Nerds Gone Wild

Something is spreading like wildfire throughout the world of gaming. It isn't the latest Call of Duty, Halo, or Pokemon game. In fact, it isn't specific to one game or franchise at all. It is a global epidemic that thousands of people fall victim to it each day. It is nerd rage.

Little too dramatic? Think again. When you're on the receiving end of this bestial, ferocious onslaught of rage, you will understand completely. It has made countless run and cry to mommy. Xbox Live, Microsoft's online world for the Xbox 360 gaming console, is credited as the spawning pool for this pandemic.


So what is nerd rage? It is when an overly competitive gamer lashes out verbally (or physically) against something. How do you determine who has this incurable sickness? First you must be able to identify the infected.

Think of your average, everyday nerd. Picture him in your mind (hard enough I know). Now strip away the pocket protector, the white t-shirt, and the khaki dress pants. Apply clothes that would make this beast look like your best friend (and be careful, your best friend might be one too). This is the typical nerd rager. They live among us.

Generally you're OK as long as you stay away from playing games with these creatures. This is what draws out the primal and savage acts from these hounds. In order to view the malicious acts of such a creature, one must enter an online world such as. Xbox Live, World of Warcraft, or the PlayStation Network. Be careful and bring a friend just in case.

Begin by playing a game, preferably something online and competitive. A first-person shooter (FPS) like Halo or Call of Duty will work best. When you join the game wait a minute or two till the best player on the team shows himself. He will generally be the player with the most kills on your team.

Once you've identified him, locate him on your map and begin to head towards the beast, ignoring your enemies. What you are doing is called griefing. Do not do this unless your speakers are on low because you are going to entice the beast.

When you find the player, begin to block his path by standing in front of him and crouching up and down. If at first he does not respond thats OK. Keep doing it as long as possible during the match and he'll act out for sure. Most of the time this type of nerd rage will be low key.

If you want to up the ante some you can begin to try to team kill him. At the least you'll get a yell or two (most likely with copious curse words thrown in). These are the beginnings of nerd rage.

It doesn't seem like much, but these are early signs of a nerd rager. You're asking yourself what a full on nerd rage looks like. Below are several videos of these acts caught in the wild. Be careful, what you are about to see is disturbing.

You might recognize this video because it was posted earlier on this blog. This nerd rage sighting of Eric 'Swarm' Cohen was in San Diego, California, at a Major League Gaming (MLG) event. The victim of this rage is actually the king of all nerd rages, Vance 'Serennia' Phuoc. Phuoc is such an notorious rager that he has alienated the entire WoW e-sports scene and almost no one will play with him except for Cohen. Like a young padawan of Phuoc, Cohen preforms for the audience. Jared Coulston, e-sports commentator, described the event as “the worst nerd rage I’ve ever seen.” See for yourself below.


Next up is D.J. 'celex' Roggenkamp of Gravitas Gaming. He is an avid competitor in the World of Warcraft and his team, Gravitas, is known for always getting second place. In the Winter of 2008 his team participated in the Electronic Sports League (ESL) Montreal event.

Gravitas once again found themselves in the final match. They did not want to end up in second place. Nevertheless, Roggenkamp's team lost against the Europeans and his reaction was caught on tape. Samuel Lingle, an e-sports reporter, can be seen behind him when he stands up. "I've never seen someone get so angry before," said Lingle. "It was a little awkward to say the least."


Last but not least we have a nerd rage on the grand scale. The video below is from a raid (40 people trying to kill an enemy) within the game World of Warcraft. The raid leader's job is to lead the other 39 members of the group in successfully killing the enemy. When things go wrong well... this is what happens.


This blog's goal was to bring awareness to this growing problem among gamers today. When you're playing a game, keep cool and don't rage against your fellow gamers or you might find yourself on YouTube acting out.

