WSVG Toronto

First off I'm sorry that I haven't bloged anything in a while. The reason for this is that I have been busy as hell. Right after blizzcon we went on a cruise, then right after that I started working 12 hours per day while spending all my free time on playing arenas. And that was like 3 hours per day, wihoo. We also had some other problems with people crashing with their MC's and not having a working Internet connection. I will wirte a blog later explaining evrything that been happening to us the last couple of months. We have been really down after Blizzcon also as we feel that we should have gotten second place.
But here we are, in Toronto. We just got to se the brackets and we play a team called "Yes We Lift" in the first round. They use priest mage hunter and according to the other players we got a really hard first game. They are at second place in their Battlegroup and seems to dominate in the other brackets as well. Never played vs a hunter team in Europe so this wil be a tough one for us for sure. Lets just hope that we manage to win. We play 18:30 local time Tarde just told me, you figure out what thats in CET.
Lets Go!



5vs5 World Finals at Blizzcon

Hello again. My plan was to blog pretty often during our preparation for Blizzcon to keep people updated but I simply had no time or energy to do that. We have been practising really hard for this tournament except when Dosferra went to Amsterdam for a week, but then I played 3vs3 with Tarde and Daimx instead. On top of that I have been working some, its summer outside and there is a girl that wants my attention now and then for some reason.
My flight leaves in about 2 hours from now so I'm leaving soon and have a really long trip ahead of me, but the destination is sweet as hell. The John Wayne Airport (I'm not joking, check www.ocair.com out) in Orange County, California USA. I'm talking THE REAL OC here baby, Laguna Beach! I bet that it will be EXACTLY like on MTV, for sure!
But speaking of WoW our preparation has been going pretty good if you ask me, and of course you do. We played really nice after Hamburg, and until Dosferra stabbed us all and went to Amsterdam we had a win percentage of ~90% and were #1 in the battlegroup. But after he came back (about one week ago) we played really bad for a couple of days, losing a lot of games in a row sometimes. We felt pretty bad then and were worried that we might not get back in shape before Blizzcon. But we did. Last couple of days we have been playing solid again, really good sometimes and no losing streaks at all. We came back from 2060 rating and we now have 2299 rating and are #2 in the notorious Cyclone Battlegroup a.k.a BG3. We were as high as 2346 but took a couple of stupid losses while not paying attention. No biggie though, we are pretty happy with how we have been playing lately. Especially considering that we use no addons at all.
We have been switching between melee and caster Shaman while practising and we will probably use both types at Blizzcon, depending on what teams we face. Versus some teams we might even respec between games. By doing this our Shaman can’t have the best possible gear though as he has to buy both melee and caster gear, but we believe that the possibilities respecing gives us outweigh this.
I'm personally aiming for #1 but Top 3 would be pretty decent, anything less than that would be a huge disappointment for us all though. We should beat Pandemic in the first game as they have a pretty gimped setup, but you never know. Millenium got their Priest disqualified and replaced with a Rogue also and they almost beat us and Nashwan anyway, not the same setups otherwise though. We lose cuz Darok sucks however have a solid setup and that will not be an easy fight at all. They beat the American favourites The Fighting Mongooses with 3-1 in the US regional, and TFM used the exact same setup as we do. So that will be a very hard task for us, if we get to play them.
Anyways, soon the theory crafting is all over. Soon we know who the winners of the 5vs5 World Finals are. Soon we know if we will drink with joy or just to drown our sorrows. Soon I have to leave for the airport so I better start packing my stuff now, see you.
I am going to Disneyland!



WSVG Dallas Blog

I'm just starting up a blog here so I can add stuff fast with comments or edits. There is no Internet access on the computers for us Gamers so ATM I'm paying for it, $0.50 every minute! The hotel/resort is super sweet, and so is the weather. We must go to the mall now however and buy converters for both the power supply at the hotel room and a PS2/USB converter for our keyboards.
Some problems regarding the WoW tournament: You can't enchant anything, except healing on helm. You can't choose race, only faction. So our warrior will be forced to play Human. Mages don't have the highest rank of Conjure Bread, however they have added arena water now. There is some kind of tournament addon installed that gives stuff like movable unit frames and neat stuff like that, but: It also gives you focus target casting bar. This is IMO 100% bullcrap. Stuff like that removes alot of skill from the game.
FIRST EDIT:
Fygg! When i saved my edit of the blog it removed like 75% of it. Already upset after our loss in our first game I am now close to shooting myself in the head. Should I try to rewrite or just let it be? Hmm. Let's do a fast recap:
We were under the impression that we had to use the tournament addon. Apparently this is only true if you play on stage, we now know after complaining after the game to the head admin. As there is no warmup play allowed I got very confused during the games and in the last one I didn't even know that oteus was low on health. I also spamed dispell trying to remove buffs that actually was my party memmbers target. So frustrating. Next game I can use my dear default UI though, if it's not on stage we play.
I also wonder how they manage to get 300-500 ping on a LAN. And freezing cold inside, in Texas. That's good work right there! Anyway, we played vs a 3 dps setup and we won 2 games quite easy but the other 3 Oteus just insta died or close to it. Thats just how it goes in 3vs3 I guess. But we should of course not have lost that match anyway. We feel ashamed for losing. Next game we will win, we must win.
We are playing very soon I think. Do or die. If we lose now you might never ever hear from me again. QQ
SECOND EDIT
We won our second game with 3-0, phew. We played much better now, mainly thanks to no shitty tournament addon. Lets keep this up, I'd say. Think we are facing a team in the next round that use the same setup as us, so that game we should/must win. If we win that one I might be able to walk with my head up straight again. :)
I'll be back with an update after our next game, 4 hours from now or so.
THIRD EDIT:
Yeehaaa! We won again. 3-0 against a team using the same setup as we did. It was nice games and they were not bad at all, just one level below us. Tomorrow we face another team I have no info about, if someone CBA and do some research on them troguh Armory it would be nice. I'm just borrowing a computer for a couple of minutes every time so I can update this blog etc.
BTW: First night we spent in a very nice club, getting free beer and everything from a very friendly bartender. Yesterday we went to a huge mall (together with Check Six, Pandemic and Insurrection) doing what Americans do. We ate crapy fast food and watched Transformers in a HUGE movie teather. Tonight we probably will visit the arcade hall and have a couple of drinks/beer while playing some silly game with toy guns. \o/
SATURDAY EDIT:
We just lost, and are out. I'm not really that upset about it though. It's hard to do better than we did with only 3 players and such limited time of 3vs3 preparation. The next WSVG we will have much better chance to go far. The ones we lost to are very good players according to the other teams here. With a week more of 3vs3 behind us we could have probably won. Maybe.
The sun is shining outside now, they say it wil be atleast +35c outside. Inside it's still very cold though, I'm freezing all the time. My throat and nose are kind of fygged up also. Think I will cure that by hanging out by the pool and having a couple of drinks. \o
Howdy.



