon and presented for free over the Internet at www.blizzcon.com. A free Battle.net account will be required for access to the Internet stream. Sign up for an account at www.battle.net. BlizzCon, which takes place at the Anaheim Convention Center in California from October 21 to 22, is a celebration of Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® universes as well as the community of players that has grown around them. Tickets to attend BlizzCon are sold out, but virtual tickets, which provide comprehensive live coverage of the event, will be available for $39.99 USD at www.blizzcon.com.

“Between the Global Battle.net Invitational and the GSL October Final, two of the biggest eSports events of the year will be taking place at BlizzCon 2011,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re looking forward to witnessing the high level of competition between the pro gamers participating in these events alongside our attendees at BlizzCon and the viewers at home.” The Global Battle.net Invitational is one of the top attractions at BlizzCon, featuring top-ranked pro players who have been invited to participate from across the world. This year, players will compete in StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™ and World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™. The GSL is one of the world’s most-watched eSports competitions. Since its inception in 2010, millions of viewers have watched GSL broadcasts featuring intense matches between highly skilled professional players. These world-class competitors make a living through sponsorships and by battling it out for cash prizes in prestigious tournaments. The GSL October Final match is expected to bring much excitement to both domestic and overseas viewers as it will be the first GSL tournament final to take place outside of Korea. Between the Battle.net Invitational and the GSL October Final, a total prize pool of nearly $300,000 USD will be up for grabs at BlizzCon 2011. More information about BlizzCon and the 2011 Global Battle.net Invitational can be found at the official BlizzCon website (www.blizzcon.com), and more information on the GSL can be found on its official website (www.gomtv.net)

Curse is Hiring!

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 20:13:32 +0000

We're continuing to grow here at Curse. The Curse network now reaches over 14 million unique users each month. So, we're looking to expand our team and fill some new positions!

If you're looking for a chance to get into the industry, this may be your opportunity. Below are the positions we are currently looking to fill:

For more information on working at Curse and for a full job listing, please head to our Jobs page on Curse.com. If you've got the skills, we want to hear from you!

Arena Season 10 Begins

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:41:11 +0000

Arena Season 10 has officially begun and titles have been awarded for Season 9. So far it appears that there is not a Feat of Strength associated with Gladiator or Vicious Gladiator for Season 9. We have yet to see a blue post addressing this. We'll keep you updated if things change or we get official word on why the change after 8 seasons of awarding a FoS for the titles.

UPDATE: The Feat of Strengths will be added in a future patch for these titles:

Official Blizzard Quote:

It wasn't intended for the mounts and titles to go out without their associated feats of strength. Unfortunately, this cannot be addressed via a hotfix and will require a client-side patch. The Season 9 feats of strength will be rewarded retroactively in a future patch to those who should have gotten them with the start of Season 10.

Good luck getting started in Season 10! We'll be working hard these next few weeks to get set up for S10 and moving forward on new features on AJ.

Below is the blue post:

Official Blizzard Quote:

Arena Season 10 has officially begun, and players can once again take to the Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds to compete for the new Ruthless Gladiator PvP sets!

All Team Ratings and Personal Ratings have been reset, and any Conquest Points from Season 9 have been converted to Honor Points. Any Honor Points above the cap were converted into gold at a rate of 35 silver per point. Matchmaking Ratings, however, will be carried over into Season 10.

Another important event that coincides with the start of Season 10 is the distribution of rewards from the previous season. Players who were in the top teams from each battlegroup at the end of season 9 should be receiving their end-of-season rewards approximately one week after the end of the last season. These include Arena-specific titles until the end of this new season and, for players who have earned the rank of gladiator, the Vicious Gladiator’s Twilight Drake. It's very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for Arena titles and/or the Vicious Gladiator’s Twilight Drake to refrain from transferring their characters to another realm or faction until all rewards have been received.

If you have any further questions about Arena and Rated Battleground rewards, please read the FAQ.

Arena and Rated Battlegrounds Rewards FAQ
Below, you can find answers to a plethora of questions about the Arena. This information contains facts that can be helpful for seasoned Arena veterans as well as people that are perhaps new to the sands:

How can I get the Gladiator title?
You need to be in top 0.5% of the total active teams in either the 3v3 or 5v5 bracket at the end of an Arena season.

When does the season end?
Official announcements are made to provide a warning of at least two weeks before the end of a season. These announcements for European realms are posted in the Arena and Rated Battlegrounds forum here: http://eu.battle.net.../forum/2265987/

What rewards are given for Rated Battlegrounds?
The top 0.5% of players on the Rated Battleground ladder will receive an achievement that grants a permanent “Hero of the Horde” or “Hero of the Alliance” title.

When can I purchase the PvP weapons?
Certain PvP weapons require that a player meet a minimum requirement before becoming available for purchase. Vicious Gladiator’s one-handed or two-handed weapons require that the player first accumulate 7250 total Honor Points, while Ruthless Gladiator’s one-handed or two-handed weapons require that the player first accumulate 7800 total Conquest Points. Total accumulated Honor and Conquest Points are tracked over the course of the season.

What rewards are given out when an Arena season ends?
The end of season rewards include the titles ‘Challenger’ for the top 10% to 35% of active teams in the battlegroup, ‘Rival’ for the top 3% to 10% of active teams in the battlegroup, ‘Duelist’ for the top 0.5% to 3% of active teams in the battlegroup, and ‘Gladiator’ for the top 0.5% of active teams in the battlegroup. Players who earn the ‘Gladiator’ title also receive a special permanent mount to signify their accomplishments in the Arena.

I was in a top team last season, where’s my reward?
Rewards from the previous season are awarded shortly after the start of the new season.

What Personal Rating (PR) must I have to qualify for the end-of-season rewards?
There is no specific personal rating amount required, but you need to be within 100 personal rating of the team rating.

What percentage of games must I play on my team to qualify for the end-of-season rewards?
You need to have played in at least 20% of the games that your team has competed in.

How many games do I need to play to qualify for the end of season rewards?
You need to have played in at least 20 games on your team.

What is an "inactive" team?
A team is "inactive" if the team has not played at least 20 games, there is no one in the team with 20%+ games played, or no one within 100 Personal Rating. Inactivity status has nothing to do with how often you play. Any inactive team is disqualified from the end of the season rewards.

Do I need to play in the last week to be able to get Gladiator?
No, you don't have to play in the last week.

If I transfer to another realm after the season ends but before I get my title and drake will they still get to me?
No. You must wait for titles/drakes to be distributed and then transfer afterward.

How do players get the Vicious Gladiator title?
At the end of each season, the #-1 ranked teams from the 3v3/5v5 brackets in each battlegroup get the title of that Arena season. For season 9 it is Vicious Gladiator and for season 10 it will be Ruthless Gladiator. If multiple teams are tied for the top spot, they will all get this title.

Do I get to keep my title forever?
The Challenger, Rival, Duelist and Gladiator titles are redistributed at the end of each season based on your team’s performance. So for example, if you get a Gladiator title at the end of season 9, when season 10 ends you will get a new title based on your performance specifically for season 10. The only title that is permanent is the one awarded for the #1-ranked teams each season.

Farewell Season 9 and Prepping for Season 10

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:45:45 +0000

Hopefully Season 9 went well for you and in a week you'll be sitting pretty with your Gladiator title. And if you miss the title you were gunning for this season, we'll be here to help you step up your game in Season 10.

Season 9, like every other season had its good times and its hard times. There is already more than enough retrospective to me and the moderator team busy for a while. But, we're always more excited to see what happens in Season 10. So, in the spirit of looking forward, here is a reminder about the transition period from Season 9 to Season 10:

From the end of season announcement:

Official Blizzard Quote:

Arena and Rated Battleground Season 9 is scheduled to end as early as June 28. At that point we will determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards, a process that should take approximately one week. It's very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for Arena titles and/or the Vicious Gladiator’s Twilight Drake to refrain from transferring their characters to another realm or faction until after Season 9 ends. During the break between seasons, all Rated Battleground and Arena matches will be unavailable.

At the end of the season, Conquest Points will be converted to Honor Points, possibly exceeding the 4,000 point Honor cap. All Season 9 items will cost Honor Points (equivalent to their previous Conquest Point cost) when the season ends, with the exception of any items with rating requirements attached. These items will no longer be available for purchase.

The next Arena and Rated Battleground season will begin for level-85 players approximately one week after the end of Season 9 and will coincide with the awarding of Season 9 titles and mounts. At that time, any Honor accrued above the 4,000-point cap will be converted into gold at a rate of 35 silver per point. In addition, Season 10 rewards will be made available for purchase with Conquest Points awarded during the new season. All Team and Personal Ratings will be wiped when Season 10 begins. Matchmaking Ratings, however, will carry over into Season 10.

