'Several hours' would be the total time added if certain combos were forced to play best out of three 10 times per week. For teams that enjoy playing more than that, it'd be even longer. Of course it would vary depending on the luck of the draw and which teams you ended up paired with, but if even 1 of those 10 games was a very evenly matched mirror-match, then you could potentially be playing three games each going over an hour.

Playing warlock/druid, we generally get one or two thirty minute games a week, and have had an hour long game perhaps once every second week. Hunter/druid especially can go on for a loooooong time. As I said, it will depend on other things though, such as luck of the draw, which bracket you're playing in, what rating range, what battlegroup, what times, etc etc.

funny story, me and resto shammy vs pally war, pally got counterspelled then i died from warrior +hoj, then my shammy friend earthshocked the war killing him. YAY! healer v healer match. a fight lasting about 30 minutes followed at which point both shaman and pally were very bored, so they agreed to Res me / war at the same time, shaman res's me and BOOM! earthshock your res pally xD. one of those times u wish fraps was running

Game Over

anyway back to topic, in 5's ive heard of outlast teams (pally resto druid resto shaman war warlock, something like that) mirror match of these could last forever xD

So you made an agreement and then broke it? All for the sake of one arena game? Interesting decision and I wouldn't be boasting about it here if I were you.

Unless one team is exceptionally bad, a Warlock/Druid mirror will never end until one team runs out of waters. My partner and I generally stay in those games for about 5 minutes to see if the other team is painfully incompetent and we can actually win quickly, but if they have any idea what pillar kiting is we just AFK and wait a few minutes to requeue. It's simply not worth playing matches that go that long - both on how many points it's worth and how much it taxes our sanity.

They ought to add a "/offerdraw" command, maybe enabled after 5 minutes.

I've always thought it was completely ridiculous that blizzard will match you against the exact same team until both teams are outside of the points range to be eligible to fight each other. Personally I think it's a bit dumb that I have wait a few minutes to queue if I encounter an opponent with a particularly effective team setup against mine. I personally like varity in my arena matches.

Also it was mentioned that the best of 3 set up would give let you play 3 times as long for the same queue time. I was under the impression that the reason 2 queues are longer is not because they are having problems finding suitable matches but rather because they only allow X number of 2v2 games to be up. If that's the case tripling the time you get to play triples the queue time as well and 2s queues are already more then long enough for my taste.

Whine post incoming.

I think before trying to increase interest or e-sport acceptance of WoW, Blizzard needs to get back the interest arena has had even 3 months ago. Right now it is slipping, and fast.

2v2 has been screwed up for a long time now. Even Blizzard has admitted the poor state of balance. And the "the queues are long due to winter break, no need to add new servers for a temporary spike" argument has run out of validity. 2v2 is flat out unplayable even if you look past the imbalances and the potential for hour long turtlefests. Would anyone (who is on BG9 and has to play during prime time) honestly do 2v2s if the other brackets were as easy to organize, get rating and points in?

My favorite bracket has always been 5v5. That's where I got my title and that's where I got my gear. It has the most depth and requires the widest range of skills. But at least in my BG 5v5 right now is terrible. Nobody plays that bracket seriously. As a result, all the top teams are spending most of their time selling points. One guy on my server bragged how he has 36 point selling slots available every week. Because of that, literally 2/3 of games we played recently were either against point buyers or point sellers. Nothing like getting railroaded by a top 10 team only to then massacre a 3 mage/2 holy pally team. Or then that game against a 3 hunter/ret pally/holy pally team where not a single trap was placed the entire game. Oh and that team was higher rated than us.

One thing I always liked about playing on BG9 was that no matter where you were you always got fair matchups. 16 point games were the norm even up to 2200 (we never got any higher). Now? Last time we played (at 1800) we had 5 games of 5 points or less - out of 14 games we played. And as I said the losses sucked and the wins felt hollow. Because of that our performance has slipped dramatically. We were on the fast track to getting our shoulders, now we are at 1715. We play like crap because it is not fun and nobody really put in any significant effort. We were more motivated during our first week of arena back in S1 were all of us were PvE specced (our warrior was prot) and we went something like 2-20.

So, my question is. Is arena running out of steam? Every serious player has all their gear by now. And with arena seemingly getting very stale, is its run coming to an end?

