So everyone here loves Arena?

[conqq]

You know, resilience gear would probably help.

With DKs or pallies it really doesn't matter... DKs aren't even crit reliant, their dots & pets do 90% of the damage while they get to spam frost trap everywhere & kite you easy as pie. Pallies just have huge crit and aren't easily mitigated

[alpy1885]

WTB QUEST AS END GAME PVE !!

[Messick]

I do arenas cause 1-2 people other than yourself on at a time is easier to achieve than 9-24 other people.

[Bats]

For starters, this is why people hate pvp players. The constant insinuation that if you play on a pve server, you are some sort of castrated bon bon eating girly man. Whereas the true epitome of manliness, the pure firey crucible from which perfect warriors with 10" penises are forged is a pvp server...
You: "Well, it's a busted mechanic. Trying to level while getting ganked by a rogue 10 levels higher isn't fun... I don't wanna play on that crap."
"LolLoLolloLOlOllolol n00b n00b n00b. l2play. You suck and are a fag because you on carebear server!!!!11!"

Personally, I cringe whenever I get a random with too many Laughing Skull players. I swear that server has to be full of 14 year old nerds over compensating for social anxiety in real life.

Why people are ambivalent or hostile to arena: The match is 90% decided by comp/class.

Why people hate arena: Every stupid ass arena nerf hits pve, every otherwise workable fix for pve class problems has to be sifted through the "well it will cause arena QQ". Almost every class I can think of has been nerfed at some point due to arena whining.

Second: We can't have cool burst abilities. Wouldn't it be neat for your DPS to have semi long cooldown super burst DPS and boss mechanics that required them? Phase 3 of fight X requires massive burst DPS? Nope, sorry, can't have that shit... the arenatards would whine.

And good lord, arenatards whine like bitches. You thought mages whined when locks beat them on DPS meters? (I'd say or vice versa, but let's face it, warlocks are always too stoned). That has nothing compared to the massive, constant QQ of pvp'ers. It has been non stop for 5 years now, it is the only constant in WoW pvp. The Blizz damage dealing forum is unusable for things like discussions about balancing DPS classes because of the 35 "ZomG nerf [class] nao!!!!" threads a day.

So given the nerfs, the sort of predetermined due to class nature of arenas, and the generally repellent personalities of pvp server denizens in general, well, that's why people don't like arenas.
It's more than arena. It's life. Only suckers go for fair fights. Generals go down in history books when they ensure their troops never have to face a fair fight in their lives.

Uhh.. what?! It goes both ways, as an ex PvEr and a PvP monkey right now, I can say that "pvetards" whine as much or even more compared to PvPers. Hybrids for example have been whining since the creation of recount. And this is all normal, what are you expecting if something is not balanced, you want everyone to just ignore the shittness of it? Arenas are just so unbalanced and that is why people are whining, PvE is far more fair seeing the only unbalanced thing is the amount of DPS and Healing that's being done (between players) and that's like 100000 times easier to balance compared to 20-30 abilities per spec for Arenas.

And that fair fight part is a joke, I mean does it make you feel good when you zerg an undergeared DK with 50% HP? What's the point in that if it doesn't make you feel good about yourself? I love fair fights, you don't get annoyed if you lose, because it's all fair and you feel freaking awesome when you win! I just don't see the fun in being a coward and jumping on single targets with 3 allies, if you're doing that you have to realize you're bad.

Arena is a fun thing to do, it just gets annoying when you face the FOTM combo 10 times in 15 played games. That's why people whine, if it was nicely balanced, people wouldn't whine so much.

[conscript]

Clearly it seems very popular with many players here since that seems to be the basis of PvP questions/answers and it makes me wonder if i'm the oddball ???

I personally hate the arena system. The Arenas in no way resemble actual arenas and the system has completely destroyed game balance. The arena system has forced Blizzard to address some issue for certain classes or specs but for the most part it has just led to them having to constantly tweak classes to be fair in pvp and then having an adverse reaction on their pve capabilities. It is a very cool pvp system, one of which i don't partake anyways, but it has its flaws just like pve does.

But seriously, when was the last time you saw an actual gladiator arena with pillars jutting out of the ground. I would love to see more cool natural elements added like fire and such while still maintaining the feel of being in a dueling pit rather than having to constantly dodge around pillars.

[Kikyoo]

Arena is like stock car racing. and if your specs arn't good enough you will lose. Personally I don't like the arena system. Mostly because it's boring. These smaller scale fights just are not fun for me. even 5 on 5 just isn't fun ta me.

The thing is the Arena system is MUCH better than what we had before. Arena ratings are supposed to mean it's more about skill, and less about grinding, and dear lord the old system was grind happy. It was an improvement, but I think the system could stand to be improved even more. I'm not entirely certain how, but with blizz's rating PvP matches and letting you get points off of that sounds like it could be solid.

