Arena participation down by more than 80 (eighthy) % on my bg in MoP

[Helltrixz]

I don't really have a point, just wanted to share this interesting fact. 6 gladiator spots in 3v3 atm, while there were about 35 back during the vicious season when I still bothered with ratings up there.

I think it's disheartening and is ultimately the consequence of blizzard's actions. I don't think the real issues are the pvp balance or subjectively dumb meta-game nowadays, the problem is blizzard literally saying to the arena population that they're valued less than the casuals and raiders (yes, blue posts said that during cata). You start to ask yourself why do you even try when they're simply ignoring whatever issues arise and keep ignoring those for.. years. Then all your arena friends quit because they don't want to bother with it anymore.

Why did they remove skirmishes again? Why weren't reported glad sells banned? Why did they do the early s10 mmr fuck up? Note that none of these issues even have to do anything with balance. I could ask myself why did resto druid suck for the whole of cata or how could vial of shadows make it through the ptr? But it's not really the issue.

Another issue is that blizzard has been and still is completely ignoring our dead realms. CRZ was a cheap solution to make the masses shut up, but doesn't help at all. The AH is empty, tol barad is 0 vs 3 players, orgrimmar has 3 people standing there, there's no feeling of a community. Heck, you don't even have enough decent players to cover the existing classes in wow.



So to finish off my rant, as it stands I don't see a bright future for arena at all anymore. It's low on blizzards list of interestests, there's a lack of an active pvp community and lastly, people just don't care anymore. This diablo related comic actually sums it up really well: http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/image/919

And it makes me sad.

[Blueobelisk]

Are these your own calculations from looking at battle.net PVP rankings?

[Helltrixz]

Are these your own calculations from looking at battle.net PVP rankings?

0-20 team on armory, although it might actually not be properly updated yet (how did the armory get this bad btw?). Checking the frenzy ladder manually reveals about 1500 eligible teams. 1500 x 0.005 = 7.5 = 7

[exstarcraftfan]

The rewards are still there, just now its not essential anymore.

[Rorschachs]

I know that I am not pvping anymore and have a lot of friends who are not playing because pvp sucks. Players most of the time underestimate the amount of people who like pvp more than pve.

This season was incredibly horrible. Hunters destroying everybody with stampede, warriors being disgustingly op, mages destroying people with a single frost bomb, 8 sec cd dispel ruining classes like rogues, spriests and their offhealing, healing before battle fatique, ferals, holy paladins having unavoidable and very strong ccs, totemic restoration, blood fear.. I am sure I am even missing something.

[Bobzor]

I think a big reason is that there's no point for new players to do arena. You need like 1650(?)to get an increased conquest cap. New players won't reach this so why should they even bother getting started? And the first real reward from arenas comes at 2.2, yea gg. Lets just go do LFR in stead.

[Roflifier]

I don't really have a point, just wanted to share this interesting fact.

fact (n.): a truth known by actual experience or observation

Kinda confused where you got this fact from.

[Rorschachs]

I think a big reason is that there's no point for new players to do arena. You need like 1650(?)to get an increased conquest cap. New players won't reach this so why should they even bother getting started? And the first real reward from arenas comes at 2.2, yea gg. Lets just go do LFR in stead.

This is another reason. Its incredibly hard to reach the gear of people who have been playing from the start of the season and lets face it.. gear is a very important factor if you want to pvp.

[Helltrixz]

fact (n.): a truth known by actual experience or observation

Kinda confused where you got this fact from.

Not sure which part confuses you? The elementary math part or the title calculating part? Want to explain further?

0-20 team on armory, although it might actually not be properly updated yet (how did the armory get this bad btw?). Checking the frenzy ladder manually reveals about 1500 eligible teams. 1500 x 0.005 = 7.5 = 7

[Valex]

I haven't capped this much this season tbh, maybe its because this time around I'm much more interested in the PvE side of the game :P. Wouldn't be suprised if others felt the same way, coupled with early season BS skewing ranking to crazy heights.

[Snuggli]

My BG had 34(?) spots I think last season. This season it's down to 12-14 or so.

Probably down to not being able to play on alts, the leveling grind and an imbalanced start of the season, which meant a lot of people quit.

[zenga]

I know that I am not pvping anymore and have a lot of friends who are not playing because pvp sucks. Players most of the time underestimate the amount of people who like pvp more than pve.

This season was incredibly horrible. Hunters destroying everybody with stampede, warriors being disgustingly op, mages destroying people with a single frost bomb, 8 sec cd dispel ruining classes like rogues, spriests and their offhealing, healing before battle fatique, ferals, holy paladins having unavoidable and very strong ccs, totemic restoration, blood fear.. I am sure I am even missing something.

This. I want to do arena, but the game puts up such a massive barrier that I simply can't be bothered. In wotlk and mop I'd do arena and run random bg's on multiple alts, every day outside raiding time. Now I just cap my points every week on the last day before the reset on 1 single toon.

