Blizzard says Arenas were a mistake

[Rogue]

Old news.

This is not a PvP-based game. It never was, and it never will be. It can be done, and it can be fun, but balancing every bracket, every class, and every ability will never, ever happen. Honestly, to me, their best move right now would be to delete Arena as a whole, and put more emphasis on competitive BGs. If that means losing the '1337 pvp starz' playerbase, so be it.

[Java]

people who dislike arena are typically bad players

Funny, in reality most arena players are the bad players. They play in a sterile environment using the same documented strategy someone else invented and practice it over and over without an ounce of inventiveness.

[Antisocial]

My class was nerfed arena was a mistake hurr durr herp derp

[Simbert]

Wow is not real life, there is a limited amount of ways to fight a battle. And by that i mean it wont mather if the paladin jumps 3 sec into fight. Thats not a different way of how the battle would go. I mean movement tactics in wow is extremely useless. Missile spells can fly trough objects and follow the target without the casters concentration directed at the missile itself. With that in place the whole game eliminates thousands of possible ways to fight the battle as dodge movement does not exist.

You obviously do not really know what you are talking about. As anyone will notice, WoW is not an fps. This means, for example, that you can not dodge missiles. However, this does not make WoW simpler than an fps. Yes, you could do some different stuff if you could dodge missiles. For example, laugh at hunter because they would never be able to hit you while you are running, at all. By the same argumentation, you could say that WoW, or any fps, are less interesting than an RTS, because you only have one unit, thus making many tactics unusable. The problem is that you simply take out one point, and say it is the only important thing that defines skill.

Movement in WoW is still important, but less on a reflex-scale, and more on a tactical scale. For example, as a healer, it is a pretty good idea to stand somewhere where the mage is not able to counter you, but you can still heal your mate. With all of the above positions shifting all the time, and the need to stand still to heal, this is a tactical challenge. And there are much, much more.

Maybe it does not matter if the paladin jumps in the middle of the battle or not, but maybe it does. Maybe he jumps, just as he is charge by a warrior, thus flying some additional yards away, out of the line of sight of the warriors partner.

Spells go back and forth with a way to high hit chance and the only variable factor is crit and hit. Actualy is not impossible to create a bot that is able to foresee the targets stats and calculate win % taking hit and crit into calculation.

Do you like rolling dice? If you believe the chance to hit is too high, that is just plain stupid. WoW is, as i stated above, no fps. It would be insanely stupid if the spells hit at only 50% of the time. And, dodging stuff, which you seem to believe is the epitome of skill, was never intended to be in WoW. You can preemptively dodge casts by not standing in the enemies line of sight.

And, while what you said mike make some sense in a situation where there are two mages standing 20 feet apart and casting frostbolts at each other, in most situation the more important question is which spell to use at what time, when to hide, and so on.

Wow is not a pvp game, it can never be a pvp game because a fighting game must have re-actions to actions. Thats how fighting game mostly works, an action is performed by a player and the second player must in best way counter it deffensive or offensive with a re-action. Most spells and attack in wow does not got a re-action wich is used to directly counter it.

WoW is not a fighting game. And it is a pvp game, how else do you explain the people hitting other people all the time? Furthermore, i must totally disagree with you. There are lots, and lots of stuff that counters other stuff. It is just not only reaktion, like in Mortal Combat or something like that, but a different style. You need to plan what you do beforehand. Reflexes are not the most important point of skill in WoW. It is planning stuff. Knowing what the enemy will most likely do, and react according, ideally before he even does it. So you can make a tactic where you control everything, and win in the end. But the enemy tries to do the same.

This reduces skillcap dramaticly as the need of reflexes is reduced to the point u can only activate an ability every 1-1.5 sec and the only times u need reflexes is when u have gcd off and u wish to counter a spell.

Do you believe that chess has a low skillcap, because you only do one action every half an hour?

On top of that as said before countering spells is not possible for most classes, sure you have cloak of shadows, bubble and other freedom spells. But they are on long cooldown and therefore they are very predictable. The oposing player will in most cases use the spells when he/she is in trouble. And therefore the 1st player will be able to predict this with ease.

So if you force an enemy to use something important, and than exploit this weakness, this has nothing to do with skill? Why does the enemy not do the same thing? The point in WoW is to make the enemy do what you want him to do. You force him to run into his ruin. Is you can do this, you win. If the enemy does it to you, you lose. If you always know what will probably happen for the next 15 seconds (or even longer), and how to counter it, while keeping in mind different possibilities, you are doing good. This is what WoW PvP is about, not who klicks x the fastest.

The only reason it seems like the game is a valid PVP game is because of noobs, the game lacks a reasonable amount of unpredictability because in most situations there is a single ability wich is best for the desired effect instead of having abilities wich can be used in an unpredictable way.

And when skillcap is reached it's so low difference betwen the pros whos able to click buttons right before something ocours that it all comes down to crit and the damage low - max.