This has been a public service announcement from ArenaCast. Remember to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

World of Warcraft now on the iPhone, sort of

Apple has infiltrated the world with its iPhone. You can’t go ten minutes without seeing someone using one at school to take quick notes (or text friends during class, tsk tsk), at the office to look up stocks, or casually looking for a place to eat using an app to find a restaurant. They are everywhere and now they’ve even infiltrated another world – the World of Warcraft.

The World of Warcraft Armory is a website where players of the popular massively online role playing game (MMORPG) can go and view their character's equipment, plan out character templates, check out new items -- everything. Blizzard Entertainment, developers of World of Warcraft (WoW), has now ported all of this into an iPhone app. MMO-Champion, a popular blog for the game, claims it to be "a wonderful tool."

Denizens of Azeroth (the world in which the game takes place) can now do all of the above mentioned tasks from the Armory on their phone, anywhere, anytime. Check out the promotional video below.


With WoW getting its own iPhone app, this begs the question thats already been begged a thousand times: when will this game stop growing? Currently it has about 13 million players world wide and no other game can touch it.

People even profit (we're talking millions of dollars in China) by selling the in-game currency with sweat shops to gather the gold for them. Keith Trahan, a popular voice within the e-sports community, casually joked with me earlier this week that Blizzard is "programming money in California and won't share the code." He's on to something.

We'll have to wait and see if the game ever stops growing, and when it does I'm sure Blizzard will have their next game ready to take over the world. Remember to follow ArenaCast on Twitter and Facebook and check out this weeks podcast discussing the world first 3000 rated arena teams.

E-sports: Just What Is It?

Jonathan Wendel is a self made millionaire. He travels around the world without paying a dime. Sponsors celebrate his name, using his mugshot to brand their products. Did I mention Wendel made his fortune by playing video games professionally?

Yeah, you didn't read that wrong. Go ahead and read it again -- he played video games professionally. Now retired, Wendel makes appearances at tournaments around the globe, showing his latest and greatest branded mouse, headset, or keyboard. Below is a picture of Wendel with celebrity Michael J. Fox.


Until recently, Wendel once participated in video game tournaments -- most of the time winning. He was even given a lifetime achievement award at the Leipzig Games Convention in early 2009. He now spends his days promoting his products and coaching his team, Team Fatal1ty.

"The Fatal1ty team is extremely busy in all aspects of electronic sports," said Wendel in an interview with Fudzilla.com. "Even though I don’t compete directly, I feel I contribute in as many ways as I can through giving advice, counseling younger players, tutoring and even coaching."

Wendel isn't the only hot commodity in the world of electronic sports (e-sports). Currently World of Warcraft (WoW) is the biggest game around and also the subject of this blog. WoW is a massively-multiplayer role playing game (MMORPG). In laymen terms, its a virtual world where players choose a role (healer, fighter, spell caster, etc) and fight against other players or the game itself.

WoW currently has about 13 million subscribers world-wide. The e-sports community within the game is about one percent, but we still get by. Tournaments are usually bi-monthly and hosted by leagues such as Major League Gaming (MLG) and Electronic Sports League (ESL), but the developer of WoW, Blizzard Entertainment, even hosts its own annual tournament at BlizzCon in August.

Tournament formats vary from round-robin to double-elimination format. Sponsored teams are flown in from around the world for a weekend to compete against each other in a 3 vs. 3, last-man-standing battle. Different teams play different setups of classes, usually revolving around two damage dealing classes and one healer.

Speaking with play-by-play broadcaster (yes, we even have those) and friend Keith Trahan, he believes WoW to be a great e-sport.

"WoW is tough to follow there's no doubt," said Trahan. "Thankfully we have 13 million people who play the game as a potential audience."

WoW isn't the only game played in e-sports. Halo, Quake, Starcraft, Street Fighter -- they all have their respected communities and tournaments. In fact, popular PC real-time strategy game Starcraft, now 10 years old, has become the national (televised) sport of South Korea.

