My 2v2 partner and I really enjoyed arena season 1, and got a kick out of learning how to fight/beat various matchups. We only got point from our 2s, so even though we did well it took the entire season for us to get our gear. At the end we were rewarded with a nifty title and a shiny new, marginally faster mount. All in all a rewarding experience.

This season we got our gear pretty early with some saved up season 1 points, and have been spending the time messing around with gimick teams. We got a team as high as 1575 (ended at 1538 after 232 matches) wearing nothing but wands and trinkets. We're currently getting a team to 1850 wearing nothing but greens off the AH.

With the new announcement that the reward for season 2 gladiator will be another netherdrake (of which the skies are already thick) with a new color shift, I'm really not sure if we'll bother this season.

I mean, if blizzard can come up with a new engineering flying mount, a cenarion expedition flying mount and a haloween flying mount, surely they could come up with something distinguishing for gladiators to look forward to at the end of a season. Perhaps my color blindness diminishes the uniqueness of my current mount (tbh I'm not even sure what color it is), but it all seems a little meh.

Just curious on peoples thoughts about the anouncement that arena titles are being taken away and redistributed for season 2, as well as the fact that the new reward will be some different netherdrake.

-Horacio (Bloodscalp)

P.S. For a lark you might want to check out:

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=47513

and

http://hosted.filefront.com/skeetar

for some (I think) amusing naked pvp vids.

Actually the netherdrakes filling up the skies are 280% unarmored ones. The Gladiator Netherdrakes actually have body armor, rather easy to distinguish them from the rest.

I'm a little upset that I have to get back into the top .5% bracket again to keep my Gladiator title, Grand Marshals get to keep theirs, why not me =/, guess I'll devote myself to getting a 2200 rating in 2vs2 to secure that sometime in the next week or so.

I don't know what else they could offer from season to season though to be honest.

The newer people definitely would want 310% mounts, but what do you do to keep the older Arena people seriously contending against each other again and again. Trinkets? Pets? All you can really offer is novelty stuff, nothing gamebreaking(I remember these mounts we got were supposed to be legendary at first).

I've played season 2 completely casually, it's not until I found out I'm gonna lose my Gladiator title that I even care about getting back in the top .5% Season 3 will be worse, I doubt I'll bother with the armor this time around.

I was really hoping it would be an Armored Nether Ray.

They should change the armored mount type each season, in my opinion. Maybe even introduce new mount types. Something like

S1 - Armored Nether Drake
S2 - Armored Wasp
S3 - Armored Hawk

Just a way to make it even more obvious who the best arena PvPers were that season.

Well it varies by server. Come to Shatt on Mal'Ganis sometime and check out the scryer bank, there's bound to be three or four gladiators hovering out there.

They said months ago that the title only lasts for a season. Why are you surprised?

I agree, almost everyone rides a netherdrake =/

ps hi horacio

You don't have to worry about loosing your title, as long as you have it selected it doesn't get removed, atleast it didn't when they removed a lot of peoples mounts and titles at the beginning of season 2.

Hadn't heard that the titles were being stripped until just recently, don't check forums all that much. However, I wasn't particularly surprised about it when I did find out, nor do I have much of a problem with it.

More than anything the mount thing is my beef. I mean, what is there to do in a MMO other than work towards accomplishments that set you appart from everyone single other person playing the game? Who is it that really has a unique flying mount? That one lucky mofo that rolled high on that rare occation that kael dropped a mount. Not that I begrudge them that mount, that's great for that guy. However, here we have a situation where people are actually competing in a ranking system for top spots. This isn't a gring that everyone will eventually get done, .5% of arena teams is all it will ever be. And for this we get a big saddle on what is one of the most common sights in the game.

I would actually be extremely excited about netherdrakes (even if each season was a new color) if 1/2 of all people with epic flying mounts weren't riding one just like it. If you look close you can certainly tell the difference, but I also get asked every week: "How hard are the quests for those mounts?" The mount being a bit faster is really nice, honestly a bit more than I expected. But could you imagine how impressive an armored netherdrake mount would be if there were no other drake mounts in the game?

Oh well, no sense obsessing on things I can't change, hm?

-Horacio

Gladiator titles should stay with you and just get bigger every season

Like, getting gladiator one season should make you "Gladiator x" and then getting in the top 0.5% again should make you "Merciless Gladiator x" and then getting it for a third season should make you "Wholly Merciless Gladiator x" or somesuch

It is confirmed that Gladiators will only lose their title, and not the mount itself, right?

I think it makes sense that the title corresponds to the armour sets for each season. So a S1 Glad would just be 'Gladiator', then S2 would be 'Merciless Gladiator.' If you get 5 seasons in a row then you should get a special title like 'Russel Crowe' or something.

I really don't expect that to happen to the game, ever. Being unable to use items because you no longer meet the requirements is something that fail-MMORPGs come up with as additional "difficulty". Imagine you could no longer use your Azzinoths because your guild didn't manage to kill the 15 minute Illidan one week.

Title decay on the other hand is great, too bad Blizzard doesn't dare to do it with the thousands of R14..

You shut your mouth! Those guys know what REAL pvp is! Ignore the fact that they can't get a team past 1750 now, this new arena system is no judge of skill or teamwork or anything.

Hah!

The title decay is great i my opinion. Sooner or later everyone would run around with at least some sort of gladiator title and would you really bother to obtain a new one every season? Personally i would be more encouraged to do it if i lost my otherwise glorious title.

I think they should be at least a little more inventive with the other rewards though. There are plenty of other stuff they could have used instead; tabards, statless gear with interesting looks (think wedding dresses and such) non-combat pets etc.

Well, since apparently Blizzard is going to re-enable the ability to gain old PvP titles, you might as well get your Gladiator one. Not that it's much of a distinction; there will certainly be plenty of people running around with both S3. I'm probably going to end up getting it just to have it, but will use my FM one until they decide to let every idiot with a keyboard get GM again.

Oh really? I haven't seen anything talking about this. Possible to just pick a rank and stick at it? I'd like to get the Commander rank more so than that Grand Marshal.

There's a thread about it on this forum. Also, here's the official blue post: WoW BlueTracker: Rank titles in the next patch. I think that once they introduce their new system it would make sense for all ranks earned to be displayed via the drop down menu (kind of like how you can choose which arena rank to display now).

Oh and Yakman, forget Netherdrakes... Flying Machine FTW.

The "next patch" that thread is talking about was 2.0.

This thread has more information regarding that. I'd kind of like the General or High Warlord rank myself. Can't stop regretting the fact that I never bothered to do it when it was actually possible (and leechable, for that matter ).

And it seems that, if they do add the PvP titles again it'll clearly show that Blizzard doesn't give rat's arse about the actual people that spent time ranking up in battlegrounds. It might be easy but it sure took time, would be another spit in the face by Blizzard to those people, I expect the same reactions as Patch 2.0 when the new honor system got introduced.

"...at some point in the future..." It's going to happen guys.