Christopher "Pwyff" Tom retells the story of the birth of competitive World of Warcraft, and how it turned into what it is today.

With Blizzard's 2009 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament starting off Phase 4 (the invitational ladder) of the qualifiers, spectators around the world are beginning to perk up and take notice of which rising stars are powering their way to the top.

But what about those who have already made the trip?

As a way of acknowledging those fierce competitors who paved the way for these cushy arena realms, today's article is a history lesson of the triumphs of World of Warcraft's short lifespan, to date, as a competitive eSport in North America.

While it could be argued that World of Warcraft's eSports roots took hold when Blizzard announced World of Warcraft arena in The Burning Crusade, the real 'moment' that made players sit up and take notice occurred on March 18th, 2007, when sponsorships were announced for Power Trip and ZERG IT DOWN, the number one and two ranked 5v5 teams in the Bloodlust Battlegroup. For those unfamiliar with the names, Power Trip was sponsored by Pandemic, and subsequently changed their name to reflect this, becoming Team Pandemic, while ZERG IT DOWN would become Check-Six to reflect their own sponsor, Check 6 Gaming. These sponsorships were incredibly important to prospective competitive WoW players because it finally meant that players could dedicate an incredible amount of time to this game and actually receive sponsorship if they did well. In a way, these sponsorships gave hope to rising competitors, and it sparked monetary interest in a community that largely felt that they were simply playing for fame.

For those of you who remember Season 1, you may recall that this was a time when nobody really knew what was going on in World of Warcraft PVP - in particular, not even Blizzard! The very first official World of Warcraft Arena Tournament was organized around 5v5 teams, and Blizzard skimmed its competitors by simply taking the top rated 5v5 teams across all Battlegrounds. There were no Tournament Realms or anything of the sort - if players wanted to learn a new class for their team, they literally had to reroll and re-gear themselves so that they could do better. In fact, some players even rerolled their race so that they could get that all important Fear Ward instead of Perception or the Human Spirit. Dedication indeed!

It was during these early tournaments that one team rose above all others to truly dominate the scene: Power Trip, a.k.a. Pandemic. The first 3v3 tournament (and first competitive World of Warcraft Tournament) was the WSVG (World Series of Video Games) held in Wuhan, China, and, for those who can remember, it was definitely a learning experience for all involved. From this tournament, however, Pandemic would emerge victorious after beating fnatic.WOW in the Championship match by playing the classic 3v3 team, Paladin, Mage and Warrior.

Following that, the WSVG moved their next tournament over to Louisville, Kentucky and then Dallas, Texas where, once more, Pandemic would absolutely tear through the competition. In Louisville, Pandemic would lose only 1 match of 30 in the entire tournament, and they performed similarly at the Dallas tournament. For the most part the team relied on the newly popularized Rogue, Mage, Priest (does this sound familiar?) matrix and this suited the veteran team very well at the Louisville WSVG.

After Pandemic's dominance of the WSVG 3v3 brackets, BlizzCon 2007 launched in August and players finally got to see a true offline 5v5 Tournament. BlizzCon 2007 saw at least half of the teams running Warrior, Paladin, Shaman, Priest and Mage, a 5v5 matrix that Pandemic had popularized for the entirety of Season 1 with their warrior, Noktyn, referring to the team setup as the '2345,' noting that the 2345 represented just how easy it was for this well balanced matrix (the Elemental Shaman, in particular) to win matches by using Nature's Swiftness + Elemental Mastery + Chain Lightning in a single burst of huge damage, and then spending the rest of the match using Earth Shocks and Healing. Unfortunately, however, BlizzCon's 2007 5v5 championship was also marred by an excessive number of disqualifications, as many players were not allowed to participate because they were using the wrong information on their World of Warcraft accounts, or if they did not live in the U.S.A. Of these casualties, Pandemic lost the lynchpin in their endeavours - Kintt, their priest and one of the best players on their team. Thus the 3v3 champions would find themselves forced to play the incredibly weak matrix of Hunter, Paladin, Mage, Warrior, Rogue, which ultimately lead to their inability to become BlizzCon's 5v5 champions as well. MoB Turtlebeach ('We lose cuz Daraok sux') ended up taking the 5v5 championship.

Incidentally, the CGS (Championship Gaming Series) was also holding a 2v2 tournament with the plan to sign top players to gaming contracts for $30,000 a year. In fact, they managed to sign 4 US and 4 European teams at the end of it all, with Schmitty's Warrior + Paladin team, Death & Taxes taking the top spot.

After the surreal 5v5 competition of BlizzCon, the next stop on the WSVG tour brought teams back to the 3v3 mindset with the WSVG tournament in Toronto, Canada. Interestingly enough, while Pandemic took the top spots once more, all eyes were on the first Hunter (we're not talking WotLK Hunters) to enter 3v3 competitive play, Hamchook. Unfortunately, while Hamchook's team almost made it to the finals, they were forced to play a rematch in the semi-finals against MoB Turtlebeach because "Hamchook did not use the Hunter's default pet (the bear), and therefore he should be disqualified." For those of you who don't know, no self-respecting Hunter ever touched the Bear pet in World of Warcraft arena, and Scorpid pets were a staple of any competitive player. A rematch was awarded to MoB, and you can imagine that the loss of the Scorpid pet ultimately cost Hamchook his chance to square up against Pandemic. In the end, while the rules were amended for future competitions, this 'default pet' business clearly demonstrated that World of Warcraft competitions were still in their developing stage.

Sadly enough, however, time was not on the WSVG's side, and they did not manage to host another tournament to atone for Hamchook-gate. In a stunning sweep of events that left the landscape of competitive World of Warcraft completely barren, the WSVG cancelled its Los Angeles, London and Sweden events and folded for lack of funding. If we were to begin marking 'eras' in competitive World of Warcraft, the WSVG era had abruptly ended, and this will be where I end the first part of my History of Competitive World of Warcraft Arena.

In the second half of the history of competitive World of Warcraft, find out what teams sank in 2008, and which teams went on to win tens of thousands of dollars (hint: it wasn't Pandemic).

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom
Editor
Allakhazam.com