I’m not a fan of boxing, wresting, or any of those other cage matched arena sports. Maybe that’s why I never bought into or liked the idea of PvP being staged on this equal grounds and turned into an e-sport. Turning the entire process into a fast moving uphill treadmill to chase the carrot compounds my dislike; I have never been a fan of the treadmill carrot process. What I have enjoyed though, and always will enjoy, is the competition of pitting my skills with my character and the game against other players. Coming back to WoW has given me the chance to finally experience them first hand and see if my feelings have been misplaced or if I truly anticipated the experience.
Well, it turns out Arenas are exactly how I thought they would be and a little worse. I expected them to be unbalanced because, let’s face it, the classes in World of Warcraft are so skewed it makes WAR’s beta look like a perfectly zero’d out scale.  What I didn’t anticipate was how cheesy some people would get and what people would do to win. The abilities that some classes get when working in conjunction with other classes makes me so frustrated. One example that seems to come up time and time again is the Rogue stunlocks combined with their ability to cheese the heck out of sap and stealth. In a game today we were against a Paladin/Rogue combo that we had fought twice previous today. We actually beat them both other times but this time the rogue resorted to sapping and stealthing away for nearly five minutes to wait on all his cooldowns. He repeated this process until he got lucky enough with his crits to kill me. Had he fought me straight out once, or even twice, he would have lost. This is when skill gets tossed out the window. Being able to abuse random elements of gameplay until they turn in your favor is a little cheesy. I know, I know, all’s fair in love and WoW and he’s not doing anything that Blizzard hasn’t allowed him to do… but part of me can’t help but feel screwed by some class that can hide until the game finally lets them win by luck. This was a source of extreme nerd rage today.
Yet, even though I’m faced with cheesy teams I still have some fun. We had some amazing fights today that really could have gone either way and some that we should have outright lost. One in particular was a Healadin with 21k HP (decent) and a Prot Warrior with 32k Hp… that’s INSANE to us. Most Warriors we come across are like 25-26k in arenas but to see 32k HP was a shock. We actually won that fight by using teamwork to coordinate silences and abilities (we’re both DK’s so we had no real heals). Our 2’s team named “Wait this isnt WAR” has gone something like 14-11 so far and we’re proud of actually having a winning ratio as an All DK team (yes, 3 Dk’s on our 2’s team, heh).
I’m left feeling a mix of “zomg I hate this crap” and “I want to play at least 10 games a week”. I’ve enjoyed earning some of the easier pieces of armor now that Blizzard has gone out of their way to make gear available through a multitude of ways (BG PvP, Arena PvP, big raids, small raids, instances, etc).  I doubt that the cheesyness I’ve seen will go away. I’ll try to roll with it and not let it bother me. I just tell myself “That’s WoW PvP for you” and keep on truckin’ away.
That is by far, the sole reason I don’t do pvp/arena’s. Every time I get killed, all I want to do is to kill the tards. I had a fight like that on my feral Druid once, had the same level of adrenalin as I had in a rollercoaster it’s annoying yet awesome if u manage to win. My last arena was at the start of season 4 tho. Btw have u done all instances yet? Some are pure gold, while others seem a bit lame. Aiming at the bossfihjts of course.
well you are playing the most OP class in WoW right now, so enjoy,
cheesy or not no other MMO offers this type of gameplay
I really don’t feel that the DK is anywhere near as powerful as the Paladin or the Rogue right now. Third most powerful, maybe.
@Yggdrassil: I’ve done all but The Oculus for instances. Did Sartharion 25 man. Have not seen Naxx yet or the other raids.
Yea Pallies are THE overpowered “flavor of the month” class right now in PvP. Seems that everyone has leveled one just for that reason. If I wasn’t done with leveling more alts in WoW I would do so as well but I also expect Blizz to eventually get around to nerfing them.
@Keen: That actually sounds a little fun, so long as you don’t take it too seriously.
It’s Blizzard, of course they’ll nerf the Paladins. It’s like saying fish swim…
Mate you got a WoW and a WAR account active, if I were you I wouldnt bother PvPing in WoW at all. It’ll only lead to frustration and boredom.