...and from the 4.2 Patch Notes

Official Blizzard Quote:

Arenas

The individual Matchmaking Rating column has been removed from the Arena scoreboard.
The Ring of Valor has been added to the Arena rotation once again. Players no longer start the match on elevators at the center of the map. They now begin the match in starting rooms on opposite sides of the Arena.

Battlegrounds

The individual Matchmaking Rating column has been removed from the Rated Battleground scoreboard and replaced with a team Matchmaking Rating.
Eye of the Storm has been added into the rotation as a 10-man Rated Battleground. The tug-of-war style capture points have been replaced with Arathi Basin style capture points to better support 10v10 competition. This change applies only to Rated Battlegrounds. Eye of the Storm is otherwise still a 15-player Battleground with tug-of-war style capture points.
Warsong Gulch has been added back into the Rated Battleground rotation.
War Games
Many improvements have been made to the War Games interface. It now has its own panel for ease of use and raid/group leaders are the only ones who can challenge another group to War Games.

On top of a new Arena season, we have some big plans for Season 10 here on ArenaJunkies as well. Of course, you can expect our regular end of season routine where we reset Junkie access for those who do not have a Gladiator title. There are also some feature improvements in the pipeline we hope to see pushed out during this season that should make the experience on AJ much better and more useful for everyone.

We always get excited for a new season to crank up and give us a fresh start. Here's to an exciting Season 10.

Back up!

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 17:11:39 +0000

Hey guys,

Our team had a long week getting restoring service to all of our sites and upgrading our network hardware. We're back on track now and, all Curse websites are back online. Thank you for your patience with us through this week - it's been rough for all of us.

Bringing you guys the best experience possible across the network is our primary goal. Rest assured, we will continue to expand our network infrastructure to prevent this from happening again.

Again, thanks for bearing with us. Good luck in the final days of the season!

Welcome Back Giveaway

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 15:32:29 +0000

GIVEAWAY UPDATE: The giveaway has ended and winners have been selected on AJ as well as FB for the giveaway. Thanks for bearing with us and being some of the first people right back on AJ. Congrats to the winners. You have a PM here or a message from me on Facebook!

...And we're back! My apologies for the extended downtime. The Curse network servers suffered a catastrophic hardware failure that took us out. Our team has been working tirelessly over the last couple days and nights to get us back online. I'm sorry for the inconvenience this has caused, especially in the last week to push for Gladiator! Thanks for your patience on this one.

Also, we may experience some additional downtime in the next day as hardware is replaced.

But, what actually happened?

This is the current update from Curse what happened to cause this major network-wide crash and what we're doing to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Quote

What Happened?

Around 7:30 AM PST on Wednesday, June 22nd one of the storage array network (SAN) controller nodes in our Atlanta datacenter failed, causing all the sites on the Curse network to go offline. This is a highly redundant system with a backup controller which should have taken over automatically. However, it did not, despite reporting as healthy. After replacing the failed controller, it booted, and began copying its configuration from its peer server. Unfortunately, as soon as the configuration was copied, the secondary controller also died.

After replacing the 2nd failed controller we began powering the servers that relied on the SAN for their data - all of the database servers and the network-attached storage (NAS) file server storing media, static content, and most web files. When the NAS server booted and reconnected to its volume on the SAN, it began to run a checkdisk command to make sure there were no errors on the drive. This proved to be a drawn out process, and was the primary reason for the length of the downtime.

In addition, we had yet another roadblock with our Linux servers. Both of the new controller nodes for the SAN had a newer firmware version, preventing these databases from reading their storage. The vendor acknowledged this as a known issue, and recommended a firmware upgrade to fix it. In order to ensure our data integrity, we are conducting a full backup of this storage before implementing the firmware upgrade. Once complete, this will bring the Linux based databases online.

After the fix is applied, we will be able to restore the database to its pre-crash state and restore full functionality to all of our sites.

Your Personal Information

We can reassure you that at no time during the hardware failure was any of your personal information compromised. We take the sacred trust you put in us with your information VERY seriously.

Status

We are currently working hard to get all of our sites restored and functioning normally. We hope to have everything up and working again by tomorrow.

Thank You

We realize that you depend on Curse for the information and add-ons that enhance your gameplay experience. As a way of thanking you for your patience and loyalty through this downtime we are giving premium access to the Curse Client to all users starting on July 1st and running through July 5th. In addition, all guilds on Wowstead.com will receive free premium access - stay tuned on WowStead for more information.

Once again, we sincerely apologize for the downtime and hope you'll continue to enjoy all the great services Curse has to offer.

The Curse Team

(source)

Giveaway!

To celebrate coming back online and the last weekend of Season 9, we'll be giving away some mounts and pets.

Prizes

There are 2 easy ways to enter, comment on this thread and/or Like our Welcome Back message on Facebook. You can enter once on AJ and once on Facebook. I will select 4 winners from this thread and 3 from Facebook. Entries will stop in 12 hours.

We used our Facebook page and Twitter account to communicate during this down time - so if you aren't already on the AJ bandwagon, please Like/Follow to make sure you always have the most recent updates from us.

Let's get back to business. Good luck in these last few days of Season 9!

Season 9 End Pushed Back Another Week

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 11:16:34 +0000

Looks like the patch they applied earlier this week on the PTR is going to push the Arena season ending date back as well. Good luck everyone.

Official Blizzard Quote:

Be sure to check out the Gladiator Bubble forum to talk about cutoffs and the Title Calculator to see what our estimates currently are. If the Title Calc seems off for your BG, try submitting a lower team or send me a PM.

Title Calculator

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:09:41 +0000

We've updated the title calculator to run off our new systems and Battle.net.

Season 9 Title Calculator

Please test it and submit the lowest team you know for your battle group. Please let me know if you experience any technical difficulties by posting in this thread.

Remember we have the Gladiator Bubble forum open for end of season title discussion. Good luck in this final week.

PvP Season 9 Ending Soon

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 15:30:33 +0000

Well, it's that time again and we got the official word from Blizzard that Season 9 will be ending soon:

Official Blizzard Quote:

Arena and Rated Battleground Season 9 is scheduled to end as early as June 21. At that point we will determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards, a process that should take approximately one week. It's very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for Arena titles and/or the Vicious Gladiator’s Twilight Drake to refrain from transferring their characters to another realm or faction until after Season 9 ends. During the break between seasons, all Rated Battleground and Arena matches will be unavailable.

At the end of the season, Conquest Points will be converted to Honor Points, possibly exceeding the 4,000 point Honor cap. All Season 9 items will cost Honor Points (equivalent to their previous Conquest Point cost) when the season ends, with the exception of any items with rating requirements attached. These items will no longer be available for purchase.

The next Arena and Rated Battleground season will begin for level-85 players approximately one week after the end of Season 9 and will coincide with the awarding of Season 9 titles and mounts. At that time, any Honor accrued above the 4,000-point cap will be converted into gold at a rate of 35 silver per point. In addition, Season 10 rewards will be made available for purchase with Conquest Points awarded during the new season. All Team and Personal Ratings will be wiped when Season 10 begins. Matchmaking Ratings, however, will carry over into Season 10.

We'll be working on getting the title calculator up and running ASAP. I'll keep everyone update on the progress here in the news feed as well as our Facebook and Twitter. I have re-activated the Gladiator Bubble forum for rating discussions as you make your push for Glad.

Good luck as you all push for titles!

The Barburas Interview!

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 15:51:48 +0000

Barburas and I had a little chat, here is what came out of it:

General Information:
Most of the readers here at ArenaJunkies know who you are and what you have achieved, but would you mind just giving a quick introduction for those who do not know?
Hello, I play a warrior (and more recently a warlock) called Barburas. I’ve achieved gladiator every season as well as Vengeful Gladiator, Furious Gladiator and Wrathful Gladiator on my warrior.

I qualified for the 2010 European regionals playing Warrior/Warlock/Paladin setup as the team SK Sansibar and we came 3rd there – This Site has some videos of our games there if people are interested.

Any special story on how you came up with the name Barburas?
Nothing too special, I was a young kid and looking to make a name that sounded "warriorish" and cool and I guess I sort of modified Barbarian or something.

Real Life Name: James Goodhead

Location: United Kingdom

Age: 21

Player Introudction
Let us just start by getting the gaming rig set. Type of mouse, keyboard, and headset?
Currently using some nice steelseries gear that SK Sansibar kindly provided ahead of 2010 European regionals: Steelseries Xai mice, 7g keyboard, Steelseries 5hv2 headset.

