I have no idea, I've always been the highest rated Priest on my server.

I can't imagine proposing sweeping changes to any kind of major business system without at least some kind of stakeholder analysis. It sounds like a recipe for disaster.

PvP doesn't require grinding? No, Arena doesn't require grinding.

The "epic" Battleground gear costs 87,000 honor, 110,000 with the Talisman, 127,000 with the Talisman and improved PvP trinket. That's most certainly quite a bit of grinding and that's assuming you never bought a gem or blue armor or some of the old purple armor.

Most people that are into PvP on any real level have ground more than 200,000 honor already at 70. I ground out what would be around 150K myself and I never got any blue PvP armor, weapons or pre-discount gems - or the Talisman - and my account's been inactive since late June.

120K was a random ballpark I threw out, but the idea that people don't grind hundreds of thousands of honor points for gear presently is a fallacy.

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Blizzard's "problem" they want to fix is that the weapons are too easy to get. Even for a 5v5 team earning 300 points a week - which is a BAD team, and I will use that word for someone that low - he'll still obtain a weapon in what amounts to 13 hours of gameplay, despite accomplishing nothing.

That's no work, and while it takes considerable calender time, Blizzard clearly views it as undesireable otherwise they wouldn't be talking about rating reqs to buy weapons.

There are really only three ways of fixing that. Gear pre-reqs, rating thresholds, and increasing the amount of gameplay required for the items.

Requiring large amounts of gameplay is indeed brutal and few people will have cutting edge gear but Blizzard's stated goal is to limit the availability of the weapons while they are relevant, not to have them proliferate. They do not WANT 50%+ of a server's level capped population having cutting edge weapons, othewise they would leave Arena alone.

Honor system with very high prices is most certainly one way to do that. It also slashes broad access dramatically, while not blatently putting them out of reach. People gave up on GM under the original system because it was impossible. People did *not* give up when they saw fixed price targets after 2.0. In fact, it had the opposite effect.

So long as a target is static and visible, people will try. Hell, the damn gems used to cost 30,000 and be unique and thus require destruction of gem/destruction of gear when you upgraded them - and people still got them. Not many, but they did get them.

Exactly (when I said that PvP doesn't require grinding I really meant arena). And that grind is already way more than enough. Why do you think there are 20+ AFKers in every AV? So why on earth would you want to double the grind? Why do you want the game to be less fun? Arenas are so great precisely because they are no grind. Why do you want to take from the "no grind PvP" and move it to the "grind PvP"? Is grinding somehow a superior gameplay experience for the customer?

The idea that time investment is an accomplishment is a leftover from the old MMO days, when games had 300k super hardcore subscribers. It has no place whatsoever in a game for the masses. Calendar time is a much better way to distinguish accomplishments if your goal is to not alienate those 95% of the WoW population that do not play 5+ hours every day. My team has a decent rating and the points roll in quite nicely. And it still feels like an eternity between upgrades. Wating 13 weeks between items is punishment enough for sucking in my book.

Again, the argument for restricting access to items seems to be this.

1) Getting weapons from PvE sucks. Drop rates are low and the randomness is high.
2) Getting weapons from PvP, with a predictable timeline for upgrades is a much better experience for the player.
3) Therefore, the only way to fix this is to nerf 2). If I have to feel the frustration of sitting at the top of the DKP chart for 6 months waiting for my weapon to drop, then everybody else should, too. A race to the bottom is the only way to balance things.

What about instead of making gearing up through PvP suck more, we could make gearing up through PvE suck less? That way we could actually enjoy playing the game for the sake of playing the game, and the highlight of our week would not be that the RNG was nice to us for a change.

EDIT: A guy on my team has a crappily geared alt that he plays for 10 games in 2v2 in each week for some fun and arena points. He just now has enough points to get a weapon. In the same time frame his main got fully decked out in both S1 and S2 gear. Is that really not enough of a distinction?

