Well maybe you could do something to end the game early if it's a 5 cap AB, since letting that drag on is just pointless. But the reason you currently have people letting the other side 5 cap in AB is because nobody wants to stay there for honor, so once it's clear you're going to lose, it's to your advantage to get your mark ASAP. The sooner you get your other BG marks, the sooner you can queue for AV and get your honor.

Then again AV isn't perfect in making people want to win either. On my BG where Horde win about 2/3 of the AV games, people get yelled at for capping the snowfall graveyard. Capping snowfall basically ensures the win as soon as the alliance are forced back to spawning in their base, but it also pushes the alliance into a turtle on the bridge, making the game last a lot longer. People would rather roll the dice on a short game that could go either way than a long game that's a certain victory, which is just broken.

Being on the wrong end of a massively unequal WSG or AB is hellish. Making such a battle last 20 minutes regardless of score would be pure punishment for that same losing side. It's not even a PUG v. premade problem - everyone has seen a game where one side simply dominates the other due to class composition, gear and skill. I'm reminded of an AB where my team had, including me, 5 MS warriors that were S2/Stormherald or better, a T6 holy paladin, and two healing druids.

Pugs might be stupid, but it's amazing how quickly - with minimal communication to boot - we figured out that we could insta-gib any defending force with those eight players, while the other 7 basically did whatever. The Horde was promptly slaughtered and the AB ended with a 5-cap almost as fast as most roll groups. The Horde lost smith to the plate zerg (resto druids can be killed by five Mortal Strikes, apparently), lost farm to the plate zerg, lost mill to the rest, then got exterminated at mine by me, two other warriors and the paladin with no GY and were pinned at their spawn.

It would have been fun to continue to murder them at their fence for another 15 minutes, but it certainly wouldn't be any fun for them.

At least in Eye of the Storm, you can sit at the top of the rock and refuse to fight campers that severely outgun you. AB and WSG don't give you that choice.

What if you could still win in the traditional way, and the 20 minutes rule was added as an additional way to end the game?

Evenly matched teams in any of the BGs can draw out the game for excrutiatingly long amounts of time. If after 20 minutes, the game is a draw, just call it a draw and be done with it(I think this is a good idea for Arenas too...)

Winning still gets you 3 tokens and full bonus honor
Drawing gets you 2 tokens and half winning bonus honor
Losing gets you 1 token and minimal bonus honor

What determines a draw could be fine tuned. Like a 1300-1400 in AB could be considered a draw, or you could award the alliance a draw and the horde a win. I might be underestimating the laziness of players, but I think this idea could get more people to keep fighting even after they get into a losing game. Fighting for the win may be an impossible goal, but fighting for the draw might be a very real one.

With regards to arena: inc double healer teams. If it's double dps, collect points. If it's not, wait out 20 minutes and hope to get double dps next match.

How about when you join a BG you get a debuff that you can't join another bg again for 20 minutes, and then the bg's are set so that you gain X honor no matter how many HK's if you win, and a set significantly smaller (so there's incentive to win) amount for losing, with the game ending after 20 minutes. This will eliminate the urge for people to race, and make people focus on winning. If the game ends before 20 minutes, then you still get the same honor/hour because you can't join again until the buff is gone, so pugs are just as efficient as premades except premade have more chance to win. There's also no "more marks" benefit to losing quick.

I'm sure a lot of the farmers would be pissed because they slow down their honor/hour, but tough. These things are supposed to be about winning. Gear is supposed to be a benefit of playing not the only reason to play.

The only problem would be with 5 caps people would have to afk for like 15 mins, but it still eliminates the honor/hour incentive.

On a side note this would also eliminate teams getting screwed by bg hoppers.

So if I want to get some EOTS marks in the 8 minute queue, I'm not allowed to jump into an AV while I wait? Sounds pretty poorly thought out. AV is always instant queue on Cyclone, but the other BG's may be 5-15 minutes depending on the day, time of day, etc. Forcing me to sit in Shatt for 15 minutes isn't fun. The game does a pretty good job of removing things that aren't fun, I don't think they're too keen on adding them back in.

Yeah multiqueuing is fine, but once you're in a game you should have to stick to it. It really sucks when you're in wsg with a full team, AB pops, and all of a sudden you're on a 5 man team.

In my opinion they should focus on making WSG, AB and EOTS more popular instead of taking away the choice to switch battlegrounds. When you talk about taking away multiqueueing it's like asking for a "nerf" instead of a "buff" (to the less popular BGs). WSG is horribly awful if you solo queued and aren't a flag running superninja, but messing around in midfield for 5 minutes is preferable to staring at the wall in Shattrath.