The European Finals, WoW!

Hi there, I’m the team leader of SK Gaming’s WoW team. Tomorrow we head down to Hamburg for the European finals in Blizzard’s WoW Arena Tournament. We have been preparing for this moment a long time and I really hope it pays off now.
When we qualified for the finals we used a melee Shaman but as you know if you read my first blog entry we later on respected to an elemental Shaman instead. This was pretty much against our will as we feel that using a melee Shaman is much more fun to play with and way more original. But as our Battlegroup became flooded with Hunter teams and our rating dropped and dropped we felt forced to give elemental a try. And we did. And it was great. We rose above 2400 rating and stayed in the Top 5 of the best Battlegroup in Europe for long periods of time. This is in my opinion quite an achievement, when using no addons at all.
However it seems like Blizzard will use the character copy from Phase 2, when our Shaman had no elemental gear, so in the finals we will be back to using melee Shaman again. At first this felt somewhat depressing but after playing with melee Shaman yesterday and tonight we’re feeling quite good about this. We had almost forgotten how much more fun melee is and in Hamburg we will tear peoples cloth to pieces, in game (mostly). As far as I know we are the only team that use melee Shaman, in any of the regional finals. Hurray for being original again and death to flavour of the month teams!
Since switching back to melee Shaman we have 41-6 in stats and are, as the new season started yesterday, at 1890 rating. I think that places us as #1 at the moment. So yes, we feel quite decent about our setup in the finals anyway. However our match ups are very bad for us as we have our 3 worst opponents in the same “bracket” as us and the 4 teams we would love to play against in the other. But if we manage to get trough the first two rounds I would almost be surprised if we do not manage to get Top 3 and qualify for the world finals.
You can watch and read an overview www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/arena/season01/index.html]here[/url].
And the brackets are found here.
We should win our first game, the one vs. Millenium. But the second game will be very hard, facing either Art of War or Nashwan. Both those teams have very good setups and will probably be our main foes in this tournament. If we lose our first game there is high risk that the tournament is over early for us though, let’s just hope that doesn’t happen. It’s tricky because we have never played against the setup Millenium is using. We are however very well prepared in other ways and for example I doubt that any team has played more than us with default UI.
The schedule can be found here.
And the games will be streamed by [url=www.giga.de/2/.
Be sure to check some of the action out as it will be WoW at its best. Forget about those US teams some of you surely have seen before; it’s time for Europe to show how the game is really played. Like always. OK, I’m just trying to stir up some heat so never mind about that. But anyways, we will do our best to bring this tournament home and if enough people wishes us luck we might just do that.
Write you later.



Hunter Teams and BG3

Our BG (#3, also known as Cyclone) is at this moment flooded with hunter teams. We had two hunter teams in top ~10 since old, and now ~3 more good hunter teams has transferred here. At the same time a couple of top teams that does not use hunter stopped playing. Result: Over 50\% of our games are against hunter teams.
And what’s the problem with this? Well, first of all there is not a single team in the EU finals with a hunter in their lineup so we have no wish or need to practise against these kind of teams.
Second we lose over 90\% of our games vs hunter teams. The reason for this is that we use a melee Shaman. A melee shaman has no way of closing in on the enemy and with the snare trap down he's pretty much worthless. This makes it pretty frustrating to play arenas and it also lowers our rating a lot making flamers very happy in their pants. :)
Edit:
I lost the second half of this blog when trying to correct a spelling error. But it was pretty much about us thinking about trying Elemental Shaman out. Now there is a quite big change to the Blades Edge Arena; Blizzard has added two ropes leading from the bridge out to the pillars. This is a pretty big buff for melees on this map, especially for a non Gnome player like our Shaman. So I really don't know what we will do. I have also respecd from Blessed Resilience to Pain Suppression, and we will try to gear/enchant a tad different, making us somewhat better at longer games when we are not allowed to drink water due to pets. We hope.

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