Good News Everyone!

So for a long period of time I personally thought that the esport part of wow was dead, done, no more. Many arena sites, and people felt the same way. With MLG dropping WOW as part of their lineup, it pretty much left nothing. There was still of course the pro's doing arenas with their teams, and of course tournament realm whenever/if it comes back up.  Blizzard had decided to not update their spectator client for cataclysm, which is what companies like MLG use to show you the matches. This is what started the whole downward spiral, this along with their new focus on Rated Battlegrounds is where it went wrong if you were an Arena fan. No doubt, RBG's are fun, I love watching Mike B's live streams of his matches on www.gamebreaker.tv along with the Haxball matches inbetween.



 However, I don't think Blizzard really thought out the logistics and so on that it'd take for a company to host tournaments for it. It's just not feasable! Consider that at the Arena Tournaments you would have multiple matches going on at once. Now lets introduce that format to RBG's... Yeah, 10 PC's per team. With backups on the side in case. So 2 teams would require 20 PC's, 20 Moniters, and bigger routers, or have them connected via WIFI, a notion that nearly every pro would cringe and place their complaints on. It's also another way for a losing team to cop out "NO WAI MAN, MY LATENCY WENT TO SHIT BECAUSE OF THIS WIFI CRAP!" There are commercial routers and switches that would work, but as I've never been to an event, I really don't know what hardware they're rocking.
 So 2 teams, 20 pc's and moniters. 20 people, that'd require in my opinion more Officials to oversee the teams. 1 person per team was good for 3v3's, but you put 10 people on one side and it easily becomes clear that they'd need more man power to oversee the matches. So with just 20 computers, and more Officials, you've drove the cost up pretty good. You're also increasing the electricity bill, which at an event like that, cannot be overlooked. These pc's are very much so top of the line, so you'd assume a power supply of AT LEAST 600watts. That's a lot of juice when you have that many running.
 So lets say you have 2 sets of teams playing, 40 PC systems, 4 officials or so. WOW, you'd also have to consider how much bigger of a venue you'd need to effectively run these events. You need room for the players and their equipment, room for the sportscasters booth, room for spectators, room for teams not currently playing. Room for server equipment, room for the broadcast stuff. You easily find that it's a big issue now.
 
 This of course isn't even considering the money that'd be required to fly 10 people out, house and feed them, and transport them. And then there's entry fee's to consider, because prize money will definitely have to increase in order to make the event even tempting for a sponsor and it's team. That's a lot of money to be slinging around.
The other option that was thrown around by Blizzard I believe was online tournaments. Which would be interesting to hold. You are introducing lag, there's no way to get around it, you'll have some team on the opposite coast, and they'll be at the disadvantage. Or heaven forbid an EU or Asian team. They'd really feel the latency.  There's also the question of how to stream these matches. Tons of issues all over!
BUT FEAR NOT! WCG, or World Cyber Games is hosting WOW arenas as part of their lineup this fall!
http://www.wcg.com/6th/fun/news/news_view.asp?keyno=C11030410001&page=1

It's not the same as MLG however it's more than nothing, WCG is also very well respected. It does hold one catch though, it's a country based format. So Azael would effectively not be able to play with his 2 team mates, his sponsor or him would have to find 2 other Canadians to make a team with.

None the less its more arena tournaments than we've seen since launch of Cata. I'm looking forward to it, and hopefully we get to see more in the short future!