[ComputerNerd]

The world of warcraft game was not designed with battlegrounds, nor arena in mind originally.
Both of those were later added on due to player demand for them, which is why when compared to more recent games, particularly those which were built around pvp from the start are often described as being superior at it.
WoW has the better PVE though that is becoming increasing more awkward with all the balancing around pvp that has to be squeezed in.
I am going to be going in arena soon enough for some casual play, since I am currently finding between lack of raiding opportunities and the complete and utter joke of battlegrounds which on this particular battlegroup tend to consist of zerg rushes for honor with little considering for the objectives, and actually winning.
PVE is what the game does best, and pvp can be a fun addition, but it is all too often ruined by the players themselves.
The 3.3.3 honor gains are going to make that even worse, so I hope hope that cataclysm will really bring something different to the table, and change player mentality but I doubt it.

[Iamsylar]

Pretty much, arena is the only reason i play WoW.

[BicycleMafioso]

Oh hush. PvP is far more interesting than PvE.
And easier to organize.

PvE is just sameold and getting new gear for... What? E-peen? Getting higher on imaginary metres? You've done it once. You have the best gear.. And you're doing it again? Or what?

Wheras PvP, you're not lootwhoring, doing pre-determined and content-limited entertainment. You don't run out of arenamatches. You can keep doing it. And you do it for rating, not to kill a suspiciously tall guy just hanging around on an alchove waiting for you to kill all of his friends.

I have as little understanding of people liking PvE as I have of people disliking RP. :\ This is an PVP/RPGame after all

[Quarian]

Have you EVER been in an arena? I highly doubt it. Arena is ALL ABOUT having the unfair advantage. Lets take DK/Pally for instance. DK's do a lot of damage. I take that back, they do a TON of damage, with the ability to put diseases on every target, silence, stun, have 2 pets, become practically immune to magic/stun/fear. Every DK weakness is covered by the paladin with freedom and cleanse.

Put this team up against lets say, two Grand Marshal Hunters with years of experience and skill that both play well with each other. Guess who will win.

First, DK's are by far the easiest class to outheal (Playing a priest), they got no MS and therefore the fight can keep going on forever between him and me, while my partner rapes the paladin.

Secondly, You wonder why you don't like arena? Trying to setup a hunter hunter team? I think i got it figured out why you fail so badly .. It requires brainz.

Third, im not an arena hungering monster, i enjoy all aspects of the game (Besides from honor farming duh) and in my eyes, arena did this game a HUGE favor and was far from a failure brining together eSports and WoW.

[Quarian]

full relentless gear not enough ? and i'm even playing resto ..

Prehot?

[fishface]

I was never much of a fan of battlegrounds during classic and tbc. Due to my lack of playtime and slight preference towards pve I'd usually just be roflstomped if I wasn't playing as a healer. Now in Wotlk I enjoy it a lot more, thanks to the ease of gear I can play competently (though I only stick to healers as it's the only way I feel like I'm contributing).

I only played arena in TBC when my RL friend and I 2v2'd (warrior and resto) we quit the game after a month or so, but it was easily the most fun I'd had PvPing (Imba comp made up for our dungeon blues and rep pvp set). I think the whole gladiatorial combat is perfect for me, I've never liked duels due to only having semi-competent pvp gear for healer roles. With BG's your efforts seem to be dwarfed by a lack of communication between players, mindless zergs, overgeared enemies, Rambos and overall stupidity. Plus BG's still bring with them that bitter feeling I had from 2 years of PvPing as alliance (I re-rolled Horde months before WoTLK) who's 'Spirit' fell from "yeah let's win", to "we can do this" to "let's just farm HK's and lose".

The notion that Arena killed World PvP is ridiculous, btw by World PvP I'm talking about actual pvp (like Xroads and Southshore raids, not ganking). The death of World PvP was inevitable without some kind of explicit reward tied into it, there's only so many times you can attack/defend southshore before it gets boring. Ask yourself, if your honour gains were reduced to those gained from HK's in BG's would you still play them?

If you really miss World PvP do something about, organize a battle on your forums, or make a level 1 of the opposing faction and tell them the details. World PvP is upto you to initiate.

[jontaxe]

Secondly, You wonder why you don't like arena? Trying to setup a hunter hunter team? I think i got it figured out why you fail so badly .. It requires brainz.

Way to totally confirm his point while at the same time missing it.

[K4ge]

Considering less than 2% of the population participates in the arena, I'd say it's a colossal failure.

25% according to official blizzard numbers. But lets go with 2%.

Glad cutoff in my bg in 3's is about 50 teams. Thats 150 players. that is 0.5% of the active players of my realmpool, which puts it at 30000 players. Assuming that's 2% would put the population to 1'500'000 ON MY POOL ALONE. I really doubt that.

[crayven]

Oh hush. PvP is far more interesting than PvE.
And easier to organize.

PvE is just sameold and getting new gear for... What? E-peen? Getting higher on imaginary metres? You've done it once. You have the best gear.. And you're doing it again? Or what?

Wheras PvP, you're not lootwhoring, doing pre-determined and content-limited entertainment. You don't run out of arenamatches. You can keep doing it. And you do it for rating, not to kill a suspiciously tall guy just hanging around on an alchove waiting for you to kill all of his friends.

