The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.

Last week, we talked to Ryzer, who is a member of an unorthodox 3v3 Arena team. In that bracket, it's not uncommon to see Warlocks and it's not uncommon to Druids. What is much less common, however, is the Two Warlock, One Druid makeup of SUPER CUTIE FEAR SQUAD. (The caps are theirs, not mine.) In a bracket of Arena often reserved for Rogue-teams (including the feared Rogue-Mage-Priest composition), the over-time based gladiators have achieved the 10th ranking on their battlegroup.

After Ryzer's interview, several folks dropped me a line wanting to know more about this team. The good news is that Apox was also able to interview with your intrepid WoW Insider staff. Check out what he had to say behind the cut.

15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

Are server firsts worth pushing for – really pushing for, as in four hours a night, five times a week, for a month and a half? For Havoc-A of Cairne, time had no bearing as they raced from Karazhan to Illidan a mere six weeks after forming their guild. They pushed through the content so quickly that some members were still sporting blues when they first met Illidan. The team racked up a list of server firsts during its ascent: first Illidan kill, first off-hand Warglaive (maybe a server first Legendary), first Zul'Aman bear mount, and Alliance firsts for Azgalor, Archimonde and last half of Black Temple bosses.

Now that the guild has had time to come down from the high, we wondered, do they think it was all worth it? Signs point to yes: the guild's GM, Meliadoul, is still waxing rhapsodic over the team's accomplishments, the bonds formed and the pride that carried them forward as a group. 15 Minutes of Fame visited with Meliadoul to find out the root of Havoc's need for speed.

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.

So far, your intrepid Colosseum has brought you a shaman multi-boxer, a rogue, a warrior, a druid, and a hunter. This week, we're looking at a Warlock player -- Ryzer of Shadow Council. The Warlock class itself used to be a great deal more dominant in Season 1 of the Arena. Now in Season 4, of course, it's not been faring so well. Armor penetration, increased tactics for dealing with Fear, and a few nerfs have come together to make the Warlock class a reasonable, but not dominant, Arena class.

This is what makes Ryzer's 3v3 team -- SUPER CUTIE FEAR SQUAD -- an interesting team for this week's Colosseum. Comprised of a Druid and two Warlocks, it's a team that definitely leans on its class makeup for some interesting fights. Check out what Ryzer had to say behind the cut.

A few weeks back, I was a guest on the Canoodle Strudel radio show, a Sunday night show about gaming on WIUX, Indiana University's student radio station. In the comments of that post, our good friend Totalbiscuit at WoW Radio was kind enough to offer to host an mp3 of the show, and the recording is now up over on their site for your listening enjoyment. It's a long show (about two hours), but we hit on pretty much everything there is to talk about in the World of Warcraft, from what it's like to start out in the game, to what's going on in Wrath, what it means to be "human" in Azeroth, and how easy the recruit-a-friend program's triple experience makes leveling (two of the guys on the show just recently started playing WoW, and they've been using the triple experience and level grant system extensively).

The show was late on a Sunday night, so I was a little loopy by the end, but hopefully it turned out OK. I did share a few Auction House secrets that I haven't really posted here on the site (though if you're already an Auction House hawk, you'll know what they are already), and we talked a little bit about the behind the scenes on the WoW Insider Show that might be fun if you're a fan of that.

Was a great time -- thanks to the guys at Canoodle Strudel for having me on. It's always a pleasure to talk Warcraft, on the radio or anywhere else.

15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

If you've ever wanted to quit your job, travel the world and play WoW whenever and wherever you please – take it from Caesar of US Dark Iron-H, it's as good as you'd ever dreamed it could be. In March 2007, Caesar sold his house, put the rest of his belongings in storage and hit the road. Since then, he's managed to keep his WoW account alive and has played on and off from his laptop and internet cafes all over the Pacific and Asia. So far, he's logged in from two dozen different countries on almost every sort of network issue you could imagine.

We caught up with Caesar in Kuala Lumpur to see if his travels are turning out to be as cool in practice as the idea was on the drawing board. (TLDR version: They are.)

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.

By popular request, the Colosseum tracked down one of the top Hunters in today's Arena. Erratic, a member of the guild LiveToPug on the Thunderlord server, was happy to share his thoughts about the Arena today.