I got both games active and there’s no way I could ever bother with WoW’s PvP again. No comparison with WAR’s at all. Where as the PvE in WoW is, as always, good (it is the games main focus after all).
@Dan: Yeah, that’s the direction I’m turning very quickly. I’m enjoying some of these more accesible and less time consuming PvE raids/encounters.
Agreed, if you’re PvP’ing in both, WAR is the better experience. Even with Wintergrasp, it doesn’t matter what goodies Blizzard pulls out, the classes aren’t balanced for PvP and that pretty much trumps it.
Besides, PvP as e-sports just kinda irks me, so I never could get much into the arena system.
That said, I think I’m headed back to the FPS genre for my PvP. My WAR account is still active for now, I’ll play it until I run out of my current time. It’s been such a letdown since launch (especially the RvR unfortunately), I think I’m getting bitter waiting for it to “get better”, which always seems to be the promise.
Back on topic tho, no comparison on the classes for PvP, WAR wins hands down. Even if WAR did arenas (*cringe*) they’d be much better.
I noticed something:
In WAR most people complain about zerg vs zerg.
In WoW most people complain about arena.
So what exactly people want? Guild Wars style 15 vs 15? Well actually that was quite good from what I remember but quite hard to pug – but so is PvE raiding.
In my opinion esport competitive “things” like arena just do not have place in mmorpg. They work great in “proper” games like Starcraft but in mmorpg where you have a lot more RNG, gear and combo problems it is bound to fail and create ocean of QQ.
But sooner or later arenas will become failed experiment from the past, Blizzard already stated that they will go away from that type of end-game PvP or at least provide some kind of alternative to it.
@Fugazi: For me, yeah 15 vs 15 would be better. Or even 24 vs 24 or 48 vs 48 — after that more numbers don’t feel necessarily epic to me, just crowded and more likely to lag (or in the case of WAR lately, crash the zone *d’oh*).
A big element is that the two sides are relatively balanced, but what I really want is more strategic and tactical gameplay. So any mechanics to break up the zergs would be welcome.
I say this having never played DAoC much– I think WAR would have hugely benefited from having three factions instead of two. In the lore, I wouldn’t have seen a problem with Order, Destruction and Chaos instead of just Order and Destruction.
Three sides could even the strategy / activity out a lot more without necessarily having all sides equal.
I don’t mind BGs / Scenarios / Minigames, so long as they’re one-shot and not about an e-sport ladder. But arenas are way too e-peen e-sport for me. Even as it is, people farm their stats in Scenarios a bit too much and don’t always participate in the objective.
I think a lot of people are right that WAR will eventually settle down into more interesting RvR just from the playerbase itself evolving to strategic gameplay most enjoy more. Maybe I’ll revisit WAR later if / when that happens.
Arena’s are the ultimate “stick and carrot” style of gaming. I personally hate them, even when I win so I cannot even force myself to do the 10 games per week. I’ll settle for lesser gear and limit my PVP to BG’s, world PVP, and Wintergrasp.
Keen, as far as I know DKs are scaled towards lvl 80. So mostly at the lower levels, 55-65 they really hurt/are considered OP. But that evens out a bit the higher you get.
Altough I leveled my Druid till 77, then quit and started from 58 on my DK who is now 78. While my Druid remains at 77 for the time being. Have 0 HKs on my DK aswell. PvP is dead.. it was waaay more fun in WAR. Altough the keep sieges went a bit stale at some point after healing everything.. feels like you don’t contribute to the fight 😡
Bla bla buggering off now :p
I am confused about some of the attitudes present in this post and some of the comments. What does it matter that wow is played as an esport? How does it affect your or my enjoyment of it?
Many games such as DoTa, UT3, Quake, Starcraft are all esports, but I have never heard them referred to in the negative manner that you all speak regarding the Arena. This is does not make sense. A game is an esport because it is fun and relatively balanced.
That leads into the comments that wow is not balanced, and that WAR is more balanced. This is pretty much pure opinion as it is comparing apples to oranges.