I have as little understanding of people liking PvE as I have of people disliking RP. :\ This is an PVP/RPGame after all

If you like arena so much, let's remove the rewards from arena ( after all u are not "loot-whoring " or playing arena for your 'e-peen' , right? ) and give you same gear from BGs as TBC was.
I guarantee you 99.99% of arena players won't even STEP into arena the milisecond this change occurs.

[Jr]

Pretty much, arena is the only reason i play WoW.

This pretty much. The game started with battlegrounds and world PvP, being the only sources of player vs. player combat. However, apart for who 'grinded the most', there was no real competition, you didn't have any rankings that depended on (mostly) skill.

With the introduction of arenas, the players have gotten used to WoW having a competitive PvP side. This is probably the reason Battlegrounds died; players only get there to get gear for their competitive arena, or their daily 25 arena points.

This is a shame, as Battlegrounds sure can be a lot of fun, but I think working on details would be the solution (a real scorebord for example, the first time I joined a Battleground and I saw the scorebored, I felt like I was playing an FPS, that feeling was much more awesome than 'fuk he stol my kil agen kil blow is impor !!'.

[valanor]

It's actually nothing new that people dislike what they fail at.

While I was at school I never met person who enjoyed subject he wasn't good at. Same with the arena. Arena haters are those who tried it once or twice and miserably failed at it.

I do know some people (like some of my guildies) who don't play arena because they admit they suck at it. But if you are a dickhead you won't just admit you are bad at something. You will start bitching it and make hate threads/posts on the forums to share your hatred and find people that are as stupid as you are.

And yeah, arena is way harder to play than pve.

Lets look at ret pally. Raiding ret pally jobs:
1. Maintain your dps rotation while standing still (yeah Im not that stupid to say LOLRET3BUTTONZLOL) but lets be honest here - it's not hard to use your spells in prioritised order when they are off cooldown.
2. Switch target to add/bone spike/snobold etc. - mostely its just hitting TAB key and moving few yards the going back to 1.
3.Run out of fire/gas dodge maleblle goo/fire orb etc. Yeah this is 'hard'
4. (optional) If ret is good he will use Salvation on that Arms warrior with gigntic threat, LoH on tank in the hour of need, and bubble when its critical. But yeah those happen rarely.

Arenaing ret pally job:
1.Maintain your dps rotation while running after your target who will do his best to kite you.
2. Switching your target (but not when DBM says 'snobolds in 5 secs get ready') but when there is good oportunity (healer got stunlocked without trinket ready, lock failed at demonic circle, warrior got dismantled just before shield wall etc.)
3. Now other classes and know how to counter them - dont dispel UA, nuke that pally right after he popped AW,know that you can't sap tree etc. etc.
4.Use cleanse, hand of freedom, hammer of justice,hand of protection, healing spells, 3 types of jugdments depending on situation, hand of sacrifice, sacred shield - all those skills you use once in a blue moon in PVE and are crucial in the arena (suddenly ret becomes something more than 3 BUTTONZ DPZ)

This is way people hate arena (I dont mean those who dont play it, i mean the haters). They suck at it, they can't admit it, so they try to convince as many people as they can to 'arena suxxx' to make them feel better (if so many hate arena it means arena is stupid, not me, right???)

[smartAXE]

arenas were a "step up" from bg's for the people in vanilla that loved pvp(i say step up cause its a pvp orientated thing that is competative; somewhat like raid world firsts and such)
i personaly would love to arena, but my shitbox pc and "highspeed" internet wont allow me to push anywhere "serious"

[degobyan]

arenas were a "step up" from bg's for the people in vanilla that loved pvp(i say step up cause its a pvp orientated thing that is competative; somewhat like raid world firsts and such)
i personaly would love to arena, but my shitbox pc and "highspeed" internet wont allow me to push anywhere "serious"

This. Especially with PvP gear becoming increasingly important for PvP with the introducion of resilience. BGs were often a terrible way to award points from which necessary gear could be bought. They could easily be imbalanced and there was no matchmaking system set up so some teams could just faceroll other teams, acquiring more honor than the other team with minimal effort or skill. This goes the same for world pvp, though no one ever really tried doing that to actually get gear.

Arena on the other hand is much more balanced. There's no afkers, there's no one holding you back unless you brought him in there on purpose, there's the same amount of people on each team, and its small scale enough to display (and require) personal skill. It really is the best situation to award meaningful gear for pvp.

I would love to do more world pvp too, but I don't think arena is hurting that. Tbh the only thing blizzard needs to do to influence more world pvp is to put another daily island like the isle of quel danas where everyone's objectives are the same and flying mounts arent allowed. That place was the best.

[Relictus]

Arena is the only reason I play WoW.
Battlegrounds are a matter of how many people are not afk, and it's very easy to find people you dislike in a raid group of 25 people in PvE. Arena is a place you can play against people at your level at a somewhat competitive pace without worrying too much about playing with people who are either afk or ridiculously dumb.