The gates are about to open and mayhem is about to ensue as the second week of the ESL TV Invitational Arena Tournament kicks off today. This special invitational event will feature four top teams from all over Europe -- x6tence from Spain, Rest in Many Pieces from Germany, aAa Nawak from France, and newcomers Sickology from... some mysterious place in Europe, probably. The whole event will be streamed live on the Blizzard eSports channel at 22:00 CEST (4pm EST).

The Spanish team x6tence won the Intel Extreme Master Global Challenge, while aAa Nawak is one of Europe's top RMP teams, placing 3rd at the IEM Global Finals. Also playing RMP is Rest in many Pieces (formerly known as mousesports), and completing the line-up is Sickology, composed of relative newcomers running a WLD (Warrior, Warlock, Druid) comp. The show is estimated to run for two hours, and should be a real treat for Arena enthusiasts. Active World of Warcraft subscribers can find the Blizzard eSports Channel through Account Management or simply head over to the ESL's Blizzard TV channel.

It seems like a good day for sports fans, too, with this show squeezed between the Champion's League Finals match between Barcelona and Manchester United and Game 5 of the NBA Western Conference Finals between the LA Lakers and the Denver Nuggets. For World of Warcraft PvP afficionados who also happen to love football and basketball (could be just me, I dunno), it looks like we'll have to look for a very comfortable chair.

Those who participated in this year's official arena tournament have been not-so-patiently awaiting their reward for playing 200 arena matches in the preliminary rounds on the tournament realm. It's been quite awhile since players expected to get their hands on Murkimus, but Blizzard representatives have been giving a mid-May estimate that proved true today.

Players who played their 200 matches should be logging into Murkimus in their mailbox today. You can stop panicking that Blizzard cheated you out of a pet. You can stop worrying that you missed some important detail. Enjoy your murloc, folks.

DreamHack, the world's biggest LAN party (according to Guinness), takes place in Sweden twice a year. They've just made an announcement of interest to us WoW players: at this year's summer event (June 13-16, assuming "Juni" means what I think it means), they'll have their own WoW realm. This is something that not many events have been able to do in the past. They'll be hosting an Arena tournament at the event, with prizes to be announced in the future.

We can expect the realm to feature premades and gear and enchant vendors, like previous tournament realms. They also mention "live showing of raids;" I'm not sure we've seen realms with premade PvE play before, so that should be interesting. More information on registration is going to be released "within the next few days;" we'll keep you posted. Is anyone thinking of competing at DreamHack? Has anyone gone before?

[thanks, Raful]

Blizzard has announced the final results of the qualifier rounds on the US Arena Tournament realms, and there they are -- you can see that Death Knights are probably the most dominant class in the lineup. Their teamup with a Paladin and a ranged DPS (specifically a Warlock, though there is a Hunter in there) is pretty devastating so far. Shaman have made a nice comeback as well, serving both as utility and healing on a few teams. And of course the old Arena standby of PMR finishes out the top ten.

Blizzard will invite the winners from the qualifying round into regional finals -- they will invite the top eight teams, but apparently, according to a few commenters in the forum thread, both "well then" and "GET TANKED" are somehow the same players on the same accounts (but different characters, even though they're same classes), and the same is supposedly true for The Phuox Den and Almost Eighty on Live. So we're not sure who they're inviting -- either these two teams will get to play twice in the tournament rounds, or Blizzard will pull in some more teams to fill in the spots.

Or maybe Blizzard will have to come up with something else: we're not entirely sure about which players are on those teams, but certainly Blizzard can check that very easily. At any rate, congrats to all of the winners so far, and we'll keep an eye out for the next round of Arena battles.

Vaneras has posted the latest EU Arena tournament rankings over on the forums (after the latest phase ended), and it looks like PMR has found their way back on top across the pond: Priest/Mage/Rogue teams have taken over the top three spots. The Death Knight/Paladin/DPS teams, formerly dominating, have fallen down to just two spots out of ten, and two Shamans have made an appearance, one partnered with a Druid and a Mage, and the other with a Lock and Hunter. Very interesting.

We should see the US standings posted soon. You can see the rest of the EU teams in the big listing over on the Armory if you want. Phase 4 of the tournament, Vaneras says, will be an invitational, and will start next week on April 14th. Congrats to all of the winners so far, and good luck in the rest of the tourney!

We hope you got those 200 games, because the Arena Tournament is ending this phase of the tournament by 9pm PDT tonight. This means that only the Top 1,000 teams will qualify for the next round, and the rest of the entrants can take the season off. The Top 1,000 teams will move on to Phase 4, or the invitational ladder, for a shot at winning up to $75,000 in a prize pool worth over $200,000. In order to qualify, players must have played a minimum of 200 games with the same character on the same team.

