Dr. Realz has really turned things around with this new line-up after dropping Serennia. His first trip to Germany will quickly be forgotten and replaced with memories of this one. No more staying in strange German houses Mr. Masterson, you’re treated like WoW royalty now.

Many are already calling SK-Gaming ‘Team America’. I think that’s a fitting title. We’ll have Dr. Realz on a special “After Thoughts: Regionals” show sometime this week along with some of the other big names from this weekend. Look for an updated post on Monday or Tuesday.

I suppose we should give TSG some praise too for making it to BlizzCon in their first tournament appearance ever. This is how I give praise:

DOWNLOAD LATEST PODCAST HERE

Tomorrow (Saturday) we’ll be doing a live mini-show for ArenaCast with myself, Igoaf, and possibly some guests. A full show will be recorded Tuesday or Wednesday with some more players who were in Europe. See you then!

GotFrag is allowing 400 WoW fans to sit in and listen to some WoW professionals (the ones who weren’t good enough to make it to Cologne haha) in Ventrilo for one of their ‘Vent Parties’.

To join download Ventrilo and connect to:

IP – 70.86.151.50
Port – 3816
Password: usregionals

Matches begin at 4:15 a.m. EST but they will start pregame discussion around 3:00 a.m. EST. Igoaf might join in but nothings been set in stone.

On the show will be JP, Igoaf, Kintt, Trance (Matt), Realz, and Azael. See you in 40 minutes!

DOWNLOAD HERE

Joining myself and Igoaf tomorrow will be King Kintt, Flexxorz (DK of eMg), Pookz (Mage of SK), and maybe (depending on work) Jared ‘vhell’ Coulston will join in! If not I’ll probably grab another player.

So join us tomorrow for our live show! As always music will be setup on the Ustream.tv embed tomorrow around 12 p.m. CST. See you guys then.

E-mail questions for the show to questions@arenacast.net

In the show we discuss the the ArenaCast Graphic Contest, Tournament Realm, the ever popular WPD comp, the latest on the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus, and also the new PTR build that was posted during the show.

Next week on the show we have Minor from eMg (OMG A GURL WOT) and the rest of the cast should return. If you guys haven’t checked out LiveOn3 yet please do so if you are at all interested in e-sports. They’re website can be found HERE along with past shows. Thanks and see you guys next week.

There is also some great talk about the ESL tournament, Patch 3.1, and of course user questions! Yay! That reminds me: all questions can be sent to questions@arenacast.net and we will get them next week. So thanks for listening, lets go for a record download again. Share this to all your friends, etc.

Sorry for the late upload, technical (idiocy) problems delayed it. See you all next week.

Temporary Alt Download Link, only up for a little bit: HERE

On a side note the past two weeks we’ve been really close to hitting a landmark number of downloads. Lets try for it this week. If we hit it, we might be able to give something away to our listeners! Spread the love!

On the ESL tournament page Sang-Yeol ‘miracle’ Lee of Kill E A had this to say on the topic:

“Upon consultation with my teammates, we have regretfully decided that we will have to withdraw our participation from the tournament.
Due to recent balance changes resulting from the 3.0.9 patch, we believe that it is no longer possible for the Mage and Rogue character classes to remain competitive in a high-level PvP setting.

In addition, our testing has shown that it is now impossible for other classes to compete effectively with the Death Knight. As the Mage and Rogue remain integral to our teams’ strategy, and because we do not have a member prepared for competitive play with the Death Knight class, we have decided to withdraw our participation from all competitions for the time being until these imbalance issues are rectified.

Please accept our sincerest apologies.”

Min-Sik ‘reis’ Ko of Sk-Gaming added:

“We are really happy about this opportunity. This event is going to be awesome because SK got all three WoW teams there and the Korean guys are really excited about going to Germany. They are well prepared right now so I think we will see some really exciting matches in Hannover!

My prediction is 1st – 3rd place – all SK! ;)”

I find it a little hard to believe a team like Kill E A would just bow out of a tournament finals. I think that Rogue / Mage are still viable — look at CompLexity. What do you guys think?

