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Blizzard has opened registration for the special upcomming PvP event of the yer for World of Warcraft players. Arena combatants have been invited to register for the 2008 WoW Arena Tournament. Not only will competitors earn renown and reputation they can also score cash prizes.

“Within a structured format comprising two six-week-long qualifying rounds, players will battle on special tournament realms purely dedicated to the competitive format of 3v3 Arena matches. The characters used on these realms are new level 70s that you create, decked to the brim with PvP armor and weapons. The top teams from each qualifier will battle in regional live events, culminating in the global finals, which will feature a total prize pool of $120,000 — $75,000 of which will go to the grand-prize-winning team!

Tournament registration is open to any active World of Warcraft account. Registration costs one payment of $20.00, which grants one World of Warcraft account access to the tournament realms for the duration of the six-week tourney. Players will be able to create up to three new characters on these realms, instantly level them to 70, and deck them out with a full set of PvP gear. Then form your new 3v3 team and enter the Arenas, where a whole new level of competitive play awaits you. Good luck!

Register for the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament!

• The registration fee is $20 per account for each six-week online qualifying round (played out on the tournament realm)
• Qualify for live tournaments with a chance to win cash prizes
• Instantly create up to three new level 70s with full sets of PvP gear
• Prove your skills in 3v3 Arena team combat”

Certain restrictions apply; not all may be eligible to enter.

Are you Ready for it?

Visit the official WoW Tournament site, read the FAQ and register Today!

Good Luck and may the force be with You!!!

World of WarCraft’s latest patch, dubbed “Fury of the Sunwell”, is alive and kicking as of right now. Jump on your epic mount and find out what’s new.

The official description of the patch is as follows:

The glorious fount of arcane energy known as the Sunwell empowered the high elves for millennia, until the death knight Arthas laid siege to the elven kingdom and corrupted its sacred energies. Seeing no other alternative, a band of survivors led by Prince Kael’thas destroyed the ancient fount. Over time the surviving elves fell pray to a crippling magical withdrawal.

Now, promising salvation for his people, Kael’thas has returned. Soon the Sunwell will shine once again, but whether the sacred fount will usher in deliverance or destruction remains to be seen.

A full list of the patch notes can be found here (good luck getting it to load within the next 3 days though). In addition to all of the changes (some for the worse depending on your perspective and/or class), Blizzard has dedicated this update in memory of Gary Gygax, one of the creative minds behind the epitome of dorkdom: Dungeons and Dragons.

It’s nice to see that Blizzard still remembers where all their inspiration came from — now they just need to set the record straight on how much they ripped off Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 (WarCraft and StarCraft, respectively).

A good many of you will be saddened to learn that the Human Illusion from the Noggenfogger Elixir no longer works outside of Old Hillsbrad. This, as you may know, is not the first time Blizzard has removed or changed something that people do just for kicks and has no real impact on the gameplay. Blizzard simply doesn’t like it if you to have too much fun.

The 256MB v2.3.3 to v2.4.0 US/AU Patch can be manually downloaded from AtomicGamer, FileFront, FileShack, Gamer’s Hell, GameUpdates (torrent), Strategy Informer, or Worthplaying.

Today is the day! Patch 2.4 is on the Blizzard downloader and sometime this afternoon World of Warcraft players around the world will be romping through Sunwell Isle. See the excitement in my typing? See it!?

The basics of the patch for me are: Druid’s Cyclone gets nerfed, Shamans get slightly buffed, but Shamans still suck and Cycloning Druids will continue to be crazy-popular in PvP. The status quo remains unchanged.

There will be some new loot to achieve as players cash in Badges of Justice, PvE currency, for PvP rewards. Sorry, there is no way to pay honor, PvP currency, for PvE gear. Blizzard doesn’t like PvP to lead to PvE. However, PvE that leads to PvP is awesome in their eyes, because PvE takes like coordination and skillz and stuff. PvP takes no skill, especially for the AFKers and Warlocks.

Soon, real soon we’ll take on the largest content patch ever released since The Burning Crusade expansion.