Erratic is a team member of Mostly Duelists. At the time of this writing, Mostly Duelists is the #1 ranked 5v5 team on the Vindication battlegroup. Erratic is also a member of the 3v3 Tardaphant, who has a 2000 rating.

Check out behind the cut to see what Erratic had to say.

We love diversity when it comes to controlling our WoW time. There's a seemingly infinite sea of AddOns and custom UI options. You can even hook up a treadmill, and simulate your character running in live action. However, except for a few custom hacks, like rigging your Wii up to control your character's direction, WoW is not playable on your console gaming device.

There's always been quite a few folks who'd like to be able to play WoW on their Xbox or Playstation. But, according to J. Allen Brack in an interview with VideoGamer.com, that's not going to happen any time soon. "World of Warcraft is designed as a PC game," Brack said. "It's designed to have a keyboard and a mouse. So the controls and the control scheme that you have are very PC centric. If you think about mapping those controls and all those different type of buttons that you have to a console without a keyboard for chatting, it's a very challenging proposition."

I think that makes a lot of sense. When you talk about keybinds, control combinations using the Shift and Alt keys, mouse buttons, Addons, customization -- it just seems like an awful lot to try and cram onto a Xbox controller. To even make it feasible, it seems like you'd have to add some kind of keyboard to the device. And even then, AddOn customization wouldn't be the same.

Tom Chilton summed it up by saying "It's just more like a square peg round hole thing for our game. "

Belfaire already explained previously that Blizzard's okay with the idea of multi-boxing, whether it's for PvE use or even to compete in the Arena. In the same Eurogamer interview that discusses the new phasing technology, Tom Chilton reinforces that Blizzard is "content to endorse multi-boxing to some reasonable degree."

Eurogamer was focused on the possible abuses of Blizzard's Recruit-a-Friend program, and the speed with which players can create and level new accounts. Chilton says that if someone wants to drop the bucks on a new account -- not only the retail fees, but also the subscription cost -- then Blizzard's okay with that.

J. Allen Brack immediately brings the discussion back to a point I've previously made -- the idea is really to help players get ready for the new expansion. You can bring in a friend or family, and get them to a level where they can play with other friends very quickly. They want new players to be able to "roll a Death Knight and be ready to go."

Now, Chilton did say the endorsement only goes to a "reasonable degree." I suspect if we see vast abuse of multi-boxing in multiple areas of play, the endorsement might quickly be repealed or re-focused. But, for now at least, Chilton has confirmed Belfaire's statement -- Blizzard's okay with multi-boxing.

15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

On a list of player names that serious WoW hobbyists should know, Phaelia definitely makes the cut. WoW Insider's Dan O'Halloran summed up why in his post last fall outlining druid blogs you should be reading: "Phaelia started Resto4Life.com back in March to educate herself about playing a better healing Druid. Turns out, she's educating the rest of us as well. Her entries delve into the many facets of a Tree Druid's gameplay: Re-evaluating Spirit, mp5 vs. +Healing and Getting More Out of Innervate are just a few of the many treasures to be found on this blog. Updated frequently with a friendly and informative tone, Resto4Life is the Big Red Kitty for Restoration druids." 15 Minutes of Fame visited with Resto4Life's creator, Phaelia of US Scarlet Crusade-A, about the many attractions of the Druid class.

15 Minutes of Fame: How did you get into WoW, Phaelia? Do you come from a gaming background?
Phaelia: I started playing WoW during the first open beta. To be honest, I was less attracted to WoW than turned off by the idea of giving over another five years of my gaming life to another game from Sony Online Entertainment. I began my MMO career as a sophomore in college, and while quitting EverQuest 1 left a void in my gaming lifestyle, I knew I didn't want to play another game from the same company. Blizzard turned out to be the breath of fresh air and fun that I was looking for!

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.

Maimage, a Warrior on Korgath, is one of the many high-ranked players competing in the Arena Junkie's Olympic contest. He's sitting right now on the team AJOlympics at 2321. Maimage is one of few, the proud -- the Vengeful Gladiators. Like many such players, however, he also has a fairly high alt priest named Maimgler, hovering around the 2K rating mark.

We caught up with him, as we tend to do, and Maim was helpful in supplying some insight about the way the Arena works. Check out what he had to say after the cut. Since he's more experienced with his Warrior, his answers are mostly focused on that class. That makes him the first Warrior for the Colosseum, and his answers contrast interestingly with previous week's speakers.