No. I do arenas because they are fun; if they yielded no rewards I would still participate in them. The fact that people play this game strictly for virtual property is mind-boggling. What are they going to do when Blizzard arbitrarily bans their account because they were "exploiting" the economy by killing Jaina Proudmore? Or when someone buys gold and mails to to them (thus getting the target account shut down)?

Arenas continue to be fun because of the ranking system, you play against and with similarly skilled players with nearly identical gear. BGs are not fun because you play against terrible retards who have trouble feeding themselves in the morning and wear 100% greens, 12 months after the release of TBC (or relatedly, 4 months after S1 gear is obtainable without any skill whatsoever).

Two major semi-controversial points in response to that:

1) The best players in any game tend to play a lot, regardless of whether it is PvE or PvP. While arena is supposed to be "casual accessible" (and is), the reality is the best players still play a lot, or at least played a lot at one point. Yet once you learn how to play and work with your team (a significant time investment, but we are in the third season now), there is very little time required. You can play 10 games a week or even 20 games a week and at most you've spent maybe 2-3 hours of the whole week playing. That's one night's worth. The best players who want to play a lot have, basically, nothing to do. Not to say I am a "best player," but I am pretty good and do play a lot, and after I quit raiding in August I basically started point selling because it was something to do. Play 3-4 3v3 teams a week plus your 5v5s, and you'd actually have something to keep you occupied at least a few days a week. I know for a fact many people who were only PvPing did this. But even that gets old, and gold is pretty meaningless at a point.

2) The gap between player skill has never been higher. This is true in PvE and PvP. In raiding, the difference between the guy who completely understands his DPS rotation, all the math behind his execution, and his role in teh grander scheme of the raid is light-years ahead of even a fresh level 70 who might be decent. The difference between a 900 DPS rogue in a guild now killing Illidan versus the 2k DPS rogue who killed him in July is enormous, and well-beyond gear. The same goes for top PvPers. Our team has played well over a thousand 5v5 games at this point, and I think we are all good players, but we still get shit-stomped by the top 5 teams in our battlegroup. And, of course, we shit-stomp the other 90%.

--

Put those two together, and you have a pretty serious problem. On one hand, your "top players" who want to play the competitive aspect of the game have basically nothing to do. Once they have their rating, there is really no incentive to play more than 10 games a week. The GM grind may have been stupid as hell, but it did reward playing - arena doesn't really. This is great for the casual PvPer and whatnot, but I actually think it is bad for the top end. Couple this with the fact that people are bored and have no competition, and they have even less reason to play.

There needs to be a continuing reason to play a lot more than 10 games a week even at the highest level. Right now there is not.


Toss these two together with the fact that arena balance is a joke at the moment (and that they only rebalance once ever 4 months, if that), and its not hard to see that there is a pretty serious problem.

Edit:
I think in theory this is the obvious reason they want people to play more: it's fun to compete. But I think the issue with many teams not finding competition, or getting bored of the same games over and over again, really hurts this. Hell, combine this with the fact that the best players who beat Illidan months ago and are competing in PvP at a high level haven't had any new content in more than half a year and you have a real problem.

That may be true for you. But if I look at the top teams on my server, they currently all either

a) Play 10 games and log.
b) Play 10 games and switch to point selling.

Once everyone has all gear and 5k points, a) will probably become "log, period". Even capslockcrew, the most dedicated 5v5 team of last season in my BG is now leveling point selling teams.

Currently the ranking system, at least for 5v5 but also to some extend for 3v3, is in ruins. Last week, out of 14 games we had maybe 2-3 that I would consider fair or fun. As I said as someone who never reached the very top having single-point games was a new experience for me in 5v5. And we are not even that high right now.

To expand on my #2, the skill differential is also the problem with all the sold teams. I think the idea Blizzard had was that getting to the top of the ladder would take some time, and be a somewhat difficult grind, so that teams who got there wouldn't be willing to just team-switch and give it away.

The problem is that only works for about a month, at which point teams constantly reform and sell their old teams because they don't have any challenge climbing right back up. And this is just a one or two day venture tops, mostly due to skill differential and a lack of things to do.

Nothing like waiting in line for your 1500 rated games only to continuously be steamrollered by bored full S3 geared teams!

I understand the top teams frustration in not having a competitive high end rating ladder (10 games and log syndrome, keeps the rating/rank up) but that doesn't justify what they do, which is essentially cheat the system and do it again for the benefit of what? Gold? How long does it take before they become bored of railroading every team from 1500-1900?

