I'm sure most people have already read this, in addition to the "many changes to Arena balance" coming soon and its pretty big news, considering we havn't heard anything from Blizzard in many months on the future of Arena.

I for one, think that this might (and would probably have to) lead to a shift of focus from 5v5 to 3v3. I don't see 5v5 ever being popular to watch, as it is extremely difficult to follow, with multiple points of interests happening simultaniously. Its just way too messy. Even veteran Arena players find 5's games very difficult to follow, so imagine how difficult it would be for the general population. I just can't see 5's being enjoyable to watch on a pop gaming culture level.

So far, Blizzard has claimed to only balance the game for 5's. The popularity of 5's has deteriated somewhat, and the lower brackets seem to be far more enjoyable and catch more interest. A shift in this focus would be massive, in terms of how every class would operate.

What implications/changes do you guys think would play a part in how all this will unfold?

Free camera.

5's are far too chaotic to watch because you can only see the battle from the viewpoint of one player at a time, when in fact there are two or three different "engagements" happening between different members of each team all at the same time.

I would guess spectator mode too, similar to Warcraft 3 had. Often times being a spectator with 5-6 other people was just as entertaining as playing a game. Probably more sponsored events as well. Thinking from a spectator spot I would rather watch 5s or maybe 3s- definitely not 2s.

I think a broad mission of "boosting arena interest" would have to include several things to make arena more accessible to the general population. One of these things would be a spectator mode of some sort. Although that would bring up a few other issues that people might have a problem with, like using spectator mode as a spyglass to see what teams are playing before you play, and spying on strategies, and whatnot.

Another thing I think they would have to do in terms of accessibility is address the queue system. Correct me if I'm wrong here, because I am not sure if this is actually how it works, but it seems to me that skirmish matches use the same system as rated ones, and as such are placed at such an ultra low priority level that you can be sitting in a skirmish queue for obnoxiously long periods of time before ever getting a game. Or maybe it's outright bugged, or maybe nobody queues for skirmishes. I'm not sure, but in any case, I know a lot of people would like to get in a few warm up games before actually playing rated, and a lot of other people would like to get their feet wet in arena without having to fork out gold for a charter or worry about rating. Making skirmish games work would boost interest I think.

I think it's important to distinguish "increasing interest" from "e-sport acceptance". It's a subtle distinction but an important one, as the latter implies that increased accessibility to the general population is not an issue at focus. When we talk e-sports we're probably talking about balance and playability at the Gladiator echelon of play.

In addition to what is discussed, I think certain mods are going to have to be in-built. Arena frames are a big must and IIRC already exist in Blizzard's in-house tournaments (C/D?). DR timers, DoT timers, and generally speaking more PvP UI sophistication will all be needed - particularly considering e-sports vendors typically disallow mods.

I believe the method of gearing is going to have to be changed to incentivise the very high end of arena play too. The contrived personal arena rating system, I feel, is probably just Blizzard's temporary fix until they can sort out a more involved and sensible method of PvP gear acquisition (as well as titles and other potential perks).

I think they have to make it easier for ungeared people to start playing arenas; i.e. increase BG honor so they can pick up S1 kit quicker.

An interesting concept for a 2v2 would be random que, as in you que in 10 people, but only 2 of them get picked up for arena match. This will increase the number of dps teams, as you don't want to stack in many healers, in case they don't get picked up together. 2v2 as bracket pretty much failed as a serious e-sport, may as well make it more fun. This will also put a stop the 2v2 godlike teams like druid/war(rior/lock). This just popped up in mind, thought I'd share

I think that would destroy any possible reason to queue 2v2s. Nobody queues 2v2 to pug it with some random retard, so why implement the absolute WORST part about battlegrounds(uncontrollable, rampaging retards on your team) into the controllable, retardless arena? If Blizzard did something like that, I'm pretty sure a great number of people would immediately stop queueing 2v2.

If you meant: have 10 people on your 2v2 TEAM all queue at once, it's a similarly horrible idea. It's hard enough coordinating 5 people being online at once for 5v5, how would having double the number required to queue be a better solution? Especially when you consider that they'll be getting random matchups.

I apologize if I seem especially grumpy, but those options just seem like a re-hashed x-realm battleground wherein I'd rather quit playing than start queueing.

This was my first though on improving arena too. Make entry level less harsh by making previous seasons arena and honour gear easier to get hold of.

That, and the previously mentioned queue time reduction. It's rediculous having to either a) wait for 30+mins for one match or b) having to schedule your matches before you head off to work or something silly like that, just to get an acceptable queue time...

I suspect the only reason they haven't done this already is because it completely obsoletes anything in PvE below Tier5 and they need some way to balance this.

I dunno if I'd go that far. My Shadow Priest alt is geared with normal dungeon drops, a couple tailoring pieces, and maybe a heroic reward. I look at all the S1 stuff on the vendor and say "Meh, not worth the honor." The purple stuff isn't really an upgrade to the decently designed dungeon blues, since it has stat points wasted on resil.

