This isn’t meant to sound inflammatory and it’s not at all a hate message. It’s a show of supreme dissapointment at how the custom arena idea has been implemented. Custom Arenas were supposed to be something everyone could enjoy (I assume) and a way for people/guilds to play with their friends without the complications/zerging of hotjoin or the “seriousness” of tournaments. Instead, we got something more like this…
- Anet: Hey guys! Custom Arenas finally dropped, enjoy!
- Me: Haha nice! I can’t wait to fina-… wait. These cost gems?
- Anet: Yep! =D
- Me: But.. Um, I play 95% PvP. I don’t have much gold to convert to gems.
- Anet: Oh that’s OK. Half the cast of Street Fighter can’t even afford shoes. You’ll get used to it.
- Me: Er, well.. Does that mean we’ll be getting a chance to earn Gems from Tournaments again? That’d be awes-
- Anet: Nope. =D
- Me: … OK, how about gold? It’d be awesome to know that I still have some form of
progression for my character in PvE bec-
- Anet: Nope. =D
- Me: …. Should I even ask if Laurels-
- Anet: Ha! Yes! You can use your Laurels to buy Unidentified Dyes which you can then sell for gold! We strive to make it easy and seemless for players to blahblahblah.
- Me: …
- Anet: …Just pay us the ’effin cash, dude.
- Me: Fine! Here! /creditcard
- Anet: Thanks! You are now the proud renter of a Custom Arena! You blahblahblah
- Me: Um.. Renter?
- Anet: Yep. You can now buy time cards every month for MORE gems to keep your custom arena open.
- Me: I. Have. To. Pay. A. MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION!? FOR A FRACTION OF THE ENTIRE GAME!?! THAT DOESN’T EVEN GET HALF AS MUCH CONTENT AS PVE!?!?!?!
- Anet: That’s a lot of exclamation points and question marks.
- Me: OK, well I guess I can afford to keep this going for a month, then take a break, then come back to it when I-
- Anet: Actually.. If you don’t pay on time, you lose the arena and have to buy a new one.
- Me: /weep
- Anet: There’s sparkly-luxury-tissue paper in the Gem Store too. =D AND a self-playing-pity-violin!
Please please correct me if I’m wrong about this. It feels really backwards that the people who focus mostly on PvP, and thus don’t have much cash, have this carrot dangled in front of them. Its not so bad for guilds, obviously, but still. What was the intention behind this Custom Arena system?
