The arena tournament’s servers have closed and the results are calculating. Things are pretty much leading up to the actual real tournament (remember the tournament realm was the preliminaries). The Ten Ton Hammer team has been battling it out for the past few weeks and has finally been able to take a break and rest from the competition. The thoughts, views, and opinions of those who participated can be found below.

David “Xerin” Piner’s Views on the Arena Realm:

It’s been a long and gruesome battle in the arena realm. The competition is fierce and the smallest differences in skill can easily be shown. It’s not easy but when the rewards are so great and the competition pool so large, who would expect it to be?

As a team of both 2 and 3 we’ve had a lot of interesting games. Many we’ve won and many we’ve lost. Winning has taken seconds to minutes while losing has taken seconds to minutes as well. Most of the matches were something we’d never experience on our home realms. Our gear may have better before the arena realm (which only allows season 2 gear), but the class choices and even battlefield was nothing we’d ever see.

The most memorable match was a 2v2 match with DarkFact. The fight lasted somewhere around 10 minutes and involved two Paladins. One of them was fully protection spec’d which meant that they went into the battle knowing full well that it was a war of attrition. The fight lasted forever in a 2v1. It’s interesting that on the actual arena realm that gimmick teams were highly prevalent.

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From one of the many battles within the arena tournament realm.

The matches themselves were varied and the group we’ve tried and have seen have been a mixed bag of awesome and weird. As a group we’ve seen the horribly generic (Mage/Rogue/Druid) to the weird. The people who were playing in the arena matches all had one thing in common – skill. Rarely did you approach a team in the rated matches that didn’t have the skill to backup their cash that they paid to join the realm.

Some oddities that I noticed were that many people would pay to join the arena realm just to seek out a team in one of the heavily populated areas. It was a common occurrence, actually. To me I’d believe that going and getting a team that you’re comfortable with and then going to the arena realm would be preferred over trying to join a random team with a group of people you do not know.

In the fights stealth was a major component. Almost every team had something that could stealth. Night Elves shadow melding, Druid’s in cat form, or just a Rogue were always lurking somewhere. CC was as important as it ever was as well.

I think that the arena tournament was a very rewarding experience. It allowed us to play together even though we’ve on different servers. It allowed to taste level 70 classes we’ve never played before in gear that we’d have to spend a good deal of time to get. It even allowed us to be part of World of Warcraft history. Was it worth it? To me, it definitely was.

During the next tournament, should it hold the same rules, I would participate again if I had friends to play with. The experience was very rewarding and the time spent was not time wasted. I’m glad that Blizzard gave many players the opportunity to stand on the main stage and fight against the best for some of the best prizes online gaming has to offer.

So, next season, if they choose to run an arena tournament you can sure bet we’ll be there if we can. Until then, let’s cheer on the teams that made it into the next round. They’ll need it!

Continue reading for the opinions and views of both Gabriel “DarkFact” Zamudio and Byron “Messiah” Mudry.

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