As 2.4 is going closer Blizzard closed down the PTR for testing and a preliminary patch was downloadable via the Blizzard background downloader. Soon we’ll all be experiencing the awaited 2.4 patch live. In the meantime take a look at a 40 second short Wrath of the Lich King teaser showing a flight through the new land. Take a look at it here.

• Wrath of the Lich King: Dragonblight - A great little sneak peak of what players have to look forward to in the WotLK expansion. The dragonblight is linked directly to Wyrmrest Keep, which will most likely be a 25-man instance in the expansion. Not a whole lot of information on this at the moment except that you will be fighting for Alexstrasza and the Red Dragonflight against the Blue Dragonflight along with the scourge found in the area.

• PTR Down For Now, 2.4 Live Soon?!? - Blizzard is claiming they are bringing the PTR down in order to force players onto the TTR (Tournament Test Realm) so they can get some last minute testing. However, with part of the 2.4 patch being available for download over the past week through the background downloader you have to wonder if patch 2.4 might be a lot closer than some originally thought?

• Druid Cyclone Nerfed - Early in the 2.4 patch on the PTR Blizzard shortened the range of cyclone from 30 yards down to 20 yards. Shortly after they reverted this change, well they have brought it back once again and the range on cyclone will most likely be only 20 yards when the patch is released.

• New Teleportation Portals - This week some items were scraped from the game files, and it looks like there might be two new portals added to the game. One portal was found to Stonard and another to Theramore. This would benefit travel to some of the further off zones in Azeroth. If you have been in Silithus lately you would know it’s about as barren as it gets on a MMO with 10 million subscribers!

• Arena Season 4 Updates - This week Drysc made a post pertaining to Arean Season 4, it seems it will be quite some time even after patch 2.4 is released. before we will see season 4. Also, Drysc confirmed that season 1 items will be removed from vendors while season 2 items will move to honor. However, he did leave it open that prices may increase on these items, and that players should not just assume these items will be the same as their corresponding items from season 3.

• All 2.4 Pattern Prices Increased - Almost all of the patterns that will be available for any profession when 2.4 is released had their prices raised significantly this week. For example, to purchase all the jewelcrafting recipes available for the epic gems before the change it would have cost you only 57 gold, but now the pattern prices are 50 gold each and will require 1900 gold to purchase all the recipes.

• Not All Specs Should be PvP Powerhouses - Drysc also came out and talked briefly about talent specs and their viability for the PvP scene. He stated they would like to slightly increase the usefulness of some talent specs, mainly protection spec warriors and shadow priests, for use in PvP action but not to the level of the highly accepted mortal strike hybrid or discipline priests currently being used. They feel a dilution of the different talent trees would only make the strengths and weaknesses of each talent spec watered down and soon each spec would be exactly the same, completely diminishing the whole idea of talent trees.

• Rogue Shiv Bug - Apparently there is currently a bug with Shiv, and it cannot be dodged or missed right now. Blizzard has stated this was never intended and they are currently working on a fix for the problem.

• Season 4 Item Levels and Stats Reduced - The few Season 4 items that had been scraped from game files seem to have had their item level and stat points reduced this week. The item level went from 159 to 154, meaning about a 3% reduction in the amount of stats and DPS of weapons. While not a huge nerf, 3% more stats never hurt!

• Patch 2.4 Items get Armor Increase - Almost every single piece of epic armor that will be released. in patch 2.4 had its armor content raised about 5-10% depending on the item. Blizzard said this change occurred in order to match the armor content with item level of the armor. 5-10% more armor content is rather significant, especially on plate items that already had 1800+ armor.
  

The last week a lot of class changes were reverted after Blizzard did not feel they gave the game the change they were hoping for. The Raid instance Sunwell Plateau has mostly been disabled for raid testing. However, Blizzard launched the Tournament Test Realm and commenced a massive PvP testing for it this weekend on Sunday with a massive garthering av Hardcore PvP players and Blizzard employees. Great fun for all who participated.

If you still aren’t on the PTR and TTR Check this guide out and join the fun.

