This would be a horrible decision from a design perspective. Players can and do skip tiers of gear in PVE, which has a much less strictly limited advancement path than the arena rewards (since a season is X weeks and you can only get Y points per week). If players are clearing Black Temple and someone who starts PVPing has to wade through multiple tiers of gear to get a single updated item, that person most likely isn't going to bother.

I agree, nor do I see the point behind doing this. There is already a fairly linear PvE progression that exists, why should there be more placed into the game? To compare, would it have been logical to force someone to run MC/BWL/AQ40 endlessly in the hopes that they would finally see the RNG work in their favor and their piece drops so they can finally enter Naxx and catch up with the rest of their guild?

As it is we are currently power leveling one of our hardcore raiders who rerolled to fill a slot in our raids. This is someone that has raided everything and has every piece of gear option on their main currently. Why should this person be forced to run KZ/Gruul more than one or two times just to catch up to where he was in SSL in addition to all the other 5-mans?

Who really enjoys farming content? The keying process makes you kill bosses at least once and the unstellar upgrades allow you to skip the encounters you don't enjoy. Blizzard made sure that after clearing everything only once (heroics, karazhan, 25-mans) you can proceed to the next level without having to go back and "farm", because it's likely that you got the gear you needed or close to it. They'll probably shoot themselves in the foot when the content runs out but that's in the future.

I enjoy WoW's PvP and I think it's the feature that attracts more players than PvE, just look at the twink population.

Players who skip tiers are either unlucky, alts, rerolls or dkp whores. Your whole raid doesn't come in with T1 into Naxx and expect to do well, there is a gear progression there.

What you're saying is that a person who starts PvP'ing when players are clearing Black Temple should be able to access T5/T6 PvP gear for the same amount of points as the person who has been PvP'ing since inception of Arena? Doesn't make sense to me.

I am fairly certain there will be a supplementary cost to the tier 2 arena items, either in the form of turning in tier 1 arena and arena pts to "upgrade to tier 2" or there will be a lifetime arena points requirement or some other system.

In the end when Naxx was beaten people were still clearing MC. Lesser tiered instance still had meaning. If arena items have higher ilvl from one season to the next, the PVE raid instances will still have the same quality. That doesnt change.

At some point entry level pvp gear will be much higher then entry level pve gear. Thats why I say they will probably force you to have pvp tier 1 before you can obtain tier 2. It works like that in PVE where you probably a decent amount of people in tier 1 to have success in tier 2 instance an so on.

There should be a progression in PVP just like there is one in PVE and I am pretty sure there will be.

Though theoretically those players who had been PvP'ing since inception would have a much easier time getting the same number of points; being fully kitted out in PvP gear and hopefully in a tight-knit tried and tested PvP team...

My point being the difficulty of Arena PvP, and getting a given number of points, will raise itself as players become veterans in skill and gear - unlike the (mostly) static difficulty of any given PvE dungeon.

Why not? If someone with lesser gear has earned the rating to purchase the higher end gear, then let them get it. Is it any less fair that a brand new Blood Elf Pally in all green/blues can obtain the newest PvP/Arena gear without having earned Rank 14 gear and Naxx gear?

I'll tell you the reason: People still equate gear will skill when in fact it's just elitism.

It's more the problem with point hoarding etc. Right now the top weapons are ~88dps for 1hrs, 115dps for 2hrs, etc, the equivalent of SSC loot. Now let's say next season they upgrade the loot, and it's 95dps 1hrs, 125 dps 2hr's, etc. How many people can access these items, by say, April do you suspect. Basically by allowing people to skip tiers you're going to run into the obstacle of, the majority of people wont buy anything until either A. They're capped on points, or B. The loot gets updated. Do you think it makes logical sense that the first day in April half the server is running around the a weapon equivalent to content maybe 100 people on the server can defeat?

Are weapons the only thing you're concerned about? There are many more slots on your character than just weapons.

Instead of you must have PvP gloves v.1 to get PvP gloves v.2, they institute lifetime points totals requirements (that drop off sharply as the gear becomes out of date). Something like to get PvP gloves v.2 you must spend 100 points and have accumulated 500 points total.

Not the only thing, but the primary thing. Consider how valuable a new weapon is to you (warlock), then consider how valuable it is to a melee class.

Yes, I think it makes sense. Choosing how you spend your points is your choice. If you horade up points it means you suffer in this season not having gear equal to what everyone else has. Also, just by farming trash in the instances you can pick up enough drops to upgrade to the Tier 3 weapons without even defeating the bosses. Also, why should there be a block to the gear? What's wrong with allowing someone to spend all their points to upgrade one slot at the start of a new seaon and then force them to spend the next 3-4 weeks earning more points to catch up in other areas because those slots are still sub-par due to their point hoarding.

Surely the simplest way to implement this would be a flagging system?

Just say that raid drops cannot be equipped in battlegrounds or arenas, and that battleground/arena rewards cannot be equipped in raid instances.

In open world, of course you can equip what you like.

It gives you the freedom to itemise the raid endgame and the competitive PvP endgame completely separately. You'd keep a rough parity to stop outdoor PvP becoming overpoweringly one way or the other, but what with all the other imbalances in outdoor PvP, that would really be neither here nor there.

They'd have to significantly improve the diversity of PvP reward itemisation, of course, so there's something suitable for each slot for each class, but we're not *that* far off that now.

