Blizzard announcing the arena tournament to actually be a LAN final with prize money was a pretty big deal at first, but now even in this early stage of balancing, the game has gotten picked up(3v3 arena) as one of the featured games for WSVG's 6 stops.

http://www.ampedesports.com/news/331...-at-WSVG-2007/

Just wondering what peoples' reaction are to this, especially the resident hardcore pvpers(I know I've seen some noto/FGJ/eminence/etc posting on these boards). On IRC the big discussion was how could they possibly make 3's work, just wanted to get a discussion going somewhere else with more people, more opinions/ideas. This really substantiates the recent sponsorships of the arena teams so far though, as they now have very real, unrestricted events to attend and compete at, with a much bigger prize pool I would imagine, and on a much bigger stage as far as who will see it.

3v3 may be a better arena to show on TV than 5v5, since there are less people to watch, yet the 3v3 bracket lessens the impact of the 2v2 power combos.

You would need a knowledgable guy to comment on what is going on so people unfamiliar other classes can understand what is going on.

It's a good idea because WoW is enormously popular and this will probably attact a lot of people, but I don't know how balanced 3v3 really is. It's hard to say because not many teams play it that seriously at the moment, 2v2 is pretty much accepted to be imbalanced, but 3v3 is more of a wild card. Rogues and druids are actually somewhat decent in 3v3 though, so it's tough to say class balance wise. I'd be surprised if a warrior / paladin + caster team didn't win though.

edit: 3v3 is way more watchable than 5v5 to an average viewer, so it makes some sense there.