You told me before we started, that you are currently inactive mainly due to frustration about the classes you are playing, would you mind giving details on that?
Well, I said that before patch 4.1 arrived. I haven’t played enough with patch 4.1 to tell if I’m enjoying the game as much as I used to; but it definitely has made helpful changes to both the classes I play which I was frustrated with.

Firstly warriors, I felt that patch 4.0.6 had wrongly went about addressing warriors, instead of lowering damage they decided to further reduce control, utility and mobility (which aside from mobility (which many warriors, myself included, felt was their “niche” and part of the reason the class was fun to play) warriors were already lacking in while increasing the damage which was already VERY high.

This was further followed up with hotfixes which added even more damage to warriors, as well as other overall changes to things such as snare length which affected warriors more than other classes (as most classes by this point have passive/non gcd based snare applications) into continuing to feel clunky and annoying to play. Essentially the patch culminated in there being less difference between good and bad warriors and skilful/interesting play being less rewarded over pop all cooldowns and one shot something play. For me, that was wholly unsatisfying so led to me more or less not playing my warrior at all.

Patch 4.1 has at least made some effort to address this, but I haven’t played my warrior yet enough to say if it’s enough to make me enjoy it again. Although there were some changes which I think are counter to this logic such as increasing Spell Reflect cooldown from 10s to 25s (20s with glyph).

On the warlock side, it was almost a case of an opposite extreme. While utility was very high, and overall damage was certainly not bad at all – the single target damage was pathetic, especially when compared to how as a warlock in wrath you could really feel like you were making a difference in killing a target rather than being solely a CCer. To make the point, if on my lock (while human so double trinkets) I popped every cooldown I have in a duel vs a Resto shaman who was doing nothing but spamming dispel on himself, I would be unable to drop him below 90%. That was also partly due to the strength of Cleansing waters, which was another problem this latest patch has remedied.

The patch has helped add a bit more damage to warlocks (albeit much of it is by pet damage which has its own frustrations) and made dispelling UA have a meaningful penalty again, and so far (despite playing with several bugs post patch which will be hotfixed soon) made me enjoy playing my lock more.

Last season was filled with Drama regarding Win-trading, Sharing Titles and people doing everything to get their titles. I remember reading one incidence that really sticks out as one of those amazing stories, that being how you achieved your Wrathful Gladiator. I know this has potential to be a really long story, but could you just sketch this up as I find this a pretty fascinating story?
Sure, As it is a rather long story I will just quote my answer from a previous interview:

The following is taken from zileas interview with Barburas from December 8, 2010.
"Sure, The story I guess starts in that our original team on cyclone had myself and another warrior Bladey in it. Anyway I was messing about with SC2 some after regionals as I had just got it and was having some fun and in that time they played some with WLP with bladey and got up to a share rating with another team playing prot war/hunter/pala. When I asked to play since my personal rating wasn't in range Draintrain said he didn't want to so I was forced to do something else to get rank 1. Fraki had another paladin so said he would help me out and James from aAa also was up for helping, so we looked for a BG to go to and decided to go to EU-Charge because there were 7 teams sharing there and the prospect of breaking such a share was quite fun. So we got there, made a team called "sharing is wrong" and within a week or so had took rank 1 with a good lead.

But here's where things got interesting, there's a person on that BG called "Mr. B" who apparently likes to consider the BG his "own" and took this as an insult so he convinced a priest/warlock from cyclone to migrate over to play double healer warlock with him to take rank 1 from us - which under normal circumstances they'd have no chance of doing but they managed to get my IP and used a technique called DDOS attacks to overwhelm my connection and force a reconnect - essentially causing us to tank rating. This was done by one of "Mr. B's" guildies "Mr. R" and he even made a joke picture out of it You can see it here It's in german but it basically shows me doing no damage because they d/ced me and got a free win.

So anyway they were blackmailing us to share rank 1 with us (in reality they wouldn't share, not that we wanted to) because they could just d/c us and take rank 1 for themselves. As it came down to the last night I was able to change my IP so was hopefully safe from being DDOSed and they hadn't quite reached our rating but they were win trading with guildies in "Guild C" to try get above us at the last minute. The warlock/priest were still not in PR range and they knew they couldn't get in range and only then did they realise "Mr. B" didn't care about them and was just trying to take r1 to fulfil his ego about "owning charge".

Anyway, they tried a last ditch effort to stall us by sending a 3 healer team from their guild with high MMR to stall us with a game until the servers went down while they finally win traded above us - but with poetic justice this plan backfired horribly and we killed their 3 healer team in under 2 minutes and gave us so many points that they couldn't possibly pass us - You can see the match here The servers went down 2 minutes later.

And just to add even more awesomeness to the story, "Mr. B" was due to get r1 in 5s with a 4 way share since we ruined his 7 way share in 3s. But blizzard decided they didn't like sharing so much anymore and only 1 team got r1 from 5s and it wasn't his. Quite the story!"

What is your opinion on Sharing titles and could you also comment blizzards approach of banning some and just giving the title "randomly" to one of the teams?
Well, generally speaking I don’t really like mass sharing as it cheapens the title and goes against the fun sense of competition. I don’t really know about blizzard’s inner methods so I really won’t comment on that as it would only be speculation.

Right, enough of the drama potential. Time to get a little more into detail, what do you do in your spare time, besides playing WoW?
I’m studying Veterinary Medicine at a university here in the U.K. so that takes a fair bit of my time, I play some other games like Starcraft 2 as well as single player RPGs like Mass Effect/Dragon Age occasionally too and play some Tennis/Squash (at a very amateur level).

How did you get into gaming, what were some of the first games you played?
I don’t really remember all of the very early games I played but I started gaming quite young on consoles like the Sega Mega Drive and later the Nintendo 64, playing games like Sonic the Hedgehog, Zelda, Mario, as well as some early PC games. I got a PS2 and played that for quite a bit playing a variety of games though the Final Fantasy series was always my favourite, but since then I haven’t really played that much on consoles and mostly stuck to the PC.

What made you start on wow and what made you stay on wow?
I’d been playing some kinda average MMORPGs after being introduced to them by friends/relatives such as Star Wars: Galaxies. Anyway one of my brother’s friends had lent him a copy of WoW sometime early in release and I played a paladin up to like level 20 over a week on that. I had planned to roll a Ret Paladin but my brother was rolling a priest and he told me a Warrior would go with it better so I went with that (reluctantly at the time).

Anything you are specifically proud of in terms of gaming accomplishment?
I guess I was fairly happy with how I did at European regionals, considering it was my first (and only) LAN I had been to. But otherwise nothing too specific.

What about the future, can we expect to see you back in the wow scene if so what would you like to achieve and if not then what should change before you would come back?
If I find the game fun then I’ll probably continue to play to some extent, the extent being based off how much time I need to commit to irl stuff such as exams and so on. If there are future tournaments then I’d love to try attend some but as I’ve not been too active lately I don’t really have a team to go with currently so that would be difficult I guess!

Team And E-Sport Questions
Now time to get a little more into the team oriented questions. First of all you are one of the most eligible to answer this question as you have managed to find success with your teams every season, what do you think is the most critical aspect to a team's success.
I guess a good team atmosphere and getting along is probably the most important. Try not to rage at each other (though playing a warrior prior in 4.0.6 really frustrated the crap out of me) and don’t be afraid to try out new strategies and try overcome your weaknesses rather than instantly giving up if you have trouble with a team/strategy and so on.

Now even though you are inactive currently, did you find yourself to try Rated Battlegrounds? And how would compare Rated Battleground's to Arena, in terms of skill level, team effort and such?
I tried them out a little bit early on, but if I’m being honest that type of thing isn’t for me. I prefer smaller scale PvP where the only objective is to kill the other team first, rather than the larger scale objective based PvP – so I’ve more or less ignored them.

As you had success and made it that one step further, perhaps you could share some of your knowledge to this success, How does a player know when they are ready to try and go pro and what can they actively do to try and get to the point?
I don’t really know about there being a point where you know you’re ready to go pro, especially with a game like WoW, I never considered going pro or consider myself a pro because I went to a LAN event.

WoW is often in flux in terms of balance and is if honest not currently the best game for an E-sport. I just treated it as a fun side thing that I got to do and just did my best at the LAN. Otherwise, I wouldn’t say you need any special knowledge just try to improve as much as possible as a player.

Improving as much as possible as a player, could you explain what lies within this?
Keep trying to improve and try not get such a big ego that you think you’re better and always will be better than others, because if you get into that mindset I think you’ll generally get worse.