How is that legitimate for teams and new players finding their feet in arena? You hit level 70, you do some BG's, get yourself some resilience gear, sign up for a team, then play a few games - and if your lucky you might get a fair fight once out of every 3 games, because power leveling rated teams is rampant and way out of control. Simply put - It's ruining arena's for new players before they have even got a look in. Why are new (and under geared) players going to que up for that? Going to tell them "Sorry go farm BG's for 2 months and get a S1 set"? :/

So if Blizzard has "big plans" to increase interest in Arena they need to

A) Give the high end teams something to really play for every week, not just in 3 months time at the end of the season
B) One team change per week per character
C) The more likely option, drastically lower the cost of the relevant arena resilience gear - a full s1 set +rings +neck +weapons +belt,boots is.....175k? Thats a huge milestone to overcome for your average player. The gap between S1 and S3 is already pretty big, and likely to get bigger, unless something is done.

I honestly don't think the 1500s are the problem. Yes the point sellers will march through there every now and then, but in the long run that will go away. In my view the problem are the 1800-2000 range, because the point selling teams hang out there indefinitely.

I don't mind getting owned by a top team every now and then. Hell, I might learn something. The problem is the complete lack of competitive matches we saw between 1700 and 1900. Last time we played almost all teams were either point buyers or point sellers. Because of that most decent-but-not-great teams seem to have stopped playing. We actually got a 5 point win at 1750. That team was around 1500! In 6 months of hovering between rank 100 and 200 we have never, not once, seen that happen before.

On top of that, burst damage has gotten out of hand in 5s, making playing a healer in that bracket a lot less enjoyable than it used to be. Resilience is unchanged from S2, stamina is slightly up. But weapons have a huge amount of extra damage.

I think you are a bit disillusioned. Not every team at 1500 is a 2200 team reroll. In case you don't remember S2 was 5 months long. That means pretty much anyone who has at least a small capacity to play this game well would have been able to achieve a full set/start saving points for S3. Everyone at 1500 (and all ranges) have full gladiator gear because arenas have been in existence for over 11 months.

Season 1 vs Season 3 for warriors:
+1131 armor
+64 stamina
+56 strength
+12 hit
+60 crit
+6 resilience
+ignores 252 armor

Weapons:
+15.6 DPS
+14 stamina
+16 strength
+5 hit
+5 resilience
+11 crit strike
+Ignores 98 armor

So, a full season 1 vs season 3 warrior, we're looking at (Insert imposing amounts of math that leads to a number of less than 5%), 780 hit points, 25 dps, 1% to hit, 3% to crit, .3% resilience, and (insert imposing amount of math that makes me cry)% more damage from -armor. All of the defense stuff boils down to about one more hit from another warrior, tops. All of the other stuff amounts to about 1-2 more hits per match.

Those are some nice differences. They are not as big a difference as skill and composition. Case in point:
Top 3v3 warrior in my BG. He's still wearing S2 Veteran rewards in two slots.

What I'm referring to is the fact that on some battlegroups both EU and US interest in arena is generally pretty low, if they want to encourage players into arena who otherwise have not participated until now reducing the cost of S1 items would be a step in the right direction, lessen the gap between steamrollering guys who join with little or no arena items. If you want to bring more players in its an option.

I only ever did 2's and 3's on my warrior, and reached 2k in S2 with a mix of S2 and BT/Hyjal gear, not played much after reaching 1800 early this season mostly due to ridiculous que time for 2's but thats another story

Our 5s face the same problem. All of our members are fairly competent at pvp; but as the season progresses, we see less 'balanced' matches. It seems over the past week, 1-2 out of every 10 matches is a steamroll by a team selling points. What's even more frustrating is that those losses usually cost ~20 points when wins are usually ~10-12. It's demoralizing to the entire team to go from 1950's a few weeks into the season to 1800's from a combination of point sellers and 'cheese' teams.

I would agree that 5s damage has gotten out of hand. Our team decided to experiment with a three healer setup, and people were still getting insta-gibbed by 4 dps teams. I'm not saying that these teams don't require skill to pull off, but I don't believe this is what they had in mind when trying to balance around 5s. Playing a non-druid (or possibly priest) healer is frustrating to say the least. Because of this, I would imagine spectating this type of play would be rather boring; I would much rather watch a 7+ minute game than a 3 minute hackfest in which both teams pile on each other until someone finally drops.