You have to realize how many people there are out there that don't care about even being competitive at all in arena, and just care about the items. It's possible to accrue plenty of points while basically giving up, which we saw in the other thread before they buffed the cost of main hand weapons.

Blizzard really doesn't plan or design for these conditions. More than likely there will be few arena PVP upgrades next season. The upgrades will "lag" PVE instances by a season, so Black Temple equiv gear will come out 2 seasons hence, to time it with more guilds being further in BT.

Its also most likely there will not be any restrictions on gear, it just makes things very complicated and difficult to construct user interfaces for - theres already 4-5 pages of gear you can buy as a gladiator, Blizzard does not want to expand that to 10 pages and introduce purchase logic that will be extremely convoluted a year from now.

No, you can pretty much predict what will happen. Next season no new items except for things they forgot, like healer 1h/2h/OHs, perhaps a new trinket or ring or somesuch.

Season after that? Items get replaced, so the 2h battlestaff, axe, etc gets an upgrade and new name, costs the same as before, and the old one is no longer purchasable. People who previously bought it have a slightly inferior item, people who saved up can buy it quickly, others save up for a few weeks and buy it. Assume a a 20-30% churn rate of items per season after that, as items get tossed out and replaced with higher stat items.

People who PVP a lot always have something to PVP for and get. People who PVP a little can save points and buy something new and shiny once a season or so. Creates long term and short term goals, doesn't introduce any complex game rules, and is fairly easy to manage.

I think it might be better to classify:

Arena stuff in arenas/bg/world
Raid stuff in raid/bg/world

BG/World stuff anywhere

I do agree that it's a hell of a lot easier to flag arena gear as "no can pve" and raid gear as "no can arena" than to try and balance the two reward paths against each other, especially when you're going to allow/require massively different amounts of out of raid/arena time spent farming.

Raise your hand if you farm for arenas in the same way that you farm for raids (I don't know anyone who does between lower repair costs, and no consumables...)

Simple, but would cause INNUMERABLE problems.

Blizzard obviously wants you to into either avenue with whatever gear you like.

But the important thing to remember is that the gear you collect in each avenue is designed to do better in it. The weapons alone can't do amazing DPS in PVE or help you survive in PVP. The extra gear you're wearing compliments what you're goal is.

Back in the day a High Warlord could come into a raid instance and do pretty decent DPS and keep up or even beat members of the raid (of course, they usually pulled aggro like bastards because it takes them time to understand how threat works, but that's beside the point). 2 months from now, if you take a guy in full gladiator gear into PVE, no matter what weapon he has, he's going to be at the bottom of the DPS chart. He's got too little attack power, crit and hit and too much of his item budget spent on stamina and resilience to compete with the rest of the raid. He'll be handy on a fight like Gruul, but that's really the only type of fight they'd have an advantage on.

Sure - I guess that makes more sense since BGs and outworld PvP give you the same "honor" currency. But explicitly divorcing the two competitive channels would do wonders for not having to balance stuff so tightly.

It's true that focusing on PvP as well as PvE limits what abilities they can give to each class. I'm sure we can all dream up abilities which would be situationally useful and fun in PvE, but utterly imbalanced in PvP.

Could you give examples? I'm just not seeing them. The Arena restricts consumables, why shouldn't it also restrict raid drops? And if (as you say) the PvP gear is useless in raids anyway, what's the problem with explicitly prohibiting it?

A poor idea that wouldn't work. Why should someone be not able to use an item they worked for in whatever section of the game they wish to play in?

Especially if a Raider wants to do some causal Arenas fights, sure they may be competitive, but maybe they will win a few games with their superior dps stats.

If a Arena player wants to try out raid encounters, they should be able to use their Arena gear there, especially since the arena gear is better than quest greens (except for main tanking/healing).

That is a real problem, but that problem comes from the ability to horde points, not from the ability of people to skip tiers of gear. If the points from each arena season were only valid for gear from that arena season - i.e. points reset when the gear changed - you wouldn't have that problem. That may bring up other issues, but is certainly a better solution to that problem than what you're suggesting. Requiring previous tiers of gear to buy the new tier just pushes the accessibilty of the arena content farther from new players, which is entirely what the idea of the arena rewards updating is trying to avoid. As a game company, you want to do everything you can to make your game at least *appear* accessible to new players, because otherwise many of them simply won't bother.

Ultimately Blizzard has to look at both systems, and can discard neither. PvP and PvE both need to be balanced and fun, since the vast majority of players want to do both, not just one. I dont know about you, but Alterac Valley got hella boring 2 years ago, and this is definitely not Counterstrike... so, I'd like them to contonue to add PvE elements, both hardcore and casual, to the game. To balance them.

And who are we (the PvP playerbase) to say what is important either? That sword cuts both ways Vontre.

To quote myself from a second ago

That's what I believe Blizzard is thinking simply because they don't restrict anything. You should be perfectly capable of going into the arena and having some fun with your insane output damage and replacing them with more viable pvp gear as you get arena points. At the same time, gladiators should be able to go into raids and pick up some proper PVE gear as they march along. Would kind of suck to deck yourself in arena gear, want to try out PVE, but realise you're miles and miles behind in the gear progression and be COMPLETELY incapable of raiding. Not just bad at it, incapable.

You should be allowed to do what you want and at the very least compete, but no ONE set of gear should be allowed to dominate BOTH aspects of the game like what happened in vanilla WOW.