PvP/Arena has been a major success in WoLTK

#0 - March 18, 2010, 8:38 p.m.

I for one was very skeptical about arena in WoLTK based on what I saw in Early season 5, but Arena in my opinion is more balanced than it was in BC. Sure there are still imbalances (mainly between classes and specs). But some thing is that some classes/specs got some light they thought they would never receive (Retribution Paladins were really bad in Vanilla and BC, they're still not where they should be but are definitely 2200 viable) Feral Druids, Enhancement Shaman, etc. All the dps hybrids were respected in this expansion and for that I'm grateful.

They are not perfect, nor they may never be, but at least blizzard has shown that they are always on top of things in this expac. Swift fast changes were done whenever imbalance was called for. I think Blizz deserves a prize.

As opposed to BC, where swift changes were never made, I'm really impressed. This game has come a long way, and I look forward to future changes in Cataclysm. Thanks,

Sincerely,

A grateful customer.

Ghostcrawler

#123 - March 22, 2010, 9:37 p.m.

As a point of clarification, it isn't really a goal to push as many players as possible into Arena. We think the Arena experience probably works better when the players who are participating are the ones who really enjoy it. This is in contrast to say our raiding model where we are actively trying to encourage a lot of players to raid. The goal for Arena is for it to be really fun for the players who do enjoy Arena.

We think emphasizing Battlegrounds in Cataclysm will do a lot for the players who like PvP but don't like Arenas, and to be honest, the players still doing Arenas then might very well have more fun as a result.

Ghostcrawler

#163 - March 22, 2010, 11:27 p.m.

Q u o t e:
So when you say keep arena for arena players, I say, keep battlegrounds for battleground players, and reward them fairly

The model for rated BGs lets players choose whether they prefer Arena or BG (or a mix of both) and progress that way.

Ghostcrawler

#166 - March 22, 2010, 11:34 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Considering how much time you spend rebalancing the entire game because of Arena, this is surprising.

We spent a lot of time designing hard mode Arthas and for that matter Yogg 0 and Algalon too. If we targeted all of our content at the parts of the game the largest percentage of players are doing, then we would release almost all of our content for level 1-10 players. Obviously that logic doesn't make sense, but I'd argue neither does the logic that a minority of players participate in Arena, therefore the experience doesn't have to be a good one.

Ghostcrawler

#168 - March 22, 2010, 11:37 p.m.

Q u o t e:
The reality is that Arena is a balancing point for the entire game. Even if you opt to not Arena you can't avoid your PVP encounters being shaped by what happens in arenas. In a very real sense, you can't avoid the arena unless you avoid PVP altogether.

I think it's a fair claim that we spend most of our PvP balance effort on Arena (and most of than on 3 vs. 3). We do spend some effort on BG balance, and we're going to have to spend a lot more once you can earn the best rewards from BGs as well.

We don't spend a lot of effort balancing world ganking, because to be honest, those encounters are rarely fair to begin with.