So, if there is no unpredictability, why do people even fight? Even better ones? In my experience, fights tend to end differently. And more often than not it is not because of some big crits, but because the tactics one side used worked better than the other one. Maybe the switched target at an important point, maybe they started the fight of better, and are able to control it for the whole time, thus manifesting their victory. While some fights might be won by a lucky string of crits, this is the exception, not the rule.

Somehow, you seem to believe that for a game to have a high skillcap, it needs stuff where you can react fast. I believe that chess is the most known counter-example to this theory. FPS are not the only thing that requires skill. WoW is in my opinion somewhere between an fps and an rts, actually nearer to an rts without the insane amounts of micro needed to pull of a successfull strategy.

[jonokola]

arenas were a mistake. Now I do about 25-100 matches a week, so don't tell me I don't understand, but your wrong. I'm so damn tired of you arena monkies bitching and complaining to the point where blizzard has to bend over backwards because "(insert every class here) has an ability I don't have and it's not fair that I should have to use my brain to compensate". Your garbage. You assholes ruined Deathknight tanks, got a beautiful rogue aoe nerfed to the ground, took all the fun out of bladestorm, sent pallies back to the days of loladins, and just generally chipped away at all the fun things about pve.
I have nothing against arenas themselves, just the QQing masses. Your sufocating Blizzards creativity because everytime they try to do something cool, instead of adjusting your strategy like intelligent human beings, you bitch about it until it goes away. Garbage, all of you

QFT

Arenas is the sole reason why this game lacks variety, every noob cries for an interupt, every noob cries for a CC, every noob cries for a snare, and "the other guy does more dmg his op", when all classes are "balanced" what do you get? you get the same sh*t different spelling abilities on your action bars, and in the end that is what balanced is right? where all things are equal and the only variable is skill.

Blizzard says "Bring the player not the class", the 2v2 and 3v3 brackets of arena obviously does not demonstrate this, where only certain class combos may work

rated BGs imho should be the only form of competitive PVP format in WoW, where teams of 10+ actually have to work together to achieve a common objective against the opposing team, where tactics are actually worth more than your class and gear. Ever heard of "a star team will always beat a team of stars"?

bottom line is arenas were a mistake.

[Sigma6987]

The pvp and pve balancing issues are hurting the raiders, which was what WoW was first. Like the quote said, pve players usually dont understand why our abilities are being changed. And it's often because they end up being balanced on the pve end, but being too much on the pvp side, so it gets nerfed on both. DKs were fine in pve from the start, and we have been riding tidal waves as are our trees are revamped over and over again. Notwithstanding everyone's alt DK and the Deathtards that fill pugs in seconds flat, the term 'Hero Class' has lost the 'Hero' part altogether. Vanilla classes are getting the same nerf hammers as well, and its for pvp reasons 90% of the time.

The term "Hero Class" means nothing other than "a class that wouldn't make sense to start from lvl 1".

If "Hero Class" meant something like... a hero from WC3, then Paladins and Shamans would be "Hero Classes" as well. If they implemented hero classes from the start like they wished to, it would've worked something like this example: you would start as a warrior and branch off into Paladin or Death Knight.

Point is, their is nothing special about the DK vs other classes. If you expected it to get special treatment from the beginning because of the title, then you were severely mistaken.

It also wasn't fair for Unholy DKs to 10k crit something 2 times in 2 seconds in pvp. Even if their wasn't pvp, their damage still would have been toned down.

[Hatelust]

LOL at everything I've bolded if you expect it to play out that way with any degree of consistency.

I know that, situations change as players adapt. I kept it as short and stupid as I could because the person I quoted requires simplicity. My point was to show that there are rock solid strategies to execute to succeed in PvP, much like there are in PvE. This is not to say that They are at all identical in the way the strategy, and to some extent, it's application gets from A-B. PvE you fight and fight and fight. Learn and learn and learn a programmed boss battle that never changes. You eventually get it down and collect loot. In PvP you fight and fight and fight. Learn, and learn, and learn. Except this time it is against a "conscious" human player(I use quotes for the some what lack thereof with compitencey in the WoW playerbase.). Now, as you develop a strategy to win against another player, they will adapt and beat that strategy. This goes back and fourth as you both build a good arsenal of counters, predictions, feints, ect. and you reach a "stalemate" so to speak, as neither of you can come out a deffinate winner. To replicate this in PvE, would be absurd. To have a boss character, that originally takes 25 very well geared people to execute the winning strategy perfectly while perfectly sequencing damaging/healing/mitigation/avoidance spells to maximize their avatar's performance output, adapt to your strategy and playstyle would result in a VERY frustratingly impossible PvE experience(even if it would bring some realness into these "gods" "titans" and what have you, I mean, come on, 25 champions which could have easily been stepped on and not noticed by a very numerous amount of these baddies win... EVERY TIME).