Source

Man, this sounds like an awful plug. But the real reason to watch the show (duh) is because they’re calling me about 1:30 p.m. CST to discuss the three new American WoW teams and also some things about ArenaCast. I’m just afraid that I’m going to be charged a billion dollars on my phone. Here’s hoping I’m not!

Link to ESL.tv (no embed, sorry)

Sure, there were obviously other websites that I could submit my content to. However, I would have either been driven out by trolls or overwhelmed by the amount of other content, so I was as enthusiastic as could be about making my first post a hit. I wanted something to write that was a genuinely helpful insight into what I believed to be the most important factor in the WoW Arena setting. Yet, because this was a new frontier for me, I also wanted to try something I had never tried before when writing an article.

I tried for the sarcasm approach, and it very obviously fell completely on its face. You see… if you knew me in real life, or in game, or from any aspect – you would know that the previous article is completely the opposite of everything that I stand for and anything I have ever written. Those two facts right there are the sole reason I even contemplated writing it in such a sarcastic voice, and why I felt it might just work as an interesting post. The entire point of it was that it was completely harsh, ridiculously critical, and barely helpful: if you could get past the thick skin, however…there was supposed to be the nugget of information that would be another breadcrumb onto your way to improving your game.

From the reaction I have seen, both from the staff here at ArenaCast and the folks who read and responded to the article, I was not even close. People mistook me for an honest troll, and someone set out to prove just how much better I am than those who “dropped low enough to read a website.” That was not my intention at all, and I sincerely hope that (if you read the last article and are reading this one) you are willing to give me another chance.

Why Multitasking?

Even though 99 percent of the replies to the previous article were bashing me, there were also some comments slipped in about how I was wrong. If there was anything I learned from the schooling I’ve received, it is that constructive criticism is one of the most important steps to success. So, with that being said, I do still believe that multitasking is the most important, but not the only valuable skill in Arenas.

Being able to juggle all of the incoming and outgoing information is easily the most difficult part of this game. Sure, there are reaction times when trying to interrupt a spell, or strategies that must be memorized before a match, but none of that is helpful if you’re unable to realize WHEN those things become useful. For instance, being able to gauge the cooldowns and timers of your opposing team, the positions of you and your teammate(s) as well as your opponents, and even the environment (ala pillars on the Orgrimmar Arena) will allow you to determine just how important the counter-spell would be, versus saving it for later and instead strafing behind a pillar.

In the same vein, multitasking is not only the key to surviving, but also being able to call out a burst at the perfect moment. There are quite a handful of different variables to consider, including but not limited to: opponents defensive trinket/out/cooldown usage, teammates offensive cooldowns, possible LoS issues (bridge in Blade’s Edge, pillars in Nagrand), and most importantly the relative health/mana of each enemy player. Calling the burst at the wrong moment, which is inherently easy due to the massive amounts of opportunities to be “the wrong moment” will lead to a failed kill, most likely leading to your defeat.

Hey! Other things are important too.

Obviously, there are aspects of playing this game that are vastly more important than others. Understanding the strengths and weakness of your class/comp against every single other class/comp is of supreme importance. Knowing the spec/gear that is required to find the right glass canon: solid brick wall ratio is also a key aspect of the meta game that is WoW Arena. Do you know the strategies of your opponents, the immediate specs and gear (PvE vs. PvP pieces), and even the little details such as they’re good and bad maps?

All of these are critical components to victory, and play a huge part in your eventual success or failure as each individual match go. However, it is of my personal opinion that your biggest gain can and will come from improving your ability to multitask. Looking back at some of my favorite matches and videos, coming from the former-GotGameEast-now-Complexity teams, Evil Geniuses and Council of Mages members, I can see plain as day when HappyMinti or Azael would call for a burst/save and actually pull it off in a move that could be seen as divine guidance. Absolutely fascinating to me, but perhaps you have a better counter argument to prove me wrong?