No, that's not at all why I believe they don't deserve it. It has nothing to do with my feeling of superiority, which is exactly what I said in the post you quoted. I'm saying losing all your games and then being rewarded with an extremely good weapon is what I find disagreeable. You can display no skill whatsoever, go in every single game with the intent to lose just to get it over with as fast as possible, and still be rewarded for it with something disproportionately good in every aspect of the game. The armor isn't an issue because it's not very useful in PVE.

Adding a rating requirement on S3 weapons is going to make this issue a lot worse i expect. Now teams don't just have their rating / weekly points at stake, they risk loosing the use of their primary weapon. Anyone around 1900 rating is suddenly going to be very very careful about when they queue.

But never mind, while you spend 30 minutes in a queue it will give you more time to stand around shattrath so people can inspect your exclusive weaponary. Neat.

Arena isn't a grind, but it takes an incredibly long time. If for example, you do Arena every week, and each week you earn 300 points, that Arena MH Weapon will cost you what, 7 or 8 Weeks? (In work and can't check the exact price)

In contrast to the old system, where time investment was the measurment of achievement, and people were grinding honour in BG's for hours and hours each day, the new system frees you from the grind, it doesn't free you from the time needed to get the gear, simply because Arena points only update once a week. Imagine the effect if they updated each night (a farcical example, but imagine if you were getting your 300 points each night, 7 nights a week, giving you 2100 Arena points to play with a week.)

In fact, imagine a scarier system altogether, imagine if everyone Arena'd in Full Glad gear, with no variation whatsoever. It would really show which teams are actually worth the high ratings. (And I know I'm definitely not. ^^ )

What could really be interesting in Season 3 is if the Windfury changes reduce the number of Arms warriors, as well as the resilience changes to DoT's effecting the power of afflic locks and shadow priests. Seen as these are basically the fundamental pillars of most successful Arena teams, there could be an interesting change in dynamics, as it might allow for other combinations to approach the higher echelons of Arena combat.

Read the thread. We're talking about the effect of making weapons more exclusive -- which is what the HWL grind was all about.

My total joke full-PvE gear paladin/shadowpriest/mage/mage/mage team sucks hosewater every week, never finishing better than 6 and 4 with a 1526 rating, and never earning more than ~415 points in a week. After two more weeks I'll have enough points for my Spellblade. Do I qualify as "deserving" of that weapon? Is 9 weeks of waiting and an hour of suffering each week enough? Would your answer be different if we typically went 3 and 7? 1 and 9? 0 and 10? If we re-formed every week (we've done so only once)?

You claim it's not about superiority and then you outline how you are superior. I don't think you've thought your "argument" through in the slightest.

And as far as arena armor not being useful in PvE, that's just false. It may not be optimal if you're knee-deep in T5+ loot but for folks whose only available PvE loot is heroics/kara/gruul/mag it can be very useful indeed.

No I don't think you deserve that weapon. You say your team is a joke and has no PvP gear. You admittedly put zero effort into it, so why would you? Sure it is taking you forever, but maybe if you were specced for PvP and had some PvP gear it might not take so long. Do you think a group composed of people that are specced and geared fully for PvP would ever be able to clear an instance that would drop anything remotely close to what season 3 gear and weapons will be like?

I think one of the best things about the current arena system is that people who don't PvE at all can get strong gear and be competitive with people who do. This increases the number of people who play.

Not requiring the lower "tier" of arena gear to get the newer season gear and making the previous season gear cheaper lowers the "cost of entry". Lowering the cost of entry increases the number of people who play.

More people playing = more people at all levels and lower queue times. It gives you a more competitive environment, and that to me is what makes it fun.

The accomplishment in arena is what you do with the gear, not what gear you have.

Do these guys "deserve" the weapons?


They have the rating...

Rhetorical thoughts not directed at anyone in particular, but...

Maybe if it's just me, but if you're really sure of your prowess in the Arena, wouldn't you want everyone you face to have the same gear to work with. So why all the fuss if some scrubs get an arena mainhand?

Oh.. so it turns out that all that extra gladiator gear is what was letting you win over equally skilled opponents after all eh?