I don't think that is true for most items for most classes. I think my PVE tanking druid has two PVP items from honor; shoulders and trinket, the trinket is only equiped when needed to help in fear situations, and the Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders will be replaced if I get the T4 shoulders, no other S1 items are better than items you can pick up in Kara, Heroics, or with Badges of Justice.

But I'm sure they could simply do something like reduce the stats by 25% outside of a PVP environment if that was the concern.

It seems to me like Arena is already the most popular 'end game', am I wrong? My server has two Horde guilds that have killed KT and maybe 1 more that might be expected to kill him in the next few months. Thats desolate compared to the hundreds of Arena teams there are. The Arena reward system is vastly superior to the PVE reward system.

That said, if they want to make Arena even more popular they need to:

1) Allow people to have one or more 'Arena' sets of talents. 50G respec a few times a week is for the birds.

2) Have separate rulesets in 2v2, 3v3, 5v5.

The rumor on the street is a full time premades server for high end arena play. Depending on how many people switched over it could solve a lot of the queue problems we're facing now, not to mention granting full freedom to play any matrix your heart desires.

Also rated WSG in 2.4 in floating around out there.

My guess is that they will test the waters with 2.4 just to see what will/won't work in WotLK.

Arena frames are absolute must for every arena player above 1500, DR and cooldown timers are not that critical, because you can still calculate them on your own without any aid and some progamers could see them as cheating.

Another idea that i thought is quite interesting is weekly arena tournament, enter for 50 gold, who has the best rating at the end of the week (weekly maintenance) wins some fancy item/arena point bonus/title, the opportunities are endless and it is quite comparable to PvE progression. Also some company could pay Blizzard to make a sponsored tournament as an additional form of advertisement, although I'm not sure how it would work out with the average player.

PvP and PvE starter kits for endgame is another idea that gets more and more support towards the end of TBC cycle. And Blizzard probably acknowledges it, yet they still don't want to let PvP gear take position over PvE gear for instances and raiding, also jumping from blue/greens to full epic set of gear isn't really a good idea from a designer's point of view. If the season 4 comes out and season 2 will be available for honor, this gap will even widen and if WotLK wouldn't be very close by that time, we will see many whines. Some "skill check" like quest for winning WSG in 10 minutes 3-0, Winning AB 5-0, winning EotS 4-0 and winning AV in 5-10 minutes comes to mind but it can be cheated very easily.

I like this idea a lot. Since the arena seasons tend to drag on for a while, it would be nice to have 3 to for 4 ladder tournaments per season for prizes/titles/gear etc. I think it would help make the season feel not so monotonous. Also I like the idea of the #1 team per server in a bg get a special title for the week as well.

That's one beef I have with the Arena setup as is. Blizzard thinks that obscurity is mandatory to make matches "fair". IE, they don't tell you what Arena you will be playing in (i know mods that do tell you) nor do they tell you the Team/Players/Classes that you'll be fighting. No other sport is like this in the real world. I really do hate to try to bring real world analogies into WoW but this one is pretty fitting. In American Football as well as many other sports, you spend just as much time if not more watching videos of your opponents as you do physically practicing for the games. Getting to know your opponent is a very pivotal aspect in competition and Blizzard removes that element entirely. I would like to see every match (maybe 2000 teams and higher only) recorded and catalogued somewhere so you could research the teams you would be facing. A pipe dream I know.

Well, even if they changed their mind on this one, i honestly have on idea how it would work. Your analogy isn't really true, because those are scheduled matches, like those you have on LANs, however with a system where new competitors join in real time, this would be crazy. If they told you who are you against during the queue time, you could very well dodge them, if they shown it up during arena preparation, it could be very well used by teams with more than 1 standard matrix to their advantage, effectively not changing anything.

And it's not like all the strats aren't out on various sites with armory at hand.

An alternative is to place a vendor inside the starting area of the arena that has a complete set of zero-cost S1-equivalent armor that disappears upon zoning out. This would fix the inaccessability of arenas for new folks, but would still give reasons to earn S1 gear for BG's and/or PvE use and S2+ gear for a better team.

They could start by adding more capacity to cut down on queues, fix the team jumping situation such that a team at 1500 doesn't constantly face a team skilled and geared to compete at 1900...stuff like that.

I've always thought it would be interesting to have an arena match in which the only armor or weapons you can use are those provided to you at the start of the match. This would eliminate all gear differences between teams and making winning or losing solely dependent on team make up and skill. I wouldn't want all matches to be this way but it would be an interesting option to have available.

I would wonder that if they plan to give them all the exact same stuff, or just enforce the gear and allow the player to gem/enchant how they would like? I'd hope for the second because it would develop into an interesting meta game for which enchants/gems are used, as long as of course they're all available to everyone (eg: no bt gems)