Matches consists of a one-on-one battle with each player choosing a race (either the insect-like Zerg, humanoid Terran, or technological Protoss). Nick Plot, a native of America, has made a living broadcasting these matches in English for fans around the world. He claims it to be "the best game to represent e-sports" and "can not wait" for Starcraft 2 to come out later this year.

Rather than telling you about the game, check below to see one of the most famous matches played at the Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea.



One major criticism the sport receives is that it is hard to follow the games. I show those people the following video. It is from the fighting game tournament EVO. Daigo Umehara of Japan plays the male in white and Justin Wong, an American, plays the female. The match begins with Wong decimating the Japanese player but Umehara has an answer in the end. Watch it.



Hopefully this brief look at e-sports has helped decode what seems to be another language to many. Next week we'll be back with more World of Warcraft action. Make sure to check out the podcast this week to learn about the new team Fnatic. Remember to follow us on Twitter and Facebook as well.

What is Creative Commons?

According to Wikipedia, Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.

The organization has released several copyright licenses known as Creative Commons licenses. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators.

Creative Commons has been described as being at the forefront of the copyleft movement, which seeks to support the building of a richer public domain by providing an alternative to the automatic "all rights reserved" copyright, dubbed "some rights reserved."

The above information was obtained from Wikipedia.

SK-Gaming, x6tence take Regionals, E-Sports for dummies

SK-Gaming proved to the world that they are the definitive Rogue, Mage, Priest when they won the U.S. Blizzard Regional event. But that wasn't the only story to come out of Cologne, Germany, last weekend.

The veteran Spanish squad of x6tence would take the European Regional cup from WoaH, a team with veteran players but under a new name (which is not an acronym for anything). Many believed WoaH would take the tournament but x6tence had other plans coming from the losers bracket to win 3-2, 3-2 claiming the $15,000.

I'll be the first to say it: SK-Gaming had an easy tournament both seed wise and opponent wise. They lost a total of three rounds and never lost a match, even when faced against the powerful cleave (a term for a team consisting of two melee classes and a healer) of The Supa Gosus (TSG), who took home second place and the other free ride to BlizzCon.

Below is an interview with Ryan 'Realz' Masterson, captain of SK-Gaming, posted on the sponsors website, SK-Gaming.com.



I spoke to the Ryan 'Realz' Masterson myself after he got home from his 15 hour flight.

"Cologne was amazing. We played great at the tournament and now we have our eyes on BlizzCon" said Masterson. "I don't think we'll have any problem if we can beat the Korean Rogue, Mage, Priest in the mirror match."

The team also always seems to be preparing for the next tournament. During Regionals they played against WoaH. Serennia, infamous blogger for WorldOfMing.com, stated SK-Gaming played the European team during breaks at the tournament and won an impressive 13 games out of 16 total.

Whatever it is Realz, Enforcer, and Pookz are doing, they are doing it right. This team is unstoppable at the moment and I wouldn't be surprised if they won BlizzCon in August.

E-sports for dummies

If you follow e-sports, then you have no trouble following what this blog is about. If you have never encountered e-sports before, you probably have no idea what it is. Let's fix that.

Having worked in the e-sports world for several years now as a writer, podcaster, and manager of sorts, I've always written for an audience who is familiar with e-sports. It hit me last week that events like BlizzCon and teams such as SK-Gaming are not that well-known by outsiders.

It is time to break things down. In the next couple of blogs we'll be defining some of the topics discussed here for newcomers to the scene.

What is BlizzCon? BlizzCon is Blizzard Entertainment's (software developer, created World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo series) meet-up for all of their fans every August. It is a mecca for nerds.

“We welcome fans of all of our products to BlizzCon each year for what has become one of the biggest events in the video game world,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, in an interview with Kotaku.com.

See below for a picture of the crowd at the event, which takes over the entire Anaheim Convention Center floor every August. This picture was taken around 7 a.m. the day before the event even started last year.



Next time we'll talk a little bit about group compositions in World of Warcraft.

This weeks audio podcast contains information regarding roster changes of the teams who attended the Regionals event this past weekend. Make sure to check it out.