They need to just make honor gain equal across the board. When you buff WSG then no one will queue for AV, and it will be a never ending cycle of "Which bg is best honor/hour?" They need to make it so that no matter which bg you choose you get around the same honor, and if you play defense or go hk farming, you get the same honor. It'll encourage people to focus on winning instead of maximizing honor/hour.

WSG should just be a 5 minute thing you do while waiting for AV to pop.

I don't know how many of you remember the old system, but the one good thing about it was that people busted their buts to win, none of this hk farming crap. The downside was that the casual gamer had no chance of getting good gear.

But even this wasn't always true. I recall very vividly how some people (terrible, terrible PvPers) managed to lose their way through enough games, HKing while they went, to hit Grand Marshal. In fact, they preferred to lose quickly, since that meant they'd get more games in for that day. There may not have been as many of those leeches, but they still were there ... and they were even more frustrating, in my opinion, since they actively tried to lose as fast as possible.

Then again, maybe my realm was just full of horrible people and system abusers. It wouldn't surprise me.

Every realm was full of horrible people and system abusers once the first few waves of GMs got their titles.

Wouldnt the opponent looting your insignia cause you to automatically release and thereafter causing you to res at the GY?

You can move away from the GY and not get ressed.

The AoE res has a range, so you can still choose not to res.

Edit: Damn, beaten to it.

I do not understand why they are forcing everyone into Arena to be remotely competitive with Arena players. So the average casual has a ceiling of being 2 seasons behind in gearing? What is the point of having 1600 minimum ratings when thats more or less forcing everyone who enjoys PvP to Arena to be competitive at all, and not a measure of skill based rewards. Measure of earning items based on skill is when you reach the 2k+ ratings, forcing ratings at 1600 for equipment is Forced Arena Participation, something that many blues pretend Arena isn't about. Its hilarious to read General Forum blues like Nethaera speak about how you dont have to Arena if you dont want to, but yet if you dont, you are so out-geared by Arena participating players that you literally are doing twice the work to beat them as they are you, in any PvP situation.

I do not play based on a timed WoW schedule anymore, and i am trying my damnest not to again. Ever since raiding pre TBC on timed schedules over 30 hours a week where i was sacrificing RL activities due to already consistently scheduled raid times, and always having to worry about it in terms of RL activities that came up. Never again.

But to enjoy PvP in WoW, and be remotely competitive, i basically have to Arena now and play on timed WoW schedules. That is all this change does. Skill is not 1600 ratings, its not 1700 ratings, its arguably 1800+ ratings, and even then it's very based on class you play and your composition and skill of your teammates. 1600 ratings is not a measure of skill based rewarding, its forced Arena participation. WoW blues need to get together and get their stories straight as to what Arena rewards are really about, instead of pretending like everyone who enjoys PvP has an option not to Arena, when that option isn't very practical to being competitive with those that do in a PvP environment.

1 season behind is fine, 2 seasons behind as a max ceiling not. Please don't force me to play WoW at the sacrifice of my RL instead of casually logging on and playing when i'm in the mood, just to be competitive

Hm...quite honestly, speaking as a player with a very low arena rating but who used battlegrounds to equip himself for the most part because of few raiding opportunities/real life constraints on grouping...

I have exactly one piece of gear paid for with arena points, and tjhe other stuff I have (mix of badge gear, crafted gear, season 2 arena, season 3 honor and season 4 honor with no arena rating) gets only very marginal upgrades by going from season 2 to season 4. The most important piece for me was the arena gloves, but not because of the raw stats (nice, but only a small % of total stam/resil/damage/crit compared to even season 2 gloves, leaving aside PVE alternatives that drop in KZ or 5 mans or can be bought with badges)...but rather because of the 50% polymorph pushback resistance. Those gloves had no rating and took about 5 weeks to earn (but < 3 hours gametime), because being bad at arena is a slow way to get arena points.

At this time the only item I can get with arena points and no rating) that I want is more epic red gems. So I only had to "opt in" for about 6 weeks of the season and if I really hated it, I could quit any time, and just do some SSO dailies to buy red gems on the AH.

