Welcome to our first show!

Show notes for show #1

Register for the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament!

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/tournament/faq.xml

The registration fee is $20 per account for each six-week online qualifying round (played out on the tournament realm) Qualify for live tournaments with a chance to win cash prizes. Instantly create up to three new level 70s with full sets of PvP gear to prove your skills in 3v3 Arena team combat and each can be on a separate arena team

At the world finals of the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament, the winning team will take home the impressive sum of $75,000. The second-place team will win $30,000, and the third-place team will be awarded $15,000. There will be cash prizes at each regional final as well, consisting of $15,000, $6,000, $3,000, and $1,500 for first, second, third, and fourth place respectively, while fifth- through eighth-place teams will each receive $600.

We are looking at April of 2008 for the beginning of the first online qualifier. The first two weeks of each round are designated for practice - giving a chance for players to meet and form teams, gain experience playing as a team, and experiment with different lineups and strategies. During this time period, matches will not count, although your rating will change as normal. When the tourney starts in earnest, all team ratings reset to 1500.

Each team must play a minimum of 200 games per qualifier. Each player, including “bench players,” must participate in at least 30% of the team’s total games to be eligible to advance to the regional finals. If a team were to play the minimum of 200 games, then each player on the team would have to have played in at least 60 of those games.

To participate, you must:

· Have an active subscription to World of Warcraft with an account in good standing, meaning the account is not flagged, suspended, or banned for violating any of the Terms of Service, EULA, or other rules of World of Warcraft.

· Have World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade installed.

· Have a valid credit card to pay the per-competitor registration fee for the tournament, which is €15/£12 in Europe; 20,000 won in South Korea; $20 in North America; and NT$450 in the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau for each six-week qualification round that the competitor participates in.

· Reside in a country or territory that allows participation (you will see the full list when registering).

· Complete the required information on the registration page to register for the tournament.

· Meet all eligibility requirements listed in the rules(coming soon). Players meeting these requirements will be allowed to participate in the tournament and will have access to the dedicated tournament realms in their region.

The new Arena Tournament realm for World of Warcraft is available for testing on the Public Test Realm.

PTR News

http://www.mmo-champion.com

Seems the Karazhan attunement has been “removed”. There is also a listing of the current PTR changes that might appear in the next patch. But since it is likely that list will evolve further there isn’t really a need to mention it here just yet. Link will be available in the show notes.

Blizz Cast News

Some changes to the Magtheridon fight according to Blizzards Podcast called Blizz cast. Planned changes include nerfing the channelers to make it easier to get to main fight. Making certain announcements from Magtheridon to alert to his special attacks. Other changes include a bag of gold as a loot drop and a bag of epic uncut gems that are hard to get in other areas. The lockout period will still remain but they wanted to make more incentive to down Magtheridon.

Spies in WoW? - Reynard Project

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/nations-spies-w.html

Having eliminated all terrorism in the real world, the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence. The Reynard project will begin by profiling online gaming behavior, then potentially move on to its ultimate goal of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.

The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world. If it shows early promise, this small seedling effort may increase its scope to a full project. Reynard will conduct unclassified research in a public virtual world environment. The research will use publicly available data and will begin with observational studies to establish baseline normative behaviors.

MMO Champion

http://www.mmo-champion.com

Reports the curse gaming has posted sound files for the new sunwell instance. Includes boss sound files and events. Very cool, unless you don’t like to spoil the surprise.

http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/11495

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