As you have been to a tournament a lot of people are curious as to know more about the whole experience of going there. Perhaps you could take us through a normal "weekend" at the tournament, what you do when you are there?
Well, I’ve only been to one tournament and I don’t really think I could call my weekend there typical… But basing what I know from that tournament (which I think is typical of the blizzard run regionals) is get there the day before, meet others and find out the general schedule/check into the hotel – went to a blizzard paid dinner at a nice Brazilian restaurant.

Next day setup at the computers they provided and tried to have everything ready for the matches which started a few hours later, played the first day in that room (and also some games on stage), if you got knocked out at this point you would go and have a good time, my team wasn’t so we didn’t drink too much or anything at this point and got up early the next day to practice ahead of the 2nd day games.

After all the games were over we mostly just had fun with the other players while we waited for our flights. I ended up drinking a little too much though and ended up waking up in a german hospital the following morning… not really proud of that one but shit happens.

In the upcoming to the tournament, did you and your team have any special training you did before you went there, or did you just play a few more games up to it?
We just practiced as much as possible particularly against the setups we struggled the most versus as well as theorycrafting a bit about where we’re weak and how we can become better in those areas.

e-Sport right now for Arena is pretty weak, do you think Arena will ever have a strong or at least stronger role in e-Sport in the future?
It’s possible, I don’t think WoW will ever be an e-sport on a big level in the way say Starcraft 2 is, but could be ok for occasional events if the game isn’t in too stale or bland a place (for example LSD/MLD dominance s8 or early PHD/beastcleave dominance s5/s6).

Pro Tips
Let's start by three quick tips to the warrior who wants to improve
I guess it’s the same as I would to any class really, keybind as much as you can (preferably everything), play as much as you can to get used to the keybinds/what strategies work/how you move your melee and use a clean UI so you don’t have information overload.

When seeing beginners play warrior is there something common, mistakes or such that they tend to do that you think is wrong?
One thing I see a lot of warriors do which I think don’t think should be done as commonly as they do is blowing their major cooldowns like Recklessness before the 15 seconds or so it takes to stack up the talent Lambs to the Slaughter which gives them a 30% damage bonus on their major special abilities.

Wrap Up
If you were to change one thing in World of Warcraft: Arena, what would that be?
I guess as I’ve not been playing lately I’ll just say a general one which has been an issue since forever – I’d remove the ability to use PvE gear, at least any above an item level that can be obtained from PvP.

What song are you listening the most to right now?
Some dubstep song, not usually listening to any specific one but I guess I like the artist Skrillex right now.

Anything you would like to add or any shoutouts?
Not really except to thank my partners who’ve played with me now and in the past and for SK who gave me this nice gaming equipment!

Video Section Update

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:03:34 +0000

Hey guys, this is a minor update, but I wanted to make sure everyone check out the updated videos section. We now have thumbnails, a featured video, and popular videos. Of course, you can still sort by bracket.

So, if you haven't already seen it, go check out the update videos section and submit your own PvP videos.

That's all for now. Hope everyone's having a good week thus far.

Updates Back Up And Running!

Wed, 25 May 2011 18:09:34 +0000

As lots of you know we've been struggling with our Battle.net updates for the past bit. Now, we've got character verification and rating updating working. This will also fix the rankings section - which was previously only showing one player per team.

It will take us some time to get everyone updated, but they are churning and you should be able to add your characters.

As a refresher. Here is the process to add a character to your account:

Goto My WoW Characters from the menu in the upper right
Add the Character
Refresh the page every few minutes to see if it's asking you to remove a piece of gear yet
Once it asks you to remove the gear - Log into WoW, Remove that Gear, Log out
Verify Bnet shows that item as removed
Refresh your My WoW Characters every few minutes to confirm adds successfully.

Thanks for all the patience guys. Give us a couple days to get caught up on everyone's ratings, but at that point if you're still not getting an update - send me a PM please.

Blizzcon Tickets on Sale Tomorrow

Fri, 20 May 2011 13:53:45 +0000

Tomorrow, the first wave of Blizzcon tickets are going on sale at 10:00AM PST. This year, Blizzcon will be October 21-22 in Anaheim, California.We've been to the last 3 and had a lot of fun watching the arena tourney, meeting up with AJ members and tournament players, and checking out the panels. These tickets will sell out super fast, so make sure you're ready to pull the trigger right on time. Hope to see a lot of y'all out there again and good luck with tickets!

Official Blizzard Quote:

Just in case 21 May isn't circled on your calendar, here's a quick reminder that BlizzCon 2011 tickets will be going on sale Saturday at 19:00 CEST - keep your eye on the ticket sales page tomorrow for the chance to get yours.

If you are unable to purchase tickets tomorrow, a second batch will go on sale Thursday, 26 May at 04:00 CEST. In addition, tickets to an exclusive pre-BlizzCon dinner to benefit Children's Hospital of Orange County will go on sale Saturday, 28 May at 19:00 CEST. For those unable to attend the show, in-depth coverage of BlizzCon will also be available through the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, which is offered as a multi-channel Internet stream and also via DIRECTV in the United States. BlizzCon 2011 will take place 21 and 22 October at the Anaheim Convention Center, and tickets cost $175 USD each. Tickets to the BlizzCon Benefit Dinner cost $500 USD each and include BlizzCon admission.

For further information, check out the official BlizzCon site. Click here to go to the BlizzCon 2011 ticket sales page.

UPDATED: World of Warcraft Arena Pass 2011

Mon, 09 May 2011 14:13:19 +0000

UPDATED (5/9/2011): Phases Added

UPDATED: EU Blue post added.

It's that time of year again, time for the official WoW Arena tournament, called Arena Pass. I haven't seen a blue post or an official post about it yet, but here is the Arena Pass Registration page.

Below I have posted excerpts from the registration pages. For all the details check out the Blizzard's Arena Pass FAQ.

What is Arena Pass?

Official Blizzard Quote:

We invite the most dedicated and skilled Arena combatants around the world to enter the new World of Warcraft Arena Pass! Your glorious victories in the Arena Pass will not only grant renown and recognition for your prowess, but will also grant you a chance to earn exclusive rewards only available to Arena Pass participants. Within a structured format comprised of one online qualifier, players will battle on special Arena Pass realms purely dedicated to the competitive format of 3v3 Arena matches. The characters used in these realms are new level 85s that you create and customize, packed with PvP armor and weapons.

Arena Pass registration is open to any active World of Warcraft account upgraded through the World of Warcraft: Cataclsym expansion. Registration costs one payment of $20.00, which grants one eligible World of Warcraft account access to the Arena Pass realms for the duration of the eight-week service. Players will be able to create up to three new fully customizable level-85 characters on these realms and deck them out with a full set of epic gear. Then form your new 3v3 team and enter the Arenas, where a whole new level of competitive play awaits you. Good luck!

Prizes:

Official Blizzard Quote:

Players who participate in the service can earn both the exclusive Armored Murloc in-game pet, and the “Vanquisher” title on their live characters by meeting certain eligibility criteria. (Please see the FAQ for more details)

When Will Arena Pass Start?

Official Blizzard Quote:

We are looking at May of 2011 for the initial phase of the Arena Pass, but will have registration for the Arena Pass available beforehand.

Arena Format:

Official Blizzard Quote:

Participating players will gain access to our dedicated Arena Pass realms and be able to create up to three level-85 characters per registered account. This special realm will allow players to fully customize characters with some of the best items available in the game. We will continue to use the 3v3 Arena format for this years’ service. Please note that the standard 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 Arena season games will continue as normal on the live realms and will not be interrupted by this Arena Pass.

Structure and Timing:

Official Blizzard Quote:

The Arena Pass service will run for eight weeks. The first four weeks are designated for practice -- giving players a chance to meet, form teams, gain experience working together as a team, and to experiment with different lineups and strategies. During this time period, matches will not count, although your rating will change as normal. After the practice period, all team ratings reset to 0. During the next two weeks, there will be a -150 team rating penalty for any new player additions to your team. Player rosters will be locked down during the final two weeks of the Arena Pass, and no changes may be made to your team during that time. The rating and ranking system functions in the same way as it does on the live realms, including personal ratings

Registration Requirements:

Official Blizzard Quote:

To participate, you must:

Have an active subscription to World of Warcraft with an account in good standing, meaning the account is not flagged, suspended, or banned for violating any of the Terms of Service, EULA, or other rules of World of Warcraft.
Have a World of Warcraft account that has been upgraded to Cataclysm
Have a valid credit card to pay the per-competitor registration fee for the Arena Pass, which is €15/￡12 in Europe; $20 in North America; and NT$450 in the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.
Reside in a country or territory that allows participation (you will see the full list when registering).
Complete the required information on the registration page to register for the Arena Pass.
Meet all eligibility requirements listed in the Terms of Use. Players meeting these requirements will be allowed to participate in the Arena Pass and will have access to the dedicated Arena Pass realms in their region.