It is extremely hard getting a new character off his/her feet in arena without the help of well geared team mates. Even my 150 resilience alt playing at 1400 right now runs into teams with mixtures of S2 and S3.

It would be nice if the cost of S2 set was greatly lowered. Let's face it, at only a couple of hundred points cheaper than S3 no one is going to buy it, it may as well not be on the vendor. If it was ~500 arena points per item people could get a set of honour armour mixed in with last seasons arena gear pretty quickly.

Hi folks!

And I thought our teams was the only one constantly facing overgeared teams in the 3vs3 1300-1500 rating. All three of us started with arena some weeks ago. Therefore our gear is not the greatest. Out of 20 matches maybe 5 were fair matches with equaly geared and skilled players. Some wins for us, some wins for them. I think both teams had a lot of fun. But all other games were pure pain and not fun at all. Getting steamrolled by PMR or DWx cookie cutter build teams is really depressing. I admit we need to improve our team skills a bit. But class balance might be an issue as well (I play a resto shaman). And if I read comments like "ditch your resto shaman if you want to get a rating better than 1800+" on the US forums I am close to cancel my subscription, I can tell you :-)

So in summary, if Blizzard want's to make arena more appealing for newbies, certain things have to be done. I'd say:

1) Arena matches should not be limited to realmpools. ANet does international Guild Wars matches for years now. I mean, come on, we are living in 2008. At least they should be expanded to US, Europe and Asia.

2) Team-switching should be much more restricted.

3) Good gear should be much easier to obtain for newbies. Because skill should matter, not gear. And being forced to grind for your "starter" gear for several weeks (depending on the faction) is far from motivating newbies.

4) Proper balancing. And faster patches. Why do we have to wait for weeks or even months? Every other eSport company is addressing balancing issues way more faster. And if it is not possible to balance 2vs2 in a proper way, then please remove it from the game. Why not a 4vs4 instead?

Thanks for reading :-)

woeye, I've recently come to the conclusion that one of the main the reasons the 1600-1400 rating zone is such a pain at the moment is because it's riddled with sold teams. The rating limit on weapons/sholders only really prevented team swapping for hardcore pvpers for a couple of weeks, until they got their items, and as such is pretty much an abject failure. Any 3v3 "team" capable of 2k rating is now pulling in over 900g per person per evening, boosting a selection of 1500 teams back up 7 wins a week. This not only means fresh (1500) teams are hitting 2k personal rating players in 1500 rating teams, it also means fresh teams are hitting a selection of teams who should be 1650ish rated, but have also been dragged down by the ratings booster teams.

Disclosure: My 2v2 and 3v3 are inactive, and my 5v5 is strictly casual. I was 1850+ in 3v3 S1 though. :S

Hi Braque, thanks for your explanation. From my own point of view I'd say those teams are abusing the arena system. Though officially it is not an abuse because Blizzard's system allows those "tricks".
The question is a) does Blizzard see this as an abuse and do they intend to change something and b) what can be done about it? If they really want to attract fresh blood into the arenas they must do something, imho. Regarding point b) I'd say that team switching shouldn't be so easy. But then again, what happens if Joe enters a team only to find out that it doesn't work very well and maybe Joe want's to switch to another team?
I wonder wether it will ever be possible to sort this out?

In Vindication, I have not had many problems with point-selling teams (Rogue/Resto Druid 1550-1650). One out of every twelve or fifteen games, we face a team clearly reforming and get pounded.

What is the real problem? It is the teams that have been grinding at 1400 since s1/early s2 that are the problem. They have earned 250 points every week for many months now, and just doing the daily BG quest every day, have a mix of s1/s2/s3 with Veterans/Vindicators. These teams are not super-skilled by any means; indeed, most of them are like the members of my guild: casual raiders and casual pvp'ers. However, they now have 250+ resilience and thus a huge gear advantage over a brand-new 70 without s1.

This is exactly what Blizzard wants to promote: casuals playing pvp and getting cool gear sets from them. However, it makes it painful to arena with a sub-100 resilience alt/reroll. I have outplayed teams on my newly-70 warrior, only to still lose because I couldn't put out sufficient dps or my lack of defensive stats led me to be gibbed.

This goes against the basic design philosophy of WoW, but I believe it would be beneficial to either have preset gear upon entering arenas, with points going towards buying the gear to use outside of arenas, or to have full deletion of PvP gear after every season.