Yes, season 4 gear is better than season 2 gear, but it is not the step function that "new 70s blues/greens" to season 2 gear is. The difference in both absolute numbers and % of overall capability is smaller, and small enough that I very much doubt that on a battleground I'd notice the difference if somebody suddenly upgraded all of my pieces to S4 pieces with arena ratings. (I would notice in arena play - the margin for error is less there and the matchups are closer in numbers and ability). Some of the season 4 stuff would be downgrades for my equipment in many roles I use it for, because it has an excessive weighting to stam/resil for which in every environment but 5x5 arena, I'm feeling "durable enough" and instead want more "burst".

My only real concern is if they leave arena ratings on stuff as it's downgraded in future seasons. Ie, if two seasons for now, half the gear still has arena ratings >= 1500, there is a problem. Today, it's still ok. WOLK will come out before the next season, and everything might be turned on its head anyway.

I'd stay that for most of us, the only way to be competitive in arena is to put a lot more time in there learning how to play than 10 games/week. I felt I was able to contribute strongly in battlegrounds long before my equipment added up to 2200 in Armorylite, because there teamwork and strategy is more important than raw individual power. Mostly my better equipment just extends a fight a few seconds or ends it a few seconds earlier - this can matter in battlegrounds but often doesn't. There are some roles where equipment matters more (eg, flagrunning in WSG), so my opinion might be different if I wasn't playing a clothie DPS type.

I am not one to talk about the big changes this season, as I only resumed my teams this week (darn priest taking a vacation!), but I can see that the competition has improved greatly. This may be because many of the "scrub" teams tried for a week or to but couldn't progress, and thus quit, or it could just be that people "got tired" of arena, or didn't think they could get any upgrades due to ratings, or what have you.

But it seems like the caliber of teams, in all three brackets really, has improved. Lower ratings equates to a better overall skill level. This is all anecdotal, though. Last season my priest and I rocked our 2s straight to 1700 the first week, whereas this week ... well, we didn't. Maybe we also ran up against more druid teams (which were a pain) in 2s, and TONS more melee/cleave teams in 3s and 5s. We actually saw a 5s team with 4 rogues and a resto druid. That was... different.

Back on point though: the number of teams probably has decreased, and as a result the average skill has greatly increased. Isn't this what most people wanted though?

It is a good question.

If Blizzard was trying to reduce participation and increase average skill level I guess they succeeded.

I would have thought their goal was to increase participation, but maybe not. The participation rate in the Sunwell is pretty low too as a percentage of overall players.

I think the overall effect on Arena is that the point infusion from scrub resets has pretty much dried up by now, whereas the point leak from pro resets is still in full force. I ran into a few toons with S4 shoulders in the 1500-1850 range on three different teams last night, and even in the starting bracket S3 weapons are common these days. As the season progresses, the average personal rating will just keep going down, so get your gear now before it's too late, as it will be harder and harder to get as the season progresses.

I'm not really concerned with average skill of the playerbase to be honest. I'm more concerned with getting a fair fight. To that end, it appears I am. I've scored my first victories vs players with S3 weaponry in this last few weeks, which is a major confidence boost to a team that has never been close to 1800. I'm seeing little to none of the steamroll combos which I (correctly, apparantly) assumed were point selling rerolls last season. I'm also getting less "joke" teams like double moonkin or some nonsense that just treant zergs you to death before you know what happened and steals 19 points from you and you never see them again. I'm all for both of those outcomes.

As to what Blizzard wanted, yeah, I agree with above. They wanted more participation. They definitely got much less participation. People who don't consider themselves able to compete don't even try now, it appears. Tiered gear will drive people with the desire to succeed. Those who don't won't bother.

I would like to afirm a point made earlier. I have rerolled a druid for arena play. Being "geared" is a requirement to being invited to run a PvE instances. PvP gear has become the only avenue to gear for the pve game. You can not get the exalted faction items with most factions because you need to run the instance runs for faction. Blues are not considered enough to warrent a group spot. A new player is never going to be able to buy that purple tradeskill BOE cause they are made to order. Without obtainable PvP gear, the entire end game is no longer available.

This got me to stop entirely. Lost a partner who foolishly enough glided AV and got himself permanently banned few weeks before s4 began. Afterwards I saw s4 weapon stats which made me wanting to try more arena in attempt to attain them for using in PvE. After trying to find a decent teammate/s for 2s and 3s, and getting my own PvP-skills to needed level I realized something: I have better chances on trusting RNG to drop glaives from a boss that we haven't even killed yet, than keeping on going in arena. That said, I still think the rating system in arenas is a good thing, so people who have the items have actually earned them. However people like me who're certain that they've hit the rating ceiling eventually stop playing and either stop pooling the brackets with newly created teams, or if they managed to get relatively high drain points instead.