UPDATE: Phases and Dates:

Official Blizzard Quote:

The 2011 Arena Pass is split into several different phases. To help you gain a more detailed understanding of how this year’s Arena Pass will unfold, you can find an explanation of the different phases in this article. You can also find out which matches are counted towards receiving a pet or title!

Registration Phase
4 May – 21 June (9pm CEST)
During this period you can register for the European 2011 Arena Pass Service. Registration will be closed outside of these dates.

Practice Phase
11 May – 8 June
During this period you will be able to enjoy the Arena Pass Realm and practice your setup with your friends. Matches played during this phase will not count towards the pet and title prizes.

Ranked Ladder Phase 1
8 June– 22 June
All Arena Rating points will be set to zero when this phase begins. Ranked 3v3 matches played during this phase will count towards the pet and title prizes. If a player switches from one Arena Team to another, the Arena Team that the player joins will have their Arena Rating reduced by 150 points.

Ranked Ladder Phase 2
22 June – 4 July (9pm CEST)
Ranked 3v3 matches played during this phase will count towards the pet and title prizes. During the Ranked Ladder Phase 2 of the Arena Pass Service, players cannot switch Arena Teams.

Prize Eligibility
Ranked 3v3 matches that count toward the pet and title prizes will start on 8 June 2011, (once the weekly maintenance has ended) and end 4 July 2011, at 9pm CEST.

Please note that phases begin once weekly maintenance has finished on the dates specified, and end at the beginning of maintenance on the dates specified (unless stated otherwise).

UPDATE: EU Blue Post:

Official Blizzard Quote:

Gather your teammates and prepare yourselves for one of the biggest online Arena events World of Warcraft has to offer; registration for the 2011 World of Warcraft Arena Pass is now open!

This premium service allows players to create up to three ready-made level 85 characters of any regular class and race combination, deck them out in some of the best gear in WoW, and then fight for glory, honor, a special title and even an in-game pet!

Top notch armor, weapons, accessories, enchants, gems, gold, glyphs, training, pets—they’ll all be freely available when you enter the Arena Pass realm so you can fully customise your characters as you see fit. Once you’re ready, all that’s left to do for you and your team is to go head-to-head with others in the Arena, focusing purely on skill and strategy, in a 3v3 format.

Besides the rush of competing with and against players dripping in full epics, there are a couple of other exclusive benefits to registering and taking part in this awesome Arena-focused service. All participants have the chance to earn themselves a special in-game pet. Play at least 50 matches with the same character and team during the last four weeks of the Arena Pass, and finish the event with this team, and you will take away a unique armoured murloc non-combat pet to accompany your adventurers on live realms. Play at least 100 matches with the same character and team during the last four weeks of the Arena Pass, and finish with this team in the top 1,000, and you will also earn the highly enviable ‘Vanquisher’ title for your eligible live realm characters!

If you have any questions or would like more details, please read the FAQ and be sure to come back to the site for more upcoming Arena Pass news and information.

Don’t miss out on the chance to prove yourself by fighting for glory in this epic Arena-focused premium service. Commit yourself to the mighty cause and register now to take part in the 2011 World of Warcraft Arena Pass!

Thanks guys, let us know who's signing up. Once it starts we'll get the tournament forums rolling for you guys as well. Good luck!

UPDATED: Character Verification System Down

Sat, 07 May 2011 18:16:01 +0000

UPDATE 3 (5/7/2011) - Getting reports that people can add characters at this time. Please try adding your character now.

UPDATE 2: Clearly something isn't working for most folks - we're checking it out. Thanks for bearing with us.

UPDATE: I'm told the character claim system is up and running, please try to add your character now. If you continue to have trouble, please send me a screenshot of the claims screen as well as a link to your bnet and we'll try to work through it. Thanks.

I've been getting a lot of PMs and requests in Site Feedback about adding characters, so I figured I would address it here rather than trying to respond individually - currently the system is down! Unfortunately, our developers have been without power for the last few days because of the storms and tornadoes in the south east.

Hopefully they will get power restored and be back online soon! I'll keep this thread updated with any new information. Thanks for your patience with this issue. We'll have it back up as soon as we can!

Click here to view the article

Get To Know Azael, Pro Warlock

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:01:42 +0000

Recently, we got a chance to chat with Azael about his gaming career and life. We've gotten a lot of requests for an interview with him and I think you'll enjoy getting to know him a little better.

Remember to follow ArenaJunkies on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest updates. Have a great Friday everyone!

General Information
In-game Nickname and Alts:
Azael but my Warlock is named Azaelz.  My only alt is my Holy Paladin Bregor.

Any interesting background to the name Azael?
Honestly I'm really indecisive with choosing names or figuring out what I want my character to look like so after sitting at the character creation screen for an hour or two trying to think of a name I started just spamming Random Name Generator.  It eventually came up with Azazael which I thought sounded pretty good so I went with that, and later on when I transferred off of that server Azazael was taken on my new server so I just ended up shortening the name to Azael.

Real Life Name: Isaac Cummings-Bentley.

Location: Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Age: 22

Player Introduction
How did you get into gaming?
I used to play games very casually when I was young on Consoles and whatnot like N64 Goldeneye and Mario Kart etc, and eventually started playing PC games.  Once I stopped playing competitive sports after High School I think I got a lot more seriously into gaming as it was a good competitive outlet.

Favorite game of all time?
I think I might have to say Mario Kart just because I have so many good memories playing that game with friends, but WoW is definitely right up there too since I've gotten a lot out of the game and it's honestly the only PC game that I've really played for very long without quitting.

Did you have a character you like to play as in mario kart?
I usually would pick Toad since the smaller guys were a bit faster and easier to handle even though they could get knocked around by the bigger ones I just found it more fun.

Tell us about your personal gaming rig. Type of mouse, keyboard, and headset?
Right now I'm using an MSi GT660 gaming laptop courtesy of my sponsors, and I'm using all Steelseries peripherals - 7G keyboard, Xai mouse, and Siberia v2 headset.

What do you do in your spare time, besides playing WoW?
I spend my spare time reading, working out, spending time with friends and more recently getting back into some pickup sports once again, I have also been playing some SC2 lately.

What sports are you getting into pickup games of?
Well when I was younger I played pretty much every sport Basketball, Rugby, Football, Soccer, Volleyball etc etc, but Basketball was definitely what I enjoyed the most and played the most.  Lately though some of my friends have been organizing a lot of pickup Soccer games so that's what I've been doing but I never played Soccer seriously so I'm pretty bad but it's a lot of fun and I'm getting better.

When did you start playing WoW?
I started playing WoW shortly after the game came out but I maybe only played 20-30 minutes a day if I even played every day for quite a long time.

Since you bought playtime up, mind sharing whow much you play daily now?
It varies so wildly that I couldn't really say how much I play with any accuracy on a day to day basis.  I basically only login for arena, so for example for a week or so we played every day for probably anywhere between 2 and 6 hours.  Then things got busy and with the new patch coming out we figured there was no rush to play since we could never get queues on our mains and were having some issues playing other characters so we didn't play any for like 2 weeks.  Then this week with the patch coming out we played a bunch, probably like 6 hours of arena yesterday all told and 3 or 4 on Tuesday for me.

Mind sharing your /played?
My played is closing in on 200 days on the Warlock I've had since release basically, but a massive amount of that would be idle. Like they say, WoW is a chat room with better graphics!

What classes do you play in WoW? Which are you competent with on a competitive level?
Well the only characters which are mine at 85 are Paladin / Warlock, but I have played Warrior since 70 and I've been rank 1 a few times on it so I'd like to think I could play Warrior at a competitive level if given a bit of time to brush up on it.  I don't think I'd ever play Paladin in a tournament unless there was some setup that it was extremely advantageous to have a Ret Paladin or something in since Tenderloin will basically always play the healer.

Current PvP Spec?
I'm playing Affliction and I've been respeccing a few times each week pretty much just trying out different things and trying to figure out what will be the ideal spec for next patch.  I think my favourite spec at the moment is the one shown here http://us.battle.net...lent/secondary.

Any changes for 4.1?
I'll still be playing Affliction, the only thing I'll really be changing around is getting Dark Arts instead of Demonic Embrace for the extra Felhunter damage.

