There are many, many points to discuss regarding the new Arena's that will be introduced into WoW 2.0.

The "2.0 PTR up" thread had moved on to discussing the new Arena's and I thought they were interesting enough to have their own thread.

Firstly, what we know about the Arena's:
- 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 Combat
- Will be based on Battlegroups (obviously)
- Possible to fight your own faction (yey)
- Uses an ELO ranking system. But it's very similar to Blizzard's own implementation in the Warcraft 3 ladder system, and is based on an old Chess Rating System.
The basic's of the system are:
Each team is given a rating, the higher your rating the better you are. The higher rating teams you beat, the higher your rating can go. If you beat a low rating team, your rating won't necessarily increase. (e: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELO_rating_system, ty Oggie)
- Cooldowns are reset at the start of each Arena fight
- During the "Start Time" (the 1 minute when you are in the Arena before it starts) all buff's cost zero. This include Warrior Shout's and all mana buffs.
- Re-agent's are still used. (Soul Shards required, Rogue re-agents required)
- The maximum amount of "Arena Points" you can get each week won't be accumulative for each type (2v2 or 3v3 or 5v5). It will be the maximum points you gain in one type of Arena Play, with 5v5 getting a large multiplier, 3v3 getting a smaller multiplier and 2v2 getting a smaller again (or no) multiplier.
- Arena's will be played in 3 month season's, with the top team after each season receiving an Armored Netherdrake (is this exactly correct?)
- After certain PvE goals are met, new armor/weapons will be brought out in the next Arena season to keep PvP and PvE items at a similar power level.
- You only get "Arena Points" from your lvl 70 arena team games, and none from the skirmish (ty Jessi & namufut)
- You don't get any Honor from arena games. Not even for each individual kill

Discussion:
Personally, I believe all re-agent requirement's should be removed from Arena play. They fit into a similar category as Cooldown's / buff's, in that if you are meant to have every buff and cooldown ready for every Arena, why shouldn't you have every re-agent as well?
A spin off, would be to make purchasable Arena only re-agents, just like the Bandages and Food's for Battleground Only use, as was suggested by Pyros (#735). A Warlock, no matter what Arena team you are playing in, will always have enough shards to last him at least the next game. If we remove the annoying task of re-farming after each couple of Arena's we'd make many people happier for it.

Agree? Or are Warlock's destined to farm for ever? Rogue's must all be Herbalists or Auction House sharks to function at their full potential? It's interesting, and I'd really like to see what reason's (if any) there are against the "no re-agents" idea.


Another point on the Arena's I'd like to discuss is the popularity of 5v5's vs 2v2's and 3v3's. Dakous (#724) suggested that 5v5's would be the most popular due to the fact that less personal responsibility would be on each player who signed up. While I'd find this true for the Random Teams (PuGs), I'd wager it's not the only reason. Why would you ever sign up to a 2v2, when it's very possible that your team could be a gimped 2x Holy Priest, or 2x Holy Paladin or no healer at all. At least with the 5v5's no matter what class you are, it's possible that you might get a close to balanced team.

Of course with organised teams, they could range to whatever size, but 5v5 being the most tactically difficult (more people to synchronise, and more people to combat) I would easily imagine this being the highest played by organised groups as well. Also, for a previously suggested reason, because a 2v2 team may always have a gimmicky counter, while it's much easier to get a balanced "world-beater" 5v5 team.

Do you know of anyone or yourself perhaps, who will exclusively do 2v2 or 3v3 combat? Why? Is it because you would prefer to just play with your best mate? Do you not trust others? Prefer that style of combat?
Personally, I'll be considering using my Priest in 5v5's (that's where i've had most of my practice, as a disc/holy, healbot, tanking priest) and use my Warlock in the 2v2's. Mainly because I like controlling things with my Warlock, and it's much easier to control a 1v2 than it is to control a 1v5. :P

I'm sure there are many more avenues of discussion regarding the Arena's, and I've left a few questions up in there to hopefully direct the thread a bit. So, thoughts?

It's worth mentioning that as far as I have found, the only way to get epic quality weapons from PVP is through the arenas or through specific BG rewards. The vendors in Hall of Legends only sell blue-quality weapons.

The arena's what now?

Ugh, I was really hoping that Arena's would be server only, and not battlegroup; pvp feels like its lost alot of its charm and fun when you're not fighting against people you know.

I hate to nitpick... but there is no apostrophe in "Arenas".

Now that I got that out of the way, I think it's safe to say that I'll be able to perform best in a 2v2 group. Paladins will shine in that scenario. I'll be able to spec Retribution and deal some burst damage, and still have the blessings/cleansing/healing needed to keep my teammate going. I'm looking forward to trying it out, for sure...haven't been on the PTR at all.

I reckon that if people start rolling with permanent teams in ranked-brackets, a tighter community will develop very quickly.

For the reagent issue, I’d really like to see a class quest to fix the blinding powder/soul shard problem. Say at level XX you start a quest that upon completion nets you a permanent item to hold in your inventory that each time it is used evokes a cooldown. Now, for the soul shard item this could cause problems when handing out healthstones or summons, but the designers would be able to go back and rework spell cooldowns to help fix this. For blinding powder the cooldown is already freaking there.

Sorry for my liberal use of apostrophes. I'm sure there are many more mistakes in there. :( I'll edit the OP to include ELO ranking though, thanks Oggie.

So when 2.0 go lives it appears there won't be much reason at all to do arenas aside from how fun they are? Damn, I was hoping we could at least get some honor for it or something. I the arenas are damn fun on the PTR but once the novelity runs out there won't be much of a reason to do it I suppose.

The only thing gold and honour points can't buy you in this game and the only reason to play Arena heavily before TBC is ePeen.

And Jessi, from what I've read, yes 5v5 will be on a higher scalar for honor points than 2v2 or 3v3. Not *exactly* sure what it all means, but I think something like the top 5v5 team would earn more honor than the top 2v2 team.