WoW: Worldwide Level-70 Arena Tournaments
WoW: Worldwide Level-70 Arena Tournaments
Blizzard announced plans for a new form of tournaments using the Arena system of World of WarCraft. There will be dedicated Realms set up for the tournaments, where players can create heroes on level 70 immediately, so that the emphasis of the new service lies in battle tactics, not character advancement. "e-Sports is one of the most interesting aspects of online play", Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime is cited. The new tournament series will start in April 2008, there will be two qualifier rounds each in Europe, South Korea, North America and Taiwan/Hongkong/Macao.
Each round will take six weeks, participants will have to pay a starting fee of 15 Euro (or 12 Pound, 20.000 Won, 20 Dollars or 460 NT$). The game mode will be 3v3. The four best teams of each round will fight the regional tournament, where price money of more than 27.000 Dollars can be won. The winners of each region will get an invitation to the World Championship with a price mony of 120.0000 Dollars, of which the winning team gets 75.000 Dollars.
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How are they planning on handling the differences in equipment? Or will everybody get the same set? Otherwise I can't see how this could be balanced.
That's a good question. I can imagine three scenarios: First, you'll get a "starter pack" depending on your class/race combination. Second, you'll get points or money to buy your equipment (I think rather not, too much choice), third, you'll have a couple of minutes or even longer (e.g. by starting positions which are far off from the other 3-player-team) in order to kill NPCs and get your equipment that way.
Honestly, Option 2 sounds way to much like CS, to be a valid Option for WoW.
And option3 depends on random chance, which would increase the imbalance even further, to my money is on the starter-kit idea, or something more creative we didn't think about.