Whether or not anyone likes it, both PvE and PvP are here to stay. But I agree that arena, or at least our current concept, has to stop.

I agree with all of your points, arenas are more applicable to melee classes with close quarters, team compositions are limited, and whats worse is how every class needs either to be a healer with incredible nigh- invulnerability or a dps with insta- gib capabilities.

I would love to see, in place of arena, wide spread world PvP. The Alliance and Horde could escalate to open war, and they could make certain objectives within the existing world. With this would also be encouraged more 1 v 1 encounters, imo one of the greatest tests of skill. If PvP were more balanced for a sustained, drawn out 1 v 1 battle between almost every class people would find themselves trolling the map looking for interesting random encounter duels and fighting under unique circumstances.

OP, I dislike the existence of the arenas, and yet I completely disagree with your points.

You're complaining about the problems that happen to plague the arena at the moment and pretending they're actually arena-specific problems. They aren't.

The reasons the arena is bad:

-Arenas are non-strategic: Why does the highest-end PvP game in an MMO based on an amazingly popular Real Time Strategy game have absolutely no strategic objectives? It's a mockery of the Warcraft legacy.

-Arenas offer the highest-tier PvP rewards: After 70/80 levels of world PvP and Battlegrounds, as you progress into the PvP endgame you eventually get corralled into a 5v5 Deathmatch minigame if you want to keep progressing. The PvE equivalent would be if, instead of raiding, Blizzard made daily quests the end-point of progression. In conjunction with the lack of strategic interest, this leads to an even worse problem...

-PvP balance is largely based around the arena: Because this is what all the PvPers ultimately care about, because it's where the rewards are. An MMO that has, on occasion, tried to provide the massive scale PvP combat that the Warcraft games themselves depicted, is now balanced around small-group tactical deathmatch skirmishes.

So, in short, arena is bad because it's uninteresting, cramped, repetitive, and the PvP game is built around you doing it constantly after a certain point.

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Because ret paladins, Dk's, rogues and mages take so much skill to kill the other classes in arena amirite?

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The good ones need to be skilled players to consistently beat the bad ones.

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What we don't like about [the Arena] is they really put class balance under a microscope.

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Where the Arena currently beats the pants off the BG is that we can detect player skill much better in an Arena.

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I believe these two quotes somewhat compete with one another, GC. With the severity of class imbalance we have seen since the introduction of the Arena system, it is difficult to use it as an accurate measure of player skill.

I am very happy that you finished with this hugely full-of-win statement:

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Q u o t e:
We do have some plans to change all of that. We don't have any intention of getting rid of Arenas for players that do enjoy that sort of gameplay. But we also want to give other players alternatives to still be able to get great rewards.

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Thank you. This will help things greatly. :)

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Q u o t e:
We like Arenas, and clearly a lot of players do too.

What we don't like about them is they really put class balance under a microscope. Ultimately we'd like to see the pendulum on PvP swing back a little closer to Battlegrounds and even world PvP. We think the BGs actually encompass the story of Warcraft (which is essentially Horde vs. Alliance) much better than do the Arenas.

Where the Arena currently beats the pants off the BG is that we can detect player skill much better in an Arena. That in turn allows us to offer the best loot to the best players. BG rewards by contrast have traditionally felt very grindy.

We do have some plans to change all of that. We don't have any intention of getting rid of Arenas for players that do enjoy that sort of gameplay. But we also want to give other players alternatives to still be able to get great rewards.

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This is a fair assessment. However imho , there are a couple of classes that have innate advantages in this form of the game. Rogues, druids, mages (till resilence kicks in... then its an endless freezing game) , paladins, warriors. Please note this is not a QQ but merely an observation. Unless you are one of these classes, the entry level skillset is very tough for the casual person who may get interested in arena.

Take Rogues for e.g.. a well designed counter with escape options on demand, among the best burst options in the game and good CC options. Ultimately with the way melee scales, given past scaling observations becomes impossible to beat for a cloth class unless they are playing out of their skin 24/7

unlike a lot of players I HATE arena. I hate getting a group the scheduling and it doesn't feel like a real contest it's about whio ha the right class balance. Even Pre-WOTLK it was bad that some of the best PVE gear was from PVP.


Now it;s worse for my class, biut I still like AV and large scale conflict. I'd like to see the rewards there. Right now I don't even WANT to PVP.

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Q u o t e:

We do have some plans to change all of that. We don't have any intention of getting rid of Arenas for players that do enjoy that sort of gameplay. But we also want to give other players alternatives to still be able to get great rewards.

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that's good to hear.

because resto druids were skilled in all of burning crusade arena seasons, and everyone else just sucked, right?

a resto druid could carry a ret paladin(the absolute worst commonly used paladin arena spec in burning crusade) to high ratings... what's that say about skill and class balance again?

Poofi - I hate the arena - unlike those that do - please read carefully.

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Q u o t e:


Class certainly has an effect on the outcome, which is why it is subject to such scrutiny. At the same time, I think there is something interesting to the whole comp strategy. I think we'd lose something if you could get any 3 random people together. I'm not saying certain classes should be doomed to failure. I'm saying who you get for your third should mean something.



Within the limitation of the tools, yes I think we can. You're talking down to an awful lot of gladiators out there if your argument is that they just picked the right class or got lucky with the RNG.

If I took say a rogue-mage-priest team at the height of its power and played a team with the same gear and comp, I don't think the outcome would be 50/50 every time. If I took my team and played the best team in the world, I would expect to get stomped. That's skill.

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so an "equally skilled" rogue-mage priest vs... say ret-resto shaman-warlock, you expect the ret-resto-lock team to have a ghost of a chance? warlocks are the current butt of everyone's jokes atm, ret is still suffering from nerfgate 3.0 and resto shaman are among the easiest healers to lock out/cc. "skill" can not overcome class imbalance, no matter how hard you want to sugar coat it or try to overcome it. :(