Horde For Life?
I honestly don't care if I'm playing Horde or Alliance.  I went to Tich Alliance at the end of Season 8 to play with friends and everyone pretty much ended up going there and I was happy as that, but due to horrible connection issues I've been having on BG9 we transferred and eventually ended up as Horde just because Tenderloin thinks it looks more cool and there's a lot of people on Illidan Horde.

What is your most important gaming accomplishment to date?
I'd definitely say winning the last IEM Global Championship was my most important.

That makes me realize, I watch the tournaments from my computer, but you actually get to travel. What's the coolest place you've gotten to travel so far?
As far as the places that I've actually been at for tournaments Cologne, Germany was really nice and 2good took some of us out bar hopping and whatnot and it was a pretty fun scene.  I've been able to use tournaments as kind of a starting point for traveling quite a bit though which has let me travel all around Europe in Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy etc so I'd have to say Amsterdam was pretty awesome, and Nice in France was also a really really great place so probably down to those two for my favorite. Traveling has definitely been my favourite part about it all since it has allowed me to go a lot of places and make a bit of money doing it that I otherwise wouldn't have had the chance to see.

Why are you a hardcore arena player and not a hardcore raider?
As I think most people will say in these interviews they were a hardcore raider at one point, and I did enjoy it but honestly for me I enjoy competing against other players more and I always found it frustrating to be held back by the weaker players in a big raid.  The biggest issue for me with raiding though is being stuck on a schedule as I always have hated planning my week around raiding so I haven't really done it in years.

What goals do you have for your gaming career?
The only thing left I'd like to accomplish is to get to Blizzcon since I haven't played there before.  I've qualified for the Regional Tournaments three times and was one game away from knocking out TSG and going to Blizzcon before getting gibbed and losing that series which was funny because they ended up winning it all that year.  Sadly last year I was traveling for basically the entire tournament realm so we weren't able to qualify which just makes me more determined to do it this year.

Which other wow player(s) inspire you/do you respect?
I think that a ton of players / comps come and go so the ones that inspire me and who I respect the most are those who have consistently been competitive over the years with a variety of setups and players.  Two people that really come to mind are Sodah and Venruki who have been playing at the highest levels since the first MLG and they're also two players who're very positive which I like as many people can be very negative at times (myself included).

Who's the better warlock,  you or Charlie Sheen?
Haha Charlie Sheen makes about a million times as much money as I do so I think he has it hands down.

Team and E-Sport Perspective
What's the most critical aspect to any team's success?
The ability to talk about losses and be critical of each others play without offending or getting someone mad.  If you can't discuss what each other did wrong and what happened in a game then you won't be able to change it.

So, lots (if not all) of the people we have interviewed so far have said something about communication for the most critical aspect to a team's success. So, to flip the question a little bit, do you think communication breakdowns is the number one reason for teams failing? Or would that be practice or skill?
I mean it's obviously a combination of all of the above as well as some other things.  I think that the biggest reason for a lot of teams failing is the way they look at the game since when I hear a lot of people talking about losing to a certain team or setup or whatever they look at the matchup in a very specific way and eliminate a lot of possibilities for beating them before they even try them.  A lot of the time those strategies they're eliminating are the ones that my team is using or other teams are using to win the matchup that they're struggling with.  For example since Warrior / Hunter / Healer setups are extremely popular I get a ton of questions on how to beat that and most people preface their questions by saying well you can't turtle cause you can't win the Mana game so what should you kill? But the thing is you basically have to play ultra defensive and if you make swaps and only get out into the open when you have one of the DPS CCed you can win on mana and create opportunities to win the game that way.

People just need to be more open to trying different strategies and try to filter what is important and what isn't because when I play with a lot of people or just listen to some videos they're emphasizing communicating so much that they basically just end up spewing bullshit which isn't really helpful to anyone.  Communication is very important but what you communicate is even more important, people don't need to know every little thing that you're doing because it just makes it harder to hear the actual important things going on.

Current ideal team composition?
Even though it's probably not the #1 comp at the moment RLS forever and always.

You've been with EG for a long time now. What does the future hold for you guys?
I'm quite close with the people and sponsors at EG, so I think that I am really able to go and do whatever I want in gaming knowing they'll be supporting me which is a great feeling.  EG is without a doubt the best sponsor around and they're supporting us strongly and giving us salary even this year when WoW hasn't been active tournament wise.  They offered to support me for SC2 if I was interested but honestly I can't see myself putting in the time to become a top player.  I really do hope that I can stay active in e-sports in one way or another over the years though be it commentating, playing or more of the administration side.

What does the future hold for you in tournament play?
I think that as long as I'm having fun playing the game and there are tournaments to play I'll continue attending them, but as it really seems to be slowing down I think a lot of players are reflecting on if it's worth the time investment to stay at the top level when there aren't many events.

What are your thoughts on the future of arena as an e-sport?
I have always felt and still do that WoW could be great as an e-sport as it really has so much untapped potential.  It always had amazing viewer numbers and a ton of fans simply because of the massive player base, but most of it was an untapped market as events were often hard to find information about and poorly promoted.  Even people I know who wanted to watch me at events would have trouble finding out where / how / when to watch the events which is quite disappointing.  If they were able to even put links / announcements about tournaments ingame as you logged in think how many viewers they could get just from people interested in checking it out casually.  WoW has always been plagued by some imbalance but the best players find ways to overcome it and stay competitive whether they're running the best setup or not, and even SC2 the premiere game at the moment also has a massive amount of imbalance so I think WoW still could've been much more successful.

Pro-Tips
How does a player know when they might be ready to try and go pro?
I think that it can be hard to know simply because most people have a much higher opinion of themselves than others have of them, so I think a good way to tell is when you're getting recognition from other top players.  I'd also say a good indicator is if you're able to consistently take games off of other pro teams with a non-fotm setup.

As one of the best warlocks in the business, what 3 pro-tips would you give a Warlock that's new to arena?

Positioning is the most important part of arena, make sure you're always forcing people to use a gap closer (Intercept, Shadowstep, Skull Bash etc ) to swap to you before you demon portal to kite them much more easily.
I think that people need to really think about when they're using Fear more simply because I get a lot of messages about people asking me why I don't spam fear more in my video, and you really just have to realize that there should always be a reason to use it. If you just Fear for the sake of using the ability then the person may be on DR for when you really need it to peel, or when you really need to interrupt a cast or free yourself up to get casts off without having to fake against Melee. Just make sure there's you're not wasting your DRs and focus more on keeping damage up if the time isn't right to use it.
I think that a lot of people aren't very good at faking interrupts, and one of the biggest issues I see is that they're locking themselves out simply by wasting so much time doing it or not doing it at the right times. You need to make sure you're always faking with an instant meaning start your cast then cancel it by using Corruption, Agony, a curse etc so that you're not wasting the global. Also don't get too caught up in faking, because although avoiding interrupts is very good if a top level player notices you will only cast when interrupts are down they'll simply stop using them.

Would you be willing to share a couple macros with us that you use the most?
I use pretty standard stuff, a ton of focus macros (CoEX, Fear, Coil, Weakness, Tongues, Spell Lock etc), and targeting macros such as /target arena 123 and /focus arena 123, the only one I have which people might not would be - #showtooltip Fel Flame
/cast [target=mouseover,harm] Fel Flame; Fel Flame.  It basically just casts Fel Flame on my target if I don't have a mouse over target, and casts it on my mouse over target if I do.  I also use the same macro for Banish and some other stuff and find it quite nice.

WASD or ESDF?
Neither actually, I use QWE and have everything else bound to abilities since I have like 100 binds I have to use pretty much everything on the keyboard haha! I use as far over as Shift-M on the keyboard, and I have a huge amount of ctrl and alt modifiers as well of course, then a lot of stuff on my mouse as well bound with modifiers.

So, it can be really hard getting used to new keybinds - what advantage do you think having such extensive keybinds gives you in arena?
It just allows me to do basically whatever I want to do in arena quickly and easily instead of having to fumble around trying to click stuff.  I see a ton ton ton of people who target by clicking on Gladius or Arena Frames and honestly I think it's not very good as it's simply a lot slower and you could be using your mouse for other things that you can't do without it like mouseover attacks and whatnot.

For example if I'm trying to watch Hex while killing a Mage against a Shaman / Mage team then I can simply scroll on my Mouse wheel to focus the Shaman then Shift Scroll to target the Mage, and then if the Shaman drops Mana Tide or Spirit Link totem etc I can use my mouse to mouseover pet attack or Fel Flame or I could mouse over Banish the Water Elemental etc all at the same time without having to be clicking anything, it just makes it a lot easier and makes your gameplay more smooth.

