In among all of the “omg fake pets for real money” scandal from this week’s announcement, we may have missed something big: the Pandaren are now live in the World of Warcraft. The Pandaren are my favorite Azerothian race, even though they’re essentially a joke — Samwise Didier just loves pandas, and he made art for an April Fool’s joke that Chris Metzen loved so much they decided to include the bears as real characters in Warcraft III. Since then, they’ve become fan favorites (not least of all, especially for me, because alcohol and ale are a big part of their culture), but we’ve only seen hints of them in World of Warcraft. There was a rumor going around a while back that they would never appear in the game because China didn’t allow depictions of violence against the bears, but that was just a rumor. Still, the Pandaren have existed in WoW only as a Blizzard in-joke. We assume they’re out there somewhere, but until now, no one has ever seen one.

Of course we say “until now” because there are now little Pandaren monk noncombat pets running around, bowing, and doing magical kung-fu. Does this mean that the future Emerald Dream expansion will have us all playing as Brewmasters? While yes that would be awesome, not so fast again: Diablo and the Zergling from Starcraft are both in the game as noncombat pets, and they don’t mean anything at all (although they were both included in the game before the announcements of Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 — maybe Blizzard is working on a Pandaren-based puzzle game? Conspiracy theorists, assemble!). And just because we all have Grunty doesn’t mean murlocs are suddenly going to take to spaceships with battle rifles in the official lore. But it’s cool to see Pandaren actually in the game, even in pet form, and who knows, maybe we will one day find the legendary realm of Pandaria in our own version of Azeroth.

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, Furious, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Frostwyrms. We’re especially focused on the people who play these games, to further shed light on the world of the PvP player.

Crinox is a hunter on the Burning Legion server. His 2v2 team is rated 2199, while his 3v3 team is rated 2212. Crinox took the time to hook up with us, and answer some basic questions about what it’s like in the Season 7 arena.

Before we get into the interview all the way, though, I wanted to take a moment and mention that we’re always interested in interviewing new, highly ranked Arena players. Just drop a line to gray AT wow.com. I’ll follow-up with an in game mail to verify that the character is actually the interviewee, and we’ll get things under way.

Without further ado, let’s jump behind the cut and talk to Crinox.
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