May 15, 2008 6:00 AMBig Download has published an article examining the new arena tournament content in Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft MMO. Blizzard's Lead Designer Tom Chilton and eSports Manager Joong Kim discuss a variety of topics including the introduction of tournaments to the game and the future of PvP in Azeroth.What is the ultimate goal with the Tournament Arena? Will there eventually be televised gameplay?Tom: As a game designer, my ultimate goal is to have it be fun and exciting. I'm sure Paul has more to add. Paul: As far as televising goes, eventually the players competing online will transition to a live event to each of the regions where we're running the tournament. The winners of those live events will go to a global final. We know our players are very interested in watching, so we're looking to broadcast them in some way. We'll be releasing more details as we get closer to those events.There is an objective. We want to give our players the opportunity to become pros and show off their talents. Our players will have the opportunity to become superstars within the World of Warcraft community. What are some of the challenges in developing PvP content and balancing it against the PvE aspect of the game?Tom: There are a lot of challenges. World of Warcraft is a very complex game, and you can break PvE down into a whole bunch of subcategories like soloing and questing. Then there's 5-man content, 10-man content and 25-player content - all have their own type of balance. Then throw small and large group PvP on top of all that. At the same time, we're trying to preserve the feel of a class-based game, where each class feels distinct and a different gameplay experience.The reality is, we know the game wouldn't be as balanced as a game that is purely designed for competitive eSports, but it's balanced enough for people to feel good about their classes and their choices. We're keeping in close communications and getting to a point where people feel that all the classes are viable across all the different situations. That's certainly the case in PvE. We see more viable classes and specializations now than before The Burning Crusade. So, even though we've introduced a competitive element with PvP, we've managed to improve the balance for PvE.The full article is available at the link provided below.Big Download: PvP vs PvEBlizzard EntertainmentWorld of Warcraft

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