Players on the Top 1,000 teams will receive the title of "Vanquisher" for all their characters Level 71 or higher. As an awesome consolation prize, any player who managed to get 200 games regardless of how well (or how badly) they performed will receive Murkimus the Gladiator on one of their characters. When Phase 3 ends tonight, the Tournament Realms will be shut down for one week, after which Phase 4 will begin anew on April 14. Good luck! We know it might be a little late for that, so... uh, congrats?

Aratil posted another weekly update on the top teams on the US Tournament Realms, with last week's number one BARKSDALE CREW remaining stagnant at 2501 rating, allowing last week's third placers well then to move past them into first place. Curiously, well-known pro gamer Serennia's We Met on eHarmony, another Death Knight/ Paladin/ Warlock comp, which was fifth last week tanked to 43rd place. Interestingly, Serennia openly dissed NO LIGHTNING GEN BRAH in his blog as "not-so-surprisingly horrible," while taking a potshot at less popular Battlegroups. The players of NO LIGHTNING GEN BRAH currently hold the top spot of the 3v3 bracket on the Rampage Battlegroup and maintained status quo in the rankings on the Tournament Realms.

Of course, it's important to note that none of these rankings really matter at this point. As Serennia noted in the same blog entry, players only need their teams to be in the top 1000 to qualify for the invitational phase of the tournament. Standings right now are merely observational benchmarks and Aratil's regular updates are nothing more than that -- updates. Although the US Tournament Realms indicate a trend towards the Death Knight/ Paladin/ Warlock team comp, the European side has a fair share of Rogue/ Mage/ Priest teams. That said, the top team in Europe as of this writing is also a DK/Pally/Lock comp that wasn't in the Top 10 last week. In Korea, where teams are still working their way to crack 2000, the most popular comps are the expected RMP with the current top team being a Death Knight/ Paladin/ Hunter. Yep, it's almost the same dominant setup with a Survival Hunter instead of a Warlock.

Registration for the 2009 Arena Tournament closed last Tuesday and the competition has now moved on to its third phase. Teams have been locked down, meaning existing teams may no longer add players to their roster. Players may continue to create new teams but will be unable to invite additional members beyond those that sign the original charter. Games played prior to the lockdown will still count towards the final tally that determines which teams advance to the next round.

This is the home stretch for players who wish to qualify for the next stage in the Arena Tournament, where the top 1000 teams will move on. Players looking to obtain Murkimus the Gladiator need to play 200 games between March 10 to April 6, while players aiming for the Vanquisher title need to get within the top 1,000 teams within the same time period. Currently, the 1,000th team on US Tournament Realms is hovering around 1,600 rating so finishing somewhere between 1,700-1,800 would probably be a safe bet for the title. Good luck to everyone!

Hate Arenas all you want, but I love it for the fact that you will sometimes see the grandest display of skill and mastery of the game in PvP and when those moments happen... it's magic. How appropriate then, that the most magical moment in quite possibly all professional Arena Tournament history was performed by none other than a Mage. It's a phenomenal comeback tale that ranks right up there with the greatest comebacks in sports -- and not just eSports.

Team H O N was down 1-2 against SK-Gaming Asia, better known as the Council of Mages, winners of the Worldwide Invitational in Paris. Both teams from Korea sported the same RMP comps, with some spec changes in between matches to keep everyone guessing. In the fourth match, played in the Ruins of Lordaeron, SK-Gaming showed superb control despite H O N going offensive in the first few minutes... so superb, in fact, that at one point the shoutcasters were already congratulating SK-Gaming. If you've kept abreast of the tiny bits of the ESL Global Finals here at WoW Insider, you'd already know that H O N won the tournament so it should be no spoiler that they escaped from being down 1-2 to tie and eventually win it all.

That's not the magical moment, though. You have to see it for yourself. Don't worry, the video might be long (that's just the first part of the match) but the most jawdropping moment happens right before the four minute mark. The movie may well be Moviewatch material if only because it's so unbelievable you're tempted to think it's all machinima. But the coolest thing about it is that it's not, and OrangeMarmalade will be celebrated as one of the greatest PvP Mages of all time.

It's time to get Murkimus the Gladiator! The Arena Tournament has officially moved on to the second phase of the tournament, where all matches played will count towards the season rankings. The bloodshed began last February, kicking off a two-week testing phase where players could create fully geared Level 80 characters, test out comps and strategies, and generally get warmed up for the real deal.

Players interested in participating simply have to pony up $20 or €15 for a shot at winning prizes totalling $200,000. All ranked matches now count towards the qualifiers, and the players belonging to the Top 1000 teams will receive the title of 'Vanquisher' on all their characters Level 71 and above on the live realms. Players who don't crack the upper echelons of Arena rankings can still get the lovable armored murloc pet by playing 200 matches. The matches must be played on the same character and with the same team charter.

Blizzard has also opened up Arena Tournament forums for US realms and EU realms, which players can use to recruit for teams, discuss strategies or ask for advice, and generally keep up-to-date on the latest goings-on in the Tournament Realms. Of course, if you want a good shot at winning, it might help to take some pointers from Korea's H O N, who played RMP to a completely different level, taking home $30,000 at the recently concluded ESL Arena Tournament.

