Why are tournament players allowed access to vendors?

[Didly]

Why does Blizzard allow tournament players access to gear vendors but force players on the live game to suffer through unfair games caused by gear discrepancies? Real players are forced to grind gear in order to compete in arena, yet the tournament players have access to normalized gear for fairness. Obviously Arena is about fair, skill-based strategic competition- not your ability to make a raid schedule. Yet this attitude doesn't apply to the Live game, only the Tourneys.

This is an inconsistent attitude. If it's unfair to force tourney players to bring the gear they have, then why do they force live players to do it?

[Deleted]

Because tourney players are playing for money would be my guess

[Deleted]

If gear was handed out on live servers, similar to Tournaments, there would be far far fewer incentives to play the game for most players, so they would unsub and so Blizzard to lose money.

For Tournaments, an even playing ground is preferred because it doesn't matter who wins for Blizzard - what they gain out of this is the fanbase, the media and the future sub revenue. IE, they invest money to make more money.

The attitude is extremely consistent, Blizzard wants you to be subbed so they can make money.

[Didly]

If gear was handed out on live servers, similar to Tournaments, there would be far far fewer incentives to play the game for most players

Stat templates fixed this problem and were removed for some reason.

[Irollmyface]

Because it has always been that way? The tournament is on its own server, so players wouldn't be able to grind for gear. The same players who play in the tournament also have toons on live, which they grind on and practice with. Having gear provided let's each player maximize how they want to gear. Stat templates aren't the answer imo because 2 players might play their class differently. Maybe one mage wants more critical but the other more haste. Having on demand gear let's them customize to their play style. Sorry if I sound rude. Also this is clearly just my own opinion. I am not, nor have I ever been a professional player.

[Deleted]

Stat templates fixed this problem and were removed for some reason.

Because they provided too little incentive for players from an RPG perspective for them to remain subbed for a long duration.

OK, I'll explain a bit more detailed.

Imagine you are playing X dps class and you get a warforged XXX ilvl weapon with a socket next week in your cache. How big the dps upgrade will be? BIG. The chance that this will happen and the happiness this will cause you is a reason to stay subbed.
Ok, same dps class but with stat templates. The difference between your char next week compared to this week is largely irrelevant. Which means if you are not enjoying the game right now(playing a poor dps class for example), you are very likely to not be subbed at all for the next time period.

By asking you to gear up, and by the difference gearing up causes, Blizzard is making sure they are giving you reasons to stay subbed and as such they are making money. And maybe you would play the game the entire next year even if the game had stat templates instead, but the average consumer probably wouldn't.

[ilik2345]

They toyed with the idea of pvp only gear from vendors on live before they introduced legion (my memory fails me of when exactly), but they clearly did not like it as it never made it past the drawing board. I think they mentioned it briefly at a blizzcon but nothing more of it was heard as i say - a bit like the dance studio. I think it had some rather terrible ideas attached to it, like a time zoned (only open at certain times) arena matches in which you could only use this said gear (awful idea considering how many time zones the game is played)

I still feel the best gearing system was the one in mop, everyone caught up eventually to a even playing field, those who pushed rating just did it a lot faster.

[xindralol]

tournament servers always had vendors regardless of how gear procurement worked on the real realms