With the World of Warcraft 5v5 arena season underway and the seemingly endless possibilities that it could bring to the game, we wanted to get into the minds of some of the top teams and how they feel about the current state of Arena PvP and what this new venture could bring to the classically PvE-oriented game.

Today we will start with a player who has a rich history in MMO PvP, the former Undead Priest from the prominent Horde PvP guild Nurfed, a guild known for running PvP nights on their server and for organizing PvP events on the Public Test Realms. This player has recently quit his famous Horde guild and began a new chapter for the Alliance.

The former Undead Priest is now a Dwarf Priest in the equally well known Alliance PvP guild Notorious of Tichondrious, the current favorites to come out of the ultra competitive Bloodlust battlegroup. So without further ado, allow me to introduce Dwarf Priest, Jared "Vhell" Coulston of Notorious.

You were one of most widely known PvP priest, in one of the most prominent PvP Horde teams, Nurfed. You were credited with starting new PvP builds like stacking armor as well as exposing the power of Undead Priests. What led you to jump ship?

Mostly personal reasons, I didn't get along with some of the members in Nurfed anymore. A close friend of mine and warrior in my normal five-man groups, Noktyn, decided to apply to Notorious and I decided to follow him there.

Notorious was the one guild that stood out, out of the few WSG losses we had.

They played with the level of coordination that I always wanted Nurfed to play, they really played Warsong Gulch flag game instead of focusing on fighting in the middle.

You’ve chosen to play the priest class almost exclusively, tell us a little background on what you enjoy about this class and what it really brings to the table in WoW 5v5.

In every MMORPG, even the PvE ones, I've always played support classes. I think the reason used to be that I liked having the group's life in my hands. The Priest was a lot more offensive than the support roles I've played in other games, but I've adjusted to it.

Priests used to be the center of 5v5 groups, because they have both the offensive and defensive dispels. Now that there is access to both Shamans and Paladins on both sides, I was worried about losing a spot on a team as a Priest. To prepare for this I started leveling a Paladin, but once I had the chance to play a Priest at 70, I fell in love with the class again. I had the ability to heal on the move with Prayer of Mending, which is getting nerfed because of how overpowered it is.

Let's shift focus here. Many eSports fanatics would argue that World of Warcraft is not a viable competitive platform. What are your thoughts on this and what would you say to them in rebuttal?

I think Blizzard rolled out the Arena system as a PR move. They wanted to get their game into the spotlight and possibly get back into eSports like their prior games Warcraft/Starcraft. But, they haven't put as much polish into this system as we'd like to see. There are a lot of issues that they still haven't taken care of and it's two weeks into the first season. There are disconnect bugs, getting empty games, and they're still tuning classes.

With World of Warcraft, if someone who played CS, for example, were to download and watch a video of a 5v5 match, they would have no idea what was going on. I'm probably the worst CS player ever, but I can watch a video of Team 3D destroying someone in a match and be able to follow along and figure out what's going on right away. Another issue which a lot of critics of competitve CS had is how random the fights can be and it's even worse in the Arena in World of Warcraft.

So what do you believe is the number one drawing factor that WoW has over other competitive games such as the previously mentioned Counter-Strike?

I think the difference between the casual World of Warcraft player and the casual Counter-Strike player is WoW's strongest pull. Character development keeps people coming back to this game and the regular World of Warcraft player will spend a lot longer per week building their characters up and keeping track of what other players are doing, including (hopefully more people soon) checking up on Arena teams.

Why should people unfamiliar with World of Warcraft pay attention to the current Arena craze?

World of Warcraft has a gigantic non-competitive base. 8 million+ people worldwide play this game and it's almost a household name. I've even heard people talking about it at bars and it wasn't the stereotypical nerds in the corner. If people enjoy watching the movies of the arena, they should try the game out and see if they like it. Now's the time to get into the game because this season will determine how sucessful WoW will do in the eSports area. Blizzard seems to have a good record with running tournaments with their own games as it is evident with Starcraft and Warcraft.