- it was pointless to play the first weeks since you would get one shot by pretty much every warrior/bm setup
- demo locks 1 shot you
...
- 4 months later warriors have still god mode and shit on you 24/7

If you are done levelling an alt (because your main like my ele shaman aint viable) you have to suck it up in random bg's for days to get honor geared. Random bg's where your win loss ratio gets decided by the amount of bots in your team. At the point where I have acquired the honor gear I'm almost disgusted by pvp.

Then you join arena and face players who have 20+ ilvls on you, and you need to deal with that crap for weeks until you can finally buy the weapon and be somewhat competitive. At this point I'm just levelling alts, so I can play whatever I want at the start of the next season.

The ilvl upgrade and the lack of pvp weapons in the first season of an expansion is the most stupid idea ever, since people need to spend more time on levelling up and whatnot than in the middle of an expansion. And I'm not even mentioning the massive amount of mmr cheating in both rbgs and arena, which created an even bigger gap if you were behind on gear.

Next season I'll play arena all day long again, and I think many are in the same boat like me: pointless to play atm, just waiting for the next round. Which will increase arena participation again. They are both making changes that makes sense, and they are committed to bring more balance lately.

[macke]

Because you can't play alts and that is your BG, maybe people transfered away from it? I know on Misery EU there was 30 glad spots last season and this season it's 22, so it's not a big difference.

[Deleth]

It's nigh impossible to play alts this time around, a lot of PvPers quit at the start of the season because it was (and partly still is) very messed up and no fun, people coming back run into the gear wall and thus get demotivated. Hopefully it's going to be better in 5.2, I doubt it though.

[Rorschachs]

This. I want to do arena, but the game puts up such a massive barrier that I simply can't be bothered. In wotlk and mop I'd do arena and run random bg's on multiple alts, every day outside raiding time. Now I just cap my points every week on the last day before the reset on 1 single toon.

- it was pointless to play the first weeks since you would get one shot by pretty much every warrior/bm setup
- demo locks 1 shot you
...
- 4 months later warriors have still god mode and shit on you 24/7

If you are done levelling an alt (because your main like my ele shaman aint viable) you have to suck it up in random bg's for days to get honor geared. Random bg's where your win loss ratio gets decided by the amount of bots in your team. At the point where I have acquired the honor gear I'm almost disgusted by pvp.

Then you join arena and face players who have 20+ ilvls on you, and you need to deal with that crap for weeks until you can finally buy the weapon and be somewhat competitive. At this point I'm just levelling alts, so I can play whatever I want at the start of the next season.

The ilvl upgrade and the lack of pvp weapons in the first season of an expansion is the most stupid idea ever, since people need to spend more time on levelling up and whatnot than in the middle of an expansion. And I'm not even mentioning the massive amount of mmr cheating in both rbgs and arena, which created an even bigger gap if you were behind on gear.

Next season I'll play arena all day long again, and I think many are in the same boat like me: pointless to play atm, just waiting for the next round. Which will increase arena participation again. They are both making changes that makes sense, and they are committed to bring more balance lately.

Yeah I forgot the mmr abuse, interrupt cheating, rbg boosts, ddos and some stuff like that. Pvp is a huge mess right now and they still will have a lot to fix even after all the class balancing.

[Cle]

i dont think just buying weapon makes any meaningful difference

[iperson]

Because you can't play alts and that is your BG, maybe people transfered away from it? I know on Misery EU there was 30 glad spots last season and this season it's 22, so it's not a big difference.

That's almost a 30% drop. Tell me, if you took a 30% pay cut today would that not be a big difference?

[macke]

That's almost a 30% drop. Tell me, if you took a 30% pay cut today would that not be a big difference?

That's mainly because you can't play alts.

[meteoa]

A major issue for me is that the 1700-2200 range is just about unplayable because nearly every team in that range has a T2 weapon from RBGs. There's also so few teams actually playing, you play the same people over and over. At ~1900 MMR, we queued 5 times in a row into a ~1700 KFC team with where all 3 had their T2s and just got bursted down over and over. That was a lot of rating lost...

During previous seasons the 2100-2200 range was kinda dicey because that's when you'd start to really find the teams with legit T2s and it was an uphill battle, but ever since MoP you start to fight T2 teams in the 1700s. I've even seen them as low as the 1400s when I was playing on some fresh new alts in crafted gear.

[Ryft]

Some really good points raised in this thread.

I used to really enjoy arena, now I regard it as a painful necessity....for a few reasons:

#1 Sometime during Cata I took a year off from WoW, and started MoP in December, levelling to 90 in January. This meant that I was behind the times gear wise, and had to go through the agony of being totally stomped in BGs due to gear disparity. I then went through the exact same thing in arena. That was less than fun. The gear disparity in arena was so immense it was ridiculous.

#2 PvP is very bursty now, which serves to emphasise gear disparities. Combined with every class having some kind of CC, matches can end very quickly with players frequently not being in control of their characters for significant periods of time.

That is the worst part of arena currently for me. I entered into my first few matches trying to use my CC's and CD's strategically as I would have in earlier arena seasons, and lost over and over to players who just blew all their CDs immediately and killed me in 5 GCDs or less. Its slightly better now that I have resilience, but not a whole lot.