I just figure if there's something you don't have to use your mouse for then why would you do it when you can accomplish the same thing in a faster / easier way and still have your mouse free for things that you can't otherwise do.

General Wrap-up Questions
What do you enjoy MOST about WoW?
Playing arena with friends.

What are your thoughts on World of Warcraft Arena and where it is going?
I honestly like how Blizzard is making changes so much more often lately and I feel like it's balancing out a lot more and a lot faster than it was in the past which is very nice.  I also do like this pace much more than WotLK simply because instant kills are less common at least for Warlocks so I think that in general WoW Arena is headed in the right direction.

If you could change one thing about World of Warcraft Arena, what would it be?
I think that I'd make it so that you could only run setups with one Healer, one Caster DPS class, and one Physical DPS class simply because the vast majority of the obnoxious cheesy setups would be eliminated with that change.  No more Melee Cleavers, no more Wizard Cleave, no more double Healer teams etc.  I think it'd be a really really nice change.

Are you happy with the state of warlocks currently? If you were in charge, what changes would you make to the class?
I've had the ability to give some feedback on the class which is nice, and honestly I think that with the upcoming patch Warlocks will be in a pretty nice spot.  I do enjoy Warlocks now, but it can be very frustrating playing against some setups simply because you're not able to put out enough damage (at least as RLS) to even more peoples HP while their healer strafes back and forth dispelling and using instants and basically never having to cast.  I don't like the feeling that I could play a healer against myself and live with minimal to no effort when I'm trying my hardest to create pressure on a Warlock.

What song are you listening to right now?
I'm sort of a music addict so I'm listening to music 24/7 but as I type this I'm listening to Santito vs Black Crown - Back it up (Club Mix).

Shoutouts?
Big thanks to Team EG and all our sponsors - Intel, Steelseries, Kingston HyperX, Thermaltake, Bigfoot Networks etc, and also to my teammates Chuck and Emerson.

Blizzard Charity Auction

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:02:46 +0000

Once again Blizzard is auctioning off some cool stuff for charity!

Included in the basket is:

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Collector’s Edition (autographed by development team)
World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition (autographed by development team)
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Collector’s Edition (autographed by development team)
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Collector’s Edition (autographed by development team)
World of Warcraft TCG Loot Card – “X-51 Nether Rocket”
World of Warcraft TCG Loot Card – “Blazing Hippogryph”
World of Warcraft TCG Loot Card – “Savage Raptor” – Value
World of Warcraft TCG Loot Card – “El Pollo Grande”
World of Warcraft One Year Subscription Card
BlizzCon 2005 – Murky Baby Blue Murloc WoW Pet Loot Card
Murky Plush Pet (Entire Set of 4)

The total estimated value of the basket is $3,970.00.

Click Here to View the Auction

There's only 9 hours left, so go check it out and bid high if you wanna get some awesome Blizzard items as well as put your money to a good cause.

Age Of Empires Online Beta Key Giveaway!

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:23:42 +0000

Age of Empires is back and we've got beta keys! This time it's online and with your friends. You can fight friends, co-op, and even build persistent cities.

Closed Beta for Age of Empires Online has been going for a while now, and Gas Powered Games is now ready to open the flood gates exclusively through Curse. Curse had had a chance to check it out at CES 2011 earlier this year, so be sure to check out our coverage.

We're stoked to be able to give you guys this opportunity to check out the game. This is a guaranteed spot in the closed beta, so be sure to get your key as soon as you can.

Get Your Beta Key Now!

Initially, the giveaway is going to be limited to Curse Premium members. We'll be opening it up once premium users have had a chance to get ahold of their beta keys.

Details

Curse Premium giveaway: April 19, 2011 @ 9AM PDT to April 20, 2011 @ 9AM PDT
General giveaway: April 20, 2011 @ 9AM PDT to when we run out of keys
When you can play: Right away after redeeming your code
How to play: See the instructions on the beta key giveaway page

There's no NDA for this phase of the beta, so feel free to contribute to AOE Wiki if you find information in the game that it's lacking.

Finally, here is the trailer from GamesCon 2010 for you guys to check out.

Post in this thread when you get your key and get in game!

Interview with Zetox

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:48:37 +0000

Hey everyone, I caught Zetox around, being one of the highest rated hunters in the world and consistently getting good results every season, I decided to throw him a interview for you guys to read.

Don't forget to follow ArenaJunkies on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest updates.

Zetox

Introduction
Hey, could you just tell us who you are?
Damon - Most people know me by Zetox or Chromex

What do you do in your spare time, besides WoW Arena?
Full-Time College Student

Do you have any special hobbies?
I've been playing piano for around 11 years now, mostly jazz and a lot of improvisation. Also, I enjoy power-lifting in the gym just to see how strong I can get

Personal
Could you perhaps tell us what is your most important accomplishment to date in terms of gaming?
Definitely getting rank 1 in almost every season, while switching classes every 2 or 3 seasons. The classes I've enjoyed playing the most out of all of the classes I've played have been: Rogue, Warrior, DK, Lock, Hunter

How would you describe your ideal team?
I've been on teams of all shapes and sizes concerning skill level, communication, personality, you name it. So I think the best combination would be that each team member has their own unique personality so that everyone can bring a different piece of the puzzle to the table.

What goals do you have in your gaming career?
I've always wanted to play at a LAN event because it seems like a lot of fun. It's just that real-life gets in the way and other commitments take priority over my WOW play.

How are you planning to achieve this goal?
(Maybe) In the near future I might get a sponsored team together and attend one

If you had to redo your WoW gaming career over again, what would you change or do differently?
Well I've played World of Warcraft since beta off and on. So like a lot of the few core veterans, we've seen and been through it all. Thankfully, I wouldn't honestly change much about my game play experience as I think I've definitely gotten my fun out of the game, I might have tried to be more involved purposefully in the community.

Being active in the community you say, which other wow player(s) inspire you/do you respect?
Well since WOW isn't exactly the most competitive game on the market, It would be unwise to say that all the top players are miles ahead of anyone else in terms of skill, that's just not how blizzard made their game. But I do have a few players that I know are top tier players, and I've certainly enjoyed playing competitively against.

What keeps you going on wow?
Currently, the only reason I am playing WOW is because of the high skill-cap of Hunters. Without the changes made in the last patch, I would probably be absent from WOW.

Team Related Questions
For a team to have success what do you reckon is the most important thing?
Understanding the Game and Good Communication.

What does all this involve?
Understanding the game are things like: Knowing each class inside and out, the abilities, rotations, cc patterns, healer movement, map advantage, and momentum of the game. Not only is it all of the knowledge, but also the ability to be able to counter the exact strategy and playstyle of your opponent in order to win a game. When you understand these ideas, your communication level with your partners should be more of an agreement, rather than a question. When your team can execute its strategy while being able to be relaxed, and concur on each other's ability and coordination all within seconds; you are doing it correctly.

What values makes you appreciate your team mates?
I appreciate people who obviously are skilful first and foremost, second I enjoy people who like to have fun and don't take the game too seriously, without compromising any competitive edge.

What is your team's greatest strength?
Well I've been on two Rank one teams this season so far ..haha. One of them being with: Getcleaved & Mouzi, and the other with: Gymped & Kollectiv. The easiest thing to realize when seeing why my teams have been so successful is that every teammate on both of the teams understands the game at an in-depth level.

What is your team's greatest weakness?
Frustration is always a team's greatest weakness. When things go right everything is fine, but it really is true that you do see the real side of someone when adversity comes their way.

A decent amount of teams tend to have a lot of drama/conflicts, do you/your team handle conflicts well and if so how?
My own personality have always tried to understand the cause-->effect problem. Which would be something, "He did this, so then you had to do that, which me made have to use X". That kind of philosophy, although probably not the most pleasant to deal with, has been successful.

If I asked one of your team mates to describe you, how would they?
I know my Rank #1 PHD team had a decent amount of drama only because I am a "perfectionist" type personality, and so I've had to learn that almost everyone doesn't want to analyze and understand the game as much as I do. A while back, my team would win a match and then I would go on for 5 minutes about what we could have done better. As you can see, that gets annoying quite easily after every game. Therefore, I've learned that I usually have to get my few words in about the match and then leave it at that.

Do you have any plans for additional goals with the team?
Get rank 1 world?!