Critical Criticism

Yet, I am just one member of a community of avid World of Warcraft players and fans. I am not some incredible being of omnipotence, and I don’t have all of the answers. I am more than willing to listen to anyone who believes I’m wrong or just have the details and focus in the wrong place. Feel free to comment about any of that, or even if you think I’m absolutely dead on and have even more examples of why, please make some sort of a comment! This is, as I said before, a community, and I’d genuinely appreciate some discussion on the matter – intelligent discussion that actually progresses the idea and theory, not just belittles it.

Unpredictability will be the theme for the first tournament of 2009, the ESL Finals in Hannover (Thanks Till, I’m stupid), Germany, which to remind you is a month away, also to remind you that only two of these teams will be in the tournament (figure out which two and you win a prize! OK, not really). The only team that has actually played at a tournament with their current roster will be CompLexity, formerly GotGame.East. But will their pre-WotLK composition of Rogue, Mage, Druid be as strong as it once was? Kintt said it best last week with “the best team right now is Rogue, Mage, and any healer” so perhaps the synergy between Venruki and Happy will be enough to take a tournament win.

Or maybe the team with the biggest ego SK-Gaming will simply stomp them, that is if they don’t verbally harass each other on Ventrilo before the big tournament comes around, showing up and grinding their teeth having to play with each other. It’s a funny thing when the biggest worry about your team isn’t whether you can play the game, it isn’t whether your composition is strong enough to beat the others, and it isn’t if you have the tournament experience or previous tournament wins (edit: Serennia doesn’t fall into the winning category, it’s nice to remind him about it). It is whether the three players can sit together at a tournament in a foreign land and deal with each other for three days. This is the number one thing that people are questioning with this team.

They just might be able to do it though. I’m not going to go out and call tournament winners but between the two veterans, Sck and Serennia, and rookie all-star Realz, you’ve got quite a team. Granted we haven’t really seen Realz on a hunter in the tournament scene (explosive shot tuff yeah?) and Serennia on a death knight either, but Sck has enough play time on paladin to hold up his side of things. But enough about this team, they’ve had their press already.

Nick. The Hammer. Can you handle the tournament pressure? I should be writing about Hamchookz really since he is well known. But I like Nick, only because people call him the Hammer. How do you earn that name? You impress people on the PTR. He’s got quite a history between some of the professional players. Zyz (Rogue, Team EG… yeah, that gangsta wannabe) said he was one of the hardest people to beat in a duel before AR/Prep was patched in.

Then you’ve got Hamchookz. What to say about this player that hasn’t already been said? Is he the U.S.’s Cherez? Is he better then Cherez? Both debatable, but one thing is for damn sure: he’s good. Kintt watched how he plays when Nick was streaming on Xfire and couldn’t say a bad thing about him, mentioning he played the game at an extremely slow pace, something he had never seen before. Oplaid even has a Hamchookz shrine (he’ll deny it if you ask) and practices the Hamchook call on a daily basis. In a way these guys are the underdogs, but I think that is discrediting them too much. This team might be a fan favorite going into their first tournament and they might even end up winning the whole thing. We’ll have to see as no tournaments besides ESL have been announced for 2009.

And all this talk about level 80 arena tournaments? Yeah, that just might all be bullshit too. Blizzard isn’t going to give ESL a tournament server at level 80 until they launch their own tournament server. Maybe we’ll see one launch in February and they are just keeping their mouth shut. Or maybe the ESL final will be at level 70 and throw everyone for a loop. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Maybe the first half of 2009 should be called “Wait To See” time, since that’s all we’ve been doing, and will continue to until a tournament. Oh and I apologize for a giant wall of text. Still working / learning WordPress stuff.

Since entering the league as the most mega-hyped #1 overall draft pick in history, he’s lead the Cleveland Cavaliers past the first round of the playoffs in each of the past three seasons. His 27.4 PPG ranks among the very best in the NBA since his arrival in the league.

That same man has become synonymous with Boston basketball over his eleven-year career as the Celtic’s biggest star and sometimes only star in that time period. Last year, his loyalty paid off as he finally got the supporting cast to win the championship.

Just a few months ago, he made his mark in his World of Warcraft tournament debut, taking ESL Philadelphia by storm, leading the Trade Chat Allstars to an improbable victory over perennial favorites GotGame East.