Here's one more interview with the folks at Blizzard from Leipzig today -- play.tm sat down with J. Allen Brack and Tom Chilton during their interview marathon to chat more about Wrath of the Lich King and our favorite game. Unfortunately, with all the talking they've been doing lately, there's a little reptition -- we hear again that the game will provide content for both hardcore and casual players, and they mention a possible graphical overhaul again.

Their answers about the "biggest advancement" in Wrath are interesting though -- Brack says that he thinks the fact that they're introducing a new class to the game for the first time has been the biggest design challenge so far. Chilton is excited about the achievements (as am I) -- they should provide a lot of new ways for players to extend their gameplay and get rewarded for new accomplishments.

They also talk about a few things players don't usually associate with MMOs: social networks and consoles. Brack says that both are possibilities for Blizzard, though consoles wouldn't really work with World of Warcraft as we know it. Any MMO, they say, for consoles would have to be designed from the ground up to work with the hardware, and that's not something (including the next-gen MMO, we assume) that Blizzard is working on at the moment.

Chilton and Brack are just all kinds of talkative at the Leipzig Games Convention this year -- in addition to chatting with the buffed.de folks, they also sat down with Jeff Kaplan and Eurogamer, and the results of that conversation are now up on their site.

They start out by talking about the changes with 10 and 25 man raiding, and Kaplan says plainly that the Burning Crusade endgame was just too plain hard: "We just had: 'OK, welcome to level 70, here's a brick wall. Maybe you can climb it.'" There will still be a hardcore endgame in Wrath, but it'll be later on, near the very end of the raiding ladder. They also describe Wrath as a "coming home" moment -- after an "exploratory" period in Outland, Wrath will be a return to Warcraft's tradition and lore. And perhaps most surprising, Brack actually lends a lot of credence to a question about a graphical overhaul "from the ground up." He says that by the next expansion they'll "probably" have to look at updating the graphics system completely.

And finally, Blizzard believes that yes, even though it doesn't seem like it now, eventually there'll be something bigger than World of Warcraft. Brack's last word is an interesting look at the future: "Something will come along and WoW will be like EverQuest: a great game I played back in the day."

[via WorldofWar.net]

Here's a nice tidbit from the Games convention at Leipzig, Germany in the form a bundle of Wrath news. Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack gave a pair of interviews to Getbuffed.de and Gamona.de. In the Getbuffed interview embedded above, they discuss the future of the lore and raids, most notably Icecrown Glacier, the home of Arthas.

15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

A couple of months ago, WoW Insider reported on the immortalization of WarcraftPets.com founder/owner Breanni with an NPC in Wrath of the Lich King. In the expansion, Breanni of US Scarlet Crusade-A appears as a NPC selling pet supplies in Dalaran. Curious about the growing public enthusiasm ("Obsession"? We think Breanni might agree ...) with non-combat pets, we contacted Breanni for more perspectives into the vanity pet craze -- as well as what it's like to run into yourself in the game as an NPC.

15 Minutes of Fame: Vanity pets – who knew? How many vanity pets are out there now, and how can players get them?
Breanni: Vanity pets (also known as companions, small pets, non-combat pets and mini-pets) are those adorable little critters that follow your character around the game world, catching the eye and imagination of others. Currently, there are 98 vanity pets, and new ones are added to the game nearly every major content patch. However, not all of these pets are available in the United States - a few are region-specific.

There are six ways to obtain vanity pets. Vendors, drops and quests offer players some of the most familiar pets. Additionally, there are a handful of pets crafted by engineers. Some of the rarest pets are obtained through real-world promotions, such as loot cards from the WoW trading card game and trade show giveaways. Finally, a new source has emerged for collecting certain pets: they can be earned through various feats, such as battleground victories or collecting a certain number of pets with a single character.

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.

Stormie of Shadow Council has placed well over 2000 in each Arena bracket for the last two seasons. A bit of a character, and well-known on the Shadow Council forums, Stormie's always been kind enough to share wisdom (and wit) with most anyone who asks. "Ask Stormie" threads pop up from time to time, and usually get helpful useful answers from the Arena celebrity.

The Colosseum was able to snag a bit of the gladiator's time for some questions, and you can check out Stormie's answers behind the cut.