• Epic Gems for Badges - All epic gems that previously only dropped in Black Temple and Mount Hyjal will now be able to be purchased for 15 Badges of Justice. This will help relieve the strain on raiding guilds for Red Gems, and also give access to more casual players.

• Season 3 Rating Requirements - Originally the rating requirements would be removed once season 4 began, but now they will only be lowered. Blizzard didn’t feel having access to items with a 1300 or 1400 personal rating was the proper way to handle these still very high quality items. This will help maintain the prestige of these items going into the new season, but expect them to be eventually removed before Wrath of the Lich King is released.

• Inscription Preview - Something was scraped from game files this week that may be a preview of the inscription profession in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The item found is, “Demonic Runes - Permanently enchants your Fireball spells to inflict up to 50 additional Fire damage. Spells can only have one inscription.

• Jewelcrafting: Brilliant Glass - This new spell will allow Jewelcrafters to create Brilliant Glass from 3 of each of the Green Quality Gems. The Brilliant Glass will contain a random Blue Quality Gem. This should help with the current state of Blue Gem prices on a lot of servers, especially since I know I have about 50 green gems of each kind in my bank!

• Shaman Mortal Strike Effect Reverted - Last week Blizzard gave the Shaman’s Flametongue Weapon and Totem a mortal strike effect, but then only two days later they reverted the changes.

• Warlock Life Tap Nerf Removed - Blizzard also reverted the changes made to Life Tap making it a percentage of maximum health and mana. The current state of life tap will remain for now.

• Druid Lifebloom Nerfed, Regrowth “Buffed” - The final Healing coefficient of Lifebloom as been reduced by 20%. This will be a significant change to druids in arena action. However, the mana cost of regrowth has been reduced by 20%, making it a more viable option for arena action.

% Based Haste Spells- No longer will any percentage based haste spells stack. The only ones that will continue to stack are self buffs such as blade flurry with slice and dice. However, a Mage’s Icy Veins will not stack with the Priest’s new Power Infusion, for example. This change is due to Haste effects decreasing the GCD for caster classes.

If you haven’t yet tested the Public Test Realm with patch 2.4 and enjoy PvP I suggest you go and try the new Areana Tournament realm out.

Be sure to train and get ready for the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament. It will be a great event with competitive 3vs3 Arena with high price money. Be sure to read the info on Blizzards Areana Tournament Information site and regisiter as soon as it becomes available.

As the great 2.4 patch evolves the latest changes applied mostly to Mages and Shamans in order to make them more viable for arena battles.

When 2.4 comes out be sure to take use of the gold-making opportunities.

First, there are changes to Enchanting that will allow Void Crystals to be converted to 2 Large Prismatic Shards. I’m willing to bet that the LPS price will drop dramatically, depending on your server. I know, for example, on raiding servers that the number of Void Crystals sitting in the guild banks is pretty high, with nothing to do with them. So LPSs won’t be quite as rare.

Other great changes like the increase of daily quests from 10 to 25 per day plus new great dailys which can be done for more earnings.

More stuff from the Patch Notes:

“Added several new tradeskill items to the new Sunwell Daily faction vendor:

* Enchanting recipe to shatter a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards.
* Enchanting recipe to increase Defense Rating by 15 for chest armor.
* Three jewelcrafting recipes to cut gems with spell haste from Dawnstones, Talasite, and noble Topaz.
* Two new meta gem recipes.”

So hang onto your Talasites, which sell for so little right now, until after the patch. After the patch, do not flood the market with them, but list them high and let the market set the new high for them.

In addition, Nether Vortexes will no longer be BOP. That means that on servers where folks are into Serpentshrine Cavern or more (where patterns drop that use Nether Vortexes), you’ll see a new demand for BoE craftable epics. Crafters that have the patterns won’t have to wait until their guild deems them eligible for the (previously BoP) Nether Vortexes. So head to Thottbot.com and look for the epic BoE patterns that drop in SSC and Tempest Keep and find out what mats are being used. Stock up on them now and expect a shortage of them post-patch, which means you can list them for a profit!

Until Next time ….