I'm sure that one good question has been running through the minds of a lot of PvP players is if Resilience is worth it. The trend early on in Arena Season 5 was the predominance of burst, keeping matches fast and putting the worth of Resilience under the microscope. Blizzard has repeatedly said that Resilience would make a difference, but the truth is, this only applies to higher levels of Arena play where players have access to the best Resilience gear. Because of the high item budget of Resilience, most players won't feel its impact with only a few items.

Ghostcrawler chimes in with Blizzard's analysis of how this happened in Wrath of the Lich King. He explains how PvE content was made very accessible, thus giving many players access to powerful gear (or weapons) while introductory PvP gear came much later and was difficult to get. This resulted in players entering Arenas with low life and no resilience -- you can probably imagine how that turned out. It didn't help that classes were dealing too much burst to begin with, which led to class changes through several patches. A final point he mentions is how BC granted a lot of Stamina that wasn't replicated in Wrath, which made players "feel a little fragile initially".

The Intel Extreme Masters World of Warcraft Arena tournament will be culminating at the CeBit in Hanover, Germany from March 3rd to 8th, featuring the European Continental Finals as well as the Global Finals, which will determine the overall winner of the 3v3 Arena tournament. The event closes the third season of a globe-hopping event that spanned Dubai to Chengdu to Los Angeles, and a total of $280,000 in prizes is ready for the taking.

The event in Hannover is significant in that it will be the first Level 80 tournament on the pro level, with special rules changes to reduce the effects of RNG. One example is banning speccing into talents like Hunters' T.N.T., Mages' Impact, or Priests' Blackout. ESL has also elected to exclude the new Arena maps -- the gimmicky Dalaran Sewer and Orgrimmar Arena -- from the tournament. This should make the competition notably different from live realms.

The Electronic Sports League will feature live streaming videos of the matches throughout the event, with live commentary from the ESL hosts. Archives of matches throughout the tournament can also be viewed on the site or on youtube, even including popular clips outside of matches such as Swarm's infamous nerdrage breakdown. The program can be viewed through the ESL TV, as well as the live stream of all the matches. All games will be broadcast in English.

The 2009 Arena Tournament officially begun yesterday, kicking of a six-week qualifying period to find the best Arena players who will earn the chance to win prizes totaling over $200,000. Registration was opened a little over a week ago, with Blizzard enticing aspiring Gladiators with the Vanquisher title and a Murloc vanity pet that will translate over to the live realms. The tournament will consist of one round of regional qualifiers, followed by the regional finals, and winners of those finals will compete against each other for the top prize.

Registering for the tournament, which costs $20 or €15, will grant players access to the tournament realms where they can create Level 80 characters of any race and class. These characters will be outfitted with the best Arena gear available -- Deadly Gladiator items from Season 5 -- and will have access to other epic items as well as enchants, gems, and glyphs allowing them to customize their character as they see fit.

Players whose teams finish in the Top 1000 at the end of the qualifiers will receive the Vanquisher title for all their characters over Level 70. Casual players who don't play Arenas seriously still have some incentive as the only requirement to obtain the Murloc pet -- Murkimus the Gladiator, according to the Patch 3.1 files -- is to play 200 games over the six-week qualifying period with one team regardless of record. [UPDATE: According to this post, the first two weeks are considered a practice period and thus do not count towards the 200 ranked games required to qualify for the pet.] Players must have an active subscription in order to register.

Blue poster Vaneras over at the European forums announced that registration for the 2009 World of Warcraft Arena tournament is officially open in Europe. Aratil made a similar announcement for US players a few hours after. They remind all players that participants in the tournament, which follows a 3v3 format, will get the chance to obtain an armored murloc pet or the the exclusive "Vanquisher" title for their characters on live realms. Successful participants will earn slots in live invitational tournaments and a shot at the $75,000 grand prize.

According to the tournament FAQ, which contains many of the important details, players must play 200 rated matches with one character on the same team within the qualifying period in order to obtain the Armored Murloc pet for their live characters. Meanwhile, players looking to earn the Vanquisher title (for live characters Level 71 and above only) must finish in the top 1,000 teams at the end of the online qualifier. Registration for the tournament, slated to start on February 25, costs $20 or 15 Euro.

Last year's arena tournament was a lot of fun. Prior to the 2008 tournament Blizzard has a Tournament Test Realm open for everyone to log on and play with. The test realm let them get the mechanics for the real tournament realm ready before hand, allowing Blizzard to work all the kinks out.

We had a lot of coverage of the event, and some of it is pretty interesting to go back and read.

There were two main tests, called stress tests. These were where as many people as possible logged on and attempted to play. You can check out our coverage of Stress Test I and Stress Test II.

And of course, the highlights of the stress test were the GMs that came and spawned all sorts of terrible creations.