Yes, that man is Ryan Lebron Paul “Realz” James Pierce Masterson.

Point Guard, Rogue hero, Power Forward, and now SK Gaming professional, can Realz lead his team to Ming’s “promised land”?

It’s easy to see that SK’s new lineup of Serennia, Realz, and Sck will be epic. Whether it’ll be epic success or epic failure, though, is another story.

There’s a lot to like about the team; they have experience winning tournaments (and losing them),

Additionally, they play what we like to call “ArenaCast comp”: Death Knight, Hunter, Paladin. Predicted by the ArenaCast staff to be the top dog pre-Wrath, ran by every member of the cast save Kintt (Ohnoes: learn Hunter), adopted by last season’s king of class switching, x6tence, the composition has plenty of potential to dominate the tournament scene this year. Similar to Warrior, Warlock, Druid, it has few weaknesses and played correctly seems to be able to beat anything thrown at it, so far.

So what’s not to like?

We’ve all laughed about and berated Serennia’s antics on his way to winning the first ever ArenaCast “Epic Fail of the Year” award, and, while his tactical knack and skill as a player is undeniable, so is his headstrong and combative attitude. He’s had trouble finding the proper mix of players to deal with his tendencies in the past, and while I doubt we’ll see Sck yelling at Serennia to “get on” his former teammate, we have seen Mr. Quick leave in the middle of a match at a Blizzcon where he experienced some understandable frustration.

Neither Realz nor Sck are the type of people to give in to Serennia’s overbearing, competitive, and sometimes seemingly psychotic personality, but they also are not the type to ignore it, either.

Realz himself has a streak of the Serennia competitiveness and isn’t afraid to support his own opinion with a stubborn tenacity that mimics his teammate. It’s unlikely both agree on every issue, so how they handle such situations will ultimately determine how the team progresses.

Sck may not have played the same leadership role as his compatriots in their prior endeavors, and he certainly proved he can does not need the spotlight during his time with Pandemic, but he isn’t going to pull a Chumpjohn and idly sit in the corner. If someone pushes him, he’ll push back.

It’s going to take effort from all three to make this work.

For all the flak Serennia has taken this year, especially after his first tournament, he’s made strides towards improving both his image and attitude in person, and the difference was noticeable at later events; the Swarm thing wasn’t an issue with him. Last year should have taught him it takes more than talented players and sound strategies to win in a team environment, despite some recent online developments that point to otherwise.

“If Serennia can keep his ego under control and let Realz be the coach of this team, they are going to clean house,” wrote Ming. This may be true, but in reality that’s going to be a role reversal I doubt Serennia could fully handle, and one that may be detrimental to the team overall.

In order for them to have success, both him and Realz will need to learn when to defer to each other. Both can contribute to the team tactically, and it’s going to be a balance that could be tough to master.

I’ve played in a dysfunctional team environment before and it can work as long as you are winning, but once there are problems things turn sour quickly. In World of Warcraft at this point, no matter how good you are there will be things you need to overcome together as a team.

Can SK do it? Probably.

Will they do it? We’ll find out soon enough, and it’ll be entertaining to watch either way…

The usual cast is here except for Sam ‘oplaid’ Lingle who was scrimming for a finals match in Team Fortress 2 tomorrow. He also just announced a sponsorship with CompLexity Gaming. Grats.

Other topics include feral druids, Serennia getting banned, the new Arena System, our Warcraft Movies Movie of the Week (which can be found HERE if you care to download) and also a very special, awkward situation between Kintt and Sck, former teammates at Pandemic.

Our bot is now up and running (or will be by the time this goes live) in #arenacast.net on irc.gamesurge.net so go visit! Questions for next week show can be e-mailed to questions@arenacast.net, also. I feel like I’m forgetting to add something so I’ll add it in after I post this I’m sure.

Edit: Yes, our host is throttled for a shit ton of downloads at once. Yes, I’m a cheap bastard who cant pay for fast hosting, and No, I wont upload it to Filefront unless this url goes down. Also, make sure to just download it because the stream is completely fucked up for some reason when you try to play it. I’ll look into this.