I played WAR and enjoyed it and is pvp, however there is certainly less class differentiation in WAR compared to WoW. The archtypes are different, but the other roles in each type are very similar. IE most of the healers have the exact same heals and healing capability.
Many call WoW unbalanced but fail to recognize how hard something like an Arena is on balance. It has been compared to observing balance under a microscope. The fact it holds up like it does is remarkable considering the large class differentiation.
WAR does not have a similar mechanic. How in a 50v50 keep siege can you even compare class balance. It is just like the days of WoW fights at Tarren Mill. No one had a problem then because you could not tell.
I wish people would stop throwing around phrases they see other people use and think more about comparing two similar but different games. WAR does not compare directly to WoW in many things, most especially pvp. Readers of this blog should realize that.
[…] has expressed his dislike for WoW’s Arenas and I mostly agree. It’s the ladder that irks […]
@Anger; See my blog link above for my full opinion on it, but in short yes, e-sports totally affect gameplay and especially player behaviour in the game– and it absolutely impacts my enjoyment.
I’d be happier with WoW’s arena system if it was just for the enjoyment, although like most I’d probably get bored of the barebones style of PvP encounters. Mind you, Blizzard probably did create the arena system based on the popularity of duels, which never had any sort of ladder tracking, rewards, etc..
After 3 years I left WoW, because it felt less and less like a place to adventure and have fun in, and more of a place of e-peen comparisons and competitive ladders. Many players bemoan the attitudes of WoW’s populace. I feel there’s a direct correlation to the e-sport direction Blizzard has taken.
I have absolutely nothing about e-sport, nothing about arena on tournament servers where everyone have access to any class and equal gear so skill is what matters.
However I have a problem with arena being practically only source of best PvP gear on live servers. So if you want to be competitive anywhere you NEED to play arena. If you don’t have FOTM class/combo you are placed in disadvantage. You can’t even grind your gear slowly like in Season 1/2 because of personal ratings everywhere.
There is a loads of players that does not enjoy arena at all and they just want some kind of alternative to get proper PvP gear not some worst possible PvP sets two tiers behind best arena gear.
@Fugazi: Bullseye, major reason I left WoW behind. =)
Now if gear didn’t matter so much in the outcome of fights then I’d have no problem with them being inaccessible to me, but they do, and I get steamrolled by those in Arenagear only due to gear difference not skill ><
@Fugazi & Proximo: Imagine if they equaled that out. The e-sport nuts would be crazy offended if you could get the same or better PvP gear without a ladder or stat collection. They’d freak out.
Plus Blizzard would probably lose most of their Korean subs and you know how much they love those guys. I have nothing against Korea per se, but it’s a much different culture when it comes to competitive gameplay, I don’t feel at home in their games.
Blizz can do what they want to WoW and their Arenas, I just don’t care anymore. =)
Their goal is to create alternative way of getting arena gear for those who hate arena. Arena will stay that is for sure but I suppose we will see big changes to battlegrounds in future.
Basically main problem at the moment is that they cannot award arena-level gear for battlegrounds as people would just AFK for it in the cave.
Err, every Arena has special floating buffs that open up after a set time and allow you to see all invisible/stealthed units. From:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/arena/index.xml
“Shadow Sight: After 90 seconds, two Shadow Sight powerups appear on opposite sides of the arena. Picking one up will briefly let you see stealthed and invisible characters, at the cost of increased damage taken by 5%.”
See the above site for “maps” showing you where each such floating buff appears. Of course you still have to run around and spot the rogue but since there isn’t really much room to hide in and he’s moving at a much reduced pace it shouldn’t be such a problem…
I have a problem with the arenas because to try and make them balanced they nurf classes which hurts the PVE side. If they wanted to keep PVE players happy they should make PVE and PVP seperate. Your skills and stats and gear etc would change when you went into a pvp match of any type and revert once you left. They could balance the classes without effecting the PVE game. I play WOW for the PVE, quests dungeons etc. Blizzard has upset a number of us by nurfs that only balance PVP. SO Anger you should relize that Bizzards attempt at makeing an e-sport has hurt many peoples enjoyment of the PVE or the “real WOW game.”