WoW Related Off-Topic Questions
What are your thoughts on World of Warcraft Arena, in its current state?
Currently, I think the game is in a decent amount of balance excluding a few classes damage output. Other than that, I think Paladin healers desperately need to be buffed for arenas, in some way shape or form. A lot of classes have been giving a good amount of utility, which could be good or bad. Ultimately, we want to have comps diversified as much as possible so that everyone can run whatever comp they want to, and still be relatively successful at it. Although, when it all comes down to it, at the highest level: the law will always remain that Comp>Skill.

What would you change, to make World of Warcraft Arena more to your likings?
Again I could talk for days about my opinion on how the game is getting more and more homogenized every expansion, but I think the reality is this: Blizzard wants everyone to have fun, they figured out grinding isn't fun, therefore if gear is taken out of the equation, it's essentially a rock paper scissors game while adding in degree of skill. If I could change WOW, I would definitely bring it back to the vanilla state where every class was unique. When you rolled class X, you knew what you brought to the table and that was it, no questions asked. There was little to no complaining, and when things weren't going your way it was clear the only way to fix it was to get better at your class. It obviously started trending like that at the start of TBC, but has only gotten worse with each new expansion. Of course the game has been out for so many years that, at this point I know blizzard understands that their time is running out, therefore they are giving everyone, everything.

Anything you would like to add?
Shoot-outs to :
David,Zach,Alan,Conrad,Doug,Ben,Kurt,Justin,Keith,Branden,Raffi,Troy,Joe,Joshj,George,Jacob,Jordon,Austin,Getcleaved,
Mouzi,Kollectiv,Toez,Snutz,Ven,Drmayo,Sam,Trevor,Ryan,and Stef!
And all my fellow hunters! Cupz,Squanky,Socker,Ballplayer
This post has been promoted to an article

Neilyo 16 with Interview

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:16:23 +0000

Recently Neilyo released his latest movie, Neilyo 16. Neilyo was kind enough to answer some of our interview questions as well as some questions about Neilyo 16. Without further ado, here's Neilyo 16.

Remember to follow ArenaJunkies on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest updates. Have a great Friday everyone!

Vitals
In-game Nickname: Neilyo - My real name is actually Neil.
Location: SoCal
Age: 22

Neilyo 16
You're like the OG of making incredible arena videos and you've just released Neilyo 16. What's new in this one?
It's been so long since I have released arena footage that my last arena video (14) was just as I was starting to use focus for everything so that vid didn't showcase any focus-usage, and skype as well.

Any favorite moments?
My favorite moment in 16 video was a moment that I had to remove due to request. It was yog singing the double rainbow song during a match in a ridiculous manner with partially inaudible grunts and moaning sounds. Aside form that it was probably yogs flawless communication when asked "Who is off fear DR? Who can I blind?"
"Uh you can blind, nobody right now."
pause
"What about rogue?"
"Ya, you can go rogue. Fear rogue. Blind rogue."

Of all the movies you've made, do you have a favorite?
My TBC Rogue v Rogue duel vids I thought were the most entertaining, fast paced, intense, and displayed the most skill. TBC rogue v rogue duels #1 most skilled duel in the history of WoW.

Player Introduction
How did you get into gaming?
I got into gaming starting with SNES as a kid, mario of course, super metroid and mega man (original) were also awesome. Then I played Doom in like 3rd grade, and then Starcraft in 6th grade which lead to CS 1.6 and Diablo2 and on to WoW.

Favorite game of all time?
Favorite game of all time, well of course I am still playing WoW as my primary game so even with all the things wrong with it it's still #1, other than that CS1.6 because it is so clean and simplistically skilled.

Tell us about your personal gaming rig. Type of mouse, keyboard, and headset?
My PC is nothing to brag about, it's just pretty good.

Mouse: Razer Deathadder
Keyboard: Logitech media 600
Headset: Plantronics .Audio 750 DSP

What do you do in your spare time, besides playing WoW?
Outside of WoW I play racquetball and badminton, work, school, hang out with friends.

When did you start playing WoW?
I started playing WoW a little bit before BWL came out (on rogue).

What classes do you play in WoW? Which are you competent with on a competitive level?
I only play rogue at a competitive level, I just started playing feral a few days ago and if I stick with it, with the right comp and good teammates I'm sure I can get it, if I go for it.

Current PvP Spec?
8/2/31, Subtlety

Why Alliance?
Tichondrius Alliance has the most known players.

What is your most important gaming accomplishment to date?
Probably my influence on rogue-play in TBC back when there were still a lot of frontiers to be explored.

Why are you a hardcore arena player and not a hardcore raider?
Raiding is too predictable, uninteresting and unsatisfying to most people who are serious about competing head to head against other thinking humans.

What goals do you have for your gaming career?
Hopefully get to go to another tournament and do well and actually fraps some of the really good games in the future.

Which other wow player(s) inspire you/do you respect?
Most of all the other tournament players and the less known players that I know who are tournament level players.

Team and E-Sport Perspective
What's the most critical aspect to any team's success?
Communication / Synergy and attitude as well as taking a loss well. The ability to analyze the match after it is over in order to theorycraft improvements.

Current ideal team composition?
Melee, Caster dps, Healer

What does the future hold for you in tournament play?
I hope to play tournaments again if more start up.

What are your thoughts on the future of arena as an e-sport?
The future of arena as an e-sport has the potential to be better than ever due to Blizzard's increased involvement in balancing.

Pro-Tips
How does a player know when they might be ready to try and go pro?
You are ready to be pro when you rarely have to ask yourself what you should be doing or what you should have done. When you can play mostly subconsciously and when you have optimized your communication to allow for better team synergy/coordination/support and team awareness of the enemies cooldown usage and the enemies potential future strategy plan. When, if you make a mistake, you immediately know what you should have done and why you should have done it, but also understand what thoughts/actions provoked you to make the mistake. And when your mistakes due to binds are reduced to the rare, random, unavoidable mistakes due the fact that you cant be perfect all the time.

As one of the best rogues in the business, what 3 pro-tips would you give a Rogue that's new to arena?
1) Binds binds binds (including macros). When you ask the question, 'what does it take to be a good player?' When you generalize and keep taking a step back further and further, the most fundamental things are Bodily Kinesthetic-Intelligence and the required mentality / frame of mind for competition, these skills can be cultivated, but most good players mostly possess them naturally. So binds come in as the next most important thing because the keyboard and mouse are the mediums through which you control everything. So, body #1 importance, extensions of body #2 (think of a racket sport).

2) Scientific Mentality - Experiment, Analyze/Observe results and reactions, make connections, understand the reason something is effective or ineffective (what causes someone to react in a certain way to a certain action?) so that you can conceptualize and apply specific effective strategies to similar situations where the same concept applies. Thinking like this increases your ability to anticipate and builds up your intuition. The typical good player has good anticipation and intuition subconsciously but do not take the next step, which is consciously analyzing their enemies actions/thoughts and their own thoughts to gain a stronger understanding.

3) Communication / Awareness / Practice - Most top players are playing subconsciously close to the same level with their respected class' rotations, so this leaves what each player does in the extra time they get for thinking because they do not have to think about their most common actions/rotations. So that extra time is spent on being aware, more awareness should give you more to anticipate.

General Wrap-up Questions
What do you enjoy MOST about WoW?
What I enjoy most about wow would be the competition, drive to improve, and talking with friends.

What are your thoughts on World of Warcraft Arena and where it is going?
I am more hopeful now than ever because of blizzards effort in balancing.

If you could change one thing about World of Warcraft Arena, what would it be?
If I could change one thing it would be removing Miss and Resist from PVP. I remember seeing an ability tweak in notes where they specified in PvP combat it does x but in PvE it remained the unchanged or something. I have been saying they should split things like this since TBC, it would be much easier to tweak / fine tune PvP balance if they didn't have to worry about repercussions in PvE.

Are you happy with the state of rogues currently?
I am very happy with rogues at the moment because shadowdance is finally the main PvP spec, that is how it should be.

If you were in charge, what changes would you make to the class?
There aren't many changes I can think of besides what I said about Miss and Resist, but I do think with the cheat death nerf it should be reduced to a 2 point talent. That way we can finally get waylay and cheat death without making huge sacrifices. Also, although positional requirements are really annoying I do like that it forces you to have good footwork so better players will be set apart more, but perhaps with lag/delay they should increase their backs from 180 degrees to 230 degrees, sometimes you cant land a backstab/ambush or garrote for a long time even if they aren't facing you perfectly due to delay. For the record I think rogues are pretty balanced, not OP, not underpowered, damage is not great but good enough.

What song are you listening to right now?
Det Gamla Landet - Tolv Under

Many thanks Neilyo for the videos and the interview.