I particularly enjoy smaller brackets for PvP - I love 3 vs 3 and 2 versus 2, and even though I just started PvP'ing as holy recently, it is a lot more enjoyable.

The problem is with the way Blizzard assigns servers/instance spots in the smaller brackets - 2 versus 2 is vastly more popular than 3 versus 3, and infinitely more popular than 5 versus 5. This is because the logistics of 2 vs 2 are much easier, and a lot more people enjoy playing that more casually. The problem is that unless you are willing to play at ungodly hours, you will usually have 8 or 9 minute queues waiting for an instance to free up - while for 3 vs 3 and 5 vs 5 you almost always have under 1 minute waiting times.

Could server resources be shifted around so people can play in the smaller brackets without waiting an eternity? Queues suck, they are by far the worst part of arena after the honor farming required for the resilience gear.

There's nothing balancing about not making enough servers to serve everyone quickly. It's the same reasoning that would say that on a 1-10 ration server in the olde times the more populous faction should wait an hour to do bgs.

I would not mind the 2v2 and sometimes 3v3 queue times if they were created because of unbalanced population but Blizzard has stated that it is because of the cap they place on the number of games that can be played at one time. Which is pretty ludicrous considering that the amount of money they are taking in and can't even afford to support their players with proper servers for arenas. Waiting 10 minutes to play a sometimes less than a minute match is unreal.

2 vs 2 and 3 vs 3 do have balance issues, but that's not what I am complaining about. They are by far the favorite brackets, and capping the number of matches that can take place is downright sadistic, I doubt their intention is to push people into bigger brackets.

I think they just drastically underestimated how popular arenas would end up being, and 2 versus 2 is by far the most resource intensive/player format there is. They have an insane profit margin, just buy more servers, having to wait 8 minutes between matches is just a killjoy.

I believe they made some official statement recently about 2v2 queue length. They said that they knew about it and had no plans to fix it.

I've had some luck playing before work in the morning (<1 minute queues); however, most partners are not willing to do this. Also, I'm not really playing my best at this time in the morning.

I've resorted to doing this as well (EARLY EARLY queues) and it's really just a totally punishing requirement. If Blizzard really has no intention to *fix* 2v2 queues (a 5 minute queue time at eleven AM on a weekday is just absurd, let alone the 17-30 minute queues during prime time weekends and monday nights), the least they could do is allow people to queue for BGs simultaneously.

Did they expand on why they aren't interested in fixing it?

This is purely a capacity issue as far as I can tell. Basically, they have more demand for instance servers than servers to fill them. I suppose it's good problem to have, since it means you have a popular feature on your hands. Arena instances would seem to be a really easy problem to scale up. You need more instances? Add more instance servers. Each instance server should be almost completely standalone. They should be 'share nothing' architecture (as in the communication between 10 instance servers is no different than 20 instance servers), which is the most scalable kind of enterprise system.

Unless there is some weird poorly designed architecture which prevents just plugging in more servers, I would guess they think they might add too much capacity for what might be a temporary problem. I.e. arena are popular now, but they don't want to over buy. I don't really buy that though, since I was having queue problems last season too. Monday night 2v2's have been impossible for months.

It's kinda excusable in my mind that one of the most popular feature's in wow is mostly inaccesable during prime time.

Yeah, I understand why there are long waiting times, I just don't understand the justification for it. It is by far the most popular arena setting, and what most people want to play, yet we want to push people to do something else?

That makes no sense to me at all.

Part of it is a user-density issue - everyone transfers to the 'big' battlegroups to face the 'real' competition.

In Retaliation, I've never - literally, never - seen a queue of more than 2 minutes.

On Stormstrike, our 2v2 queue's during prime time can easily shoot over 10 minutes, even 15. Even at times like 4 pm, they're usually at least 5 minutes or so. As noted, Blizzard actually posted suggesting that you queue for 3v3 or 5v5 instead, or queue at off-peak times, as they had no intentions on alleviating this problem.

It's not quite as simple as shifting resources from 5's to 2's -- 2's are VASTLY more popular. Just look at the number of teams in 2v2 compared to 5v5. Now consider how easy it is to play those 2v2 teams. Your teammate is on -- great, queue up. It's not like 5v5 where your teams probably schedule their times in advance and maybe play once or twice a week.