You misunderstand. It is not the PvPers that are making a fuss over the easy access to arena weapons. A scrub in good gear is still a scrub and I am confident I will still beat him. I am beating competent players with full gear all the time, so why would I be afraid of a scrub in full gear?

If that person was skilled enough to be feared they would meet the bar anyway. So this has absolutely no impact on the balance of power in PvP.

It is the raiders who are pissed that boss X did not drop their weapon for 6 months while said scrub has afked his way to an equivalent weapon.

Did people who bought BWL epics from raiders deserve them?
Yes. This is no different.

This is different. People who sell raid epics are denied the epics themselves. People who sell arena rating are not losing every point they sell on their own team. Instead they are selling points they took from other teams by smurfing.

The equivalent would be me selling epics that dropped in your raid. How would you feel if on your first Illidan kill all the items suddenly vanished and appeared in the inventory of some random guy you never met, who paid me to steal them from you?

No, its not even close. Losing one game doesn't result in a loss of all your points for the week. If you are losing to a paid-for-team, stop queuing. Or log on your second account, go to their server and only queue once they enter a game.

It is the same principle.

And I am sure you can see the negative effect the advice of "stop queueing every time you hit a smurf team" has on the overall health of the arena system. Basically you are advocating gaming the system to counter the gaming of the system that everyone else is doing (I am purposely avoiding the word cheating here). What about having a system that cannot be gamed instead?

Your complaint is in some ways analogous to the raider who gets upset because someone's alt or casual friend gets an invite to a farm content raid, and picks up a nice piece of loot by default that would otherwise be sharded. This despite the fact that the raider got that same piece of loot 4 months earlier, got 4 more months use out of it that the alt / casual friend will never see, is decked out fully in other high end content gear, and is a much better player.

In the end, you as the skilled arena PvPer have more than 1-2 pieces of elite pvp gear, had all those pieces 4 months earlier, are far and away more skilled in using the gear, and have the arena rating, gladiator title, and netherdrake mount.

Maybe we need some sort of token-based system (each raid boss drops one token for each player, 100, 200, whatever tokens for an item) to fill the holes caused by the fickleness of the PvE random loot drops? (And to fill itemization holes such as the afore-mentioned rogue offhand). Since the problem is (apparently) PvEers who have no interest in PvP PvPing for gear they will use in PvE, wouldn't the obvious solution be to make that gear reliably available through PvE?

I'm not sure it's a problem from the PvE side. I'm one of the PvE'ers trying to grab an OH to fill itemization holes. If there was a readily available one in SSC, I'd probably just stick with Latros and wait until I get the drop.

Having said that, most of the "no talent casual PvP getting free epix we don't deserve" PvE'ers are in the 1400-1800 bracket (wild ass guess based on what our guild is doing), and we're providing a relatively "stable population" for other people to PvP against.

As many people have said, having the items of value to PvE has made the Arenas *MORE* popular, reduced queue times and made it a better experience for everybody, even the top rated teams (more teams, more points in the system to obtain, greater number of teams per bracket)

And as other people have commented on, once you introduce arbitrary restrictions based on desirable items, people _will_ game the system. (Smurf teams, buying my 30% a week on higher ranking teams, selling teams). This has a much worse effect on any Arena "purity" than myself and my guildmates taking 4-6 weeks to get a weapon and staying in the "starting bracket".

I can't see how any of the current Arena system is a problem in any way at all other than hurting the fragile egos of immature players who seem to think their $15 is worth more than others. Yes, this applies equally to raiders who cry about "QQ, no attunement to SSC, fucking casuals ruining the game".

One point of note. Blizzard underestimated the popularity of arenas by a long shot. At least in the Bloodlust BG 2v2 queue times are 10 minutes during prime time even at lower ratings because *too many* people queue. Blizzard acknowledged that at Blizzcon (and from their explanation I can only conclude that their programmers are not used to creating scalable systems) and asked us to queue during off times (still 3 minutes 3 am).

<Tinfoil hat> So maybe they want to get the popularity down until they can increase their capacity for hosting games? </Tinfoil hat>

In any case, given the popularity of arenas, some people leaving the system would not make queue times worse, and would maybe even make them better.