[Rakavys]

Umm yeah he said it was a mistake. I don't think he can be any clearer in his view that arenas should have never been put in the game. I wonder how much extra revenue arena has cost blizzard? I bet alot of man hours go into unnecessary class balances.

They said that it was never their intention to make it into an e-sport. Recently they said that it is a good part of the game.

[Elanale]

I know that, situations change as players adapt. I kept it as short and stupid as I could because the person I quoted requires simplicity. My point was to show that there are rock solid strategies to execute to succeed in PvP, much like there are in PvE. This is not to say that They are at all identical in the way the strategy, and to some extent, it's application gets from A-B. PvE you fight and fight and fight. Learn and learn and learn a programmed boss battle that never changes. You eventually get it down and collect loot. In PvP you fight and fight and fight. Learn, and learn, and learn. Except this time it is against a "conscious" human player(I use quotes for the some what lack thereof with compitencey in the WoW playerbase.). Now, as you develop a strategy to win against another player, they will adapt and beat that strategy. This goes back and fourth as you both build a good arsenal of counters, predictions, feints, ect. and you reach a "stalemate" so to speak, as neither of you can come out a deffinate winner. To replicate this in PvE, would be absurd. To have a boss character, that originally takes 25 very well geared people to execute the winning strategy perfectly while perfectly sequencing damaging/healing/mitigation/avoidance spells to maximize their avatar's performance output, adapt to your strategy and playstyle would result in a VERY frustratingly impossible PvE experience(even if it would bring some realness into these "gods" "titans" and what have you, I mean, come on, 25 champions which could have easily been stepped on and not noticed by a very numerous amount of these baddies win... EVERY TIME).

Jesus. If you don't want actual paragraphs just double space every four sentences so there's some chance in hell of someone reading your posts without their heads fucking EXPLODING.

[AnotherPaladin]

I don't think implementing arenas were a bad idea; if blizz took them out they'd lose thousands of subscribers just like that. It adds a new element to the game, and if you don't like the arenas, then you have the option of not doing them

[Snoosie]

Screw blizzard, Arena is the only reason i play this game.

[Endler89]

i understand from ur reply that u are rly bad in pvp, and pvp is better then pve

pvp need skills, pve asks u only to know the right tactic and do it good

I understand from your reply that you are really bad in pve, and pve is better than pvp.

Pve needs skills, pvp just asks you to know the right party composition and do it good.

look i can make biased statements too. Arena takes the same amount of skill as raiding does. Only difference is any error in arena is magnified because there are less people and its easier to see where mistakes were made. Raiding takes more coordination hate to say but finding 5 people that aren't completely braindead is a lot easier than finding 25.

[bliston78]

http://www.warcry.com/articles/view/...ards-Rob-Pardo

Ouch! Seems like Pardo is saying they should have just kept all the arena players over on xbox live or something. I for one couldn't agree more.

Well he said it, Arenas ruined the game, pissed people off, made the dev team "schizophrenic". I'm glad they finally said what everyone has been thinking for so long.

i'm really curious what PvE would look like today if we hadn't of had the arenas come along, and just had world pvp and BG's.. it would be interesting and druids would probably be the most OP healing class.. not that they aren't now anyway

[Annarion]

I'm sorry, I pvp'd to Grand Marshal prebc as a warrior, it was tons of fun, I made friends with all the other pvp'ers on the server, had good rivalries with the opposite faction, and left me with a sense of accomplishment. I played through arena in season one, and honestly hated every second of it. Even though warriors were OPs as shit, it was stupid. You could code some ai that would act like a player (obviously not as intuitive or creative) but you could have it react on it's own logic, and it would be as fun as arena. PvE: Kill that mob. Arena: Kill that guy. May as well be the same thing. Sure you have to react and adjust, but at the end of the day it's still kill that guy. Battlegrounds have OBJECTIVES. Something to do other than generic combat, which is the same as grinding against any old mob. More attention required, but still the same. When you're using your skills and combat to achieve something else, you return to that same sense of satisfaction that came from prebc.

inb4 it was a grind, blah blah blah. It was still more eventful than grinding the same 30s-1m fight in the same 4 rooms.

[Offhand]

Love that article, it makes PvP'ers squirm.

[lilbandit]

anyone who has pvped in vanilla knows that arena saved wow pvp. possibly even pve.

we would never have been able to enjoy such a level of balanced if wow had not become an e-sport.

and besides that if we have to re-gem every now and again because something was OP i dont really care.

even if you never did arenas you benefited form them existing.

lol anyone who seriously thinks arena was good for pvp needs their head examining. yes burst was OP with Pom-pyro mages etc, but arena was just bad from the start. thank god for rated BGs incoming is what I say.

[K4ge]

lol anyone who seriously thinks arena was good for pvp needs their head examining. yes burst was OP with Pom-pyro mages etc, but arena was just bad from the start. thank god for rated BGs incoming is what I say.

Nice argumentation there. As it stands you're wrong.

[Backwell]

I wouldn't be playing without them.