WOW, Season 4. Arena or GTFO

[Sunder]

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

Thoughts?

I agree whole heartedly, but understand what this will mean. It will mean a drop in subscriptions. It will mean a decline in Blizzard revenue. It will mean much wailing and gnashing of teeth by those who no longer have an avenue for free upgrades. I still think it's what's best for the game, but it is definitely not best for Blizzard's bottom line. I'm betting we lose this argument solely because of that.

[Jubee]

I'm on the other side of the fence, Cutlery. I've been 2k+ in every single bracket but the rating requirements on everything put the nail in my coffin.

My teams have all split up within the past few months. Mostly due to burnout from facing reroll teams that were caused by the rating requirements on the weapons/shoulders. So now I'm stuck with a nerfed class (Holy Pally) with only 1 legitimate bracket choice and no team. I can either beat my head against the endless wave of Dru/War in 2v2, stumble my way through 3v3 mana drain teams or somehow convince an established 5v5 team to let me leech my way to honor gear. Or I can not bother with any of that bullshit and hope Warhammer/Age of Conan don't suck ass.

The flaw with your AB example is that the retards on the other side of the map will also stop doing BGs, not just the retards on your team. My brother is a casual player that has just floated around 1400 and scooping up a new arena piece every month or so. Now he's not going to even bother. The 1500 players will fall down to his old spot. It's a domino effect from there. There won't be any incentive for people to fail, so they just won't bother. Pretty soon the only way to reach those shoulders/weapons will be to win trade with your alt team as there just simply won't be enough losers for you to win.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Jubee

The flaw with your AB example is that the retards on the other side of the map will also stop doing BGs, not just the retards on your team.

I've considered this. I've also considered the Horde dominance prior to TBC. Then, the Alliance had pretty much no reason to be there either. We 4 capped every game, 5 capped probably 20% of them. Yet they still queued. And oddly enough, queues were faster than they are now. They had no viable way to grind ranks as pugs, their premades were awful...and yet they were still in the game. I don't know why, but they provided an outlet for the unstoppable Horde ass kicking machine. I'm not so sure we wouldn't get that back.

[Sunder]

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

I've considered this. I've also considered the Horde dominance prior to TBC. Then, the Alliance had pretty much no reason to be there either. We 4 capped every game, 5 capped probably 20% of them. Yet they still queued. And oddly enough, queues were faster than they are now. They had no viable way to grind ranks as pugs, their premades were awful...and yet they were still in the game. I don't know why, but they provided an outlet for the unstoppable Horde ass kicking machine. I'm not so sure we wouldn't get that back.

The reason they still queued is because they still got gear. Granted it was slower than what the Horde side got it, but they still could get it. Therefore they did have a reason to be there. Now, you will be taking even that reason away. You will not get back what you once had.

[Adrain]

I'm honestly hoping these reqs go live and the entire system burns down to nothing but 25 minute arena queues necessitating a complete redesign rather then the endlessly annoying tweaks that have yet to address actual problems.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Sunder

The reason they still queued is because they still got gear. Granted it was slower than what the Horde side got it, but they still could get it. Therefore they did have a reason to be there. Now, you will be taking even that reason away. You will not get back what you once had.

I don't really consider the old honor grind "gear"

What was it, trinket at R2, bracer at 3, cloak or something at 4? That's not a great progression path for spending your day getting your ass kicked.

Maybe I won't get back what I once had. Maybe it'll only be people who want to be there. Maybe I only win 50% of the time, and I get some really good PvP out of the deal.

I'd consider that a win. Faggot rogues doing 60k damage in 20 minutes is absurd, and they can gtfo any time now.

[Adrain]

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

I'd consider that a win. Faggot rogues doing 60k damage in 20 minutes is absurd, and they can gtfo any time now.

Anyone looks like theyve been afk most of the match if no one comes after the node theyre watching.

[Araxen]

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

Now, hypothesis, follow with me for a minute here.

Pre TBC, the honor grind was intense. It was not a viable gear upgrade path. The best you could feasibly hope for if you had a job and a life was about rank 10 or so if you played REALLY hard. Most people ended up betweeen R6 and R8. Good enough for the Blue set. This lack of non upgrades lead to the only people being in BG's (generally) were people who were actually interested in PvP'ing, and had a geniune desire to win.

Fast forward to today, when I do 2 AB's, (and several yesterday) and absolutely can not get anyone to :

A) Stop fighting on the roads.
B) Defend
C) Stop Zerging
D) Do fucking damage
E) Attack/CC healers

Alot of times on Nightfall and I suspect many other battlegroups is alot of the BG's start out with a way uneven teams. It's a common occurrence to see 15 alliance vs 5 horde at the beginning of AB and this doesn't only happen in AB either. It's pretty common to see this in WSG and EOTS. Being down that many people at the beginning of a match doesn't leave much desire to "try and win". Blizzard has done nothing really to fix this problem so why should the players give a fuck? Heck, if they just change "hide" to "no" it would help a ton at fixing the problem but not totally fix it but it would be a start.

The rest of what you said in the above and in the rest of your post applies too. No D, fighting on the roads, the straight zerg to Van. It's pretty fucking annoying and it's always the same idiots doing it too and no matter how much you yell they still do it. It's frustrating as fuck.

[Agraza]

Couldn't they also change the join window and the game start times so that there is time for the original invitations to expire, by at least 30 seconds? 90 second chance to join vs. 120-150 second until start. If they get rid of hide they'll have to re-work the offer window a hair to allow multiple queues to appear in the same area, and that will remove a lot of convenience if you're doing something just then.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Adrain

Anyone looks like theyve been afk most of the match if no one comes after the node theyre watching.

That would require them to watch a fucking node. 13 horde at farm, being the only node we have, does not equal 60k damage.

I know what defense looks like. I know what a fucking hunter pet takes to kill, maybe you should shut the fuck up and quit trying to sound like you've got all the answers, k?

[Xequecal]

Originally Posted by Sunder

The reason they still queued is because they still got gear. Granted it was slower than what the Horde side got it, but they still could get it. Therefore they did have a reason to be there. Now, you will be taking even that reason away. You will not get back what you once had.

Under the old honor system, you got rank based on how you much honor you got compared to the other people on your server and faction. I made rank 13 pre-TBC, getting 5-capped at least 1/3rd of games and losing over 95%. AB was the only viable way to get honor, WSG had a 1 hour queue and AV had a 6 hour queue. There were at least five 24/7 Horde premades and zero Alliance premades. You could PvP for five hours straight and fight the exact same 15 people for all five hours, getting 5-capped or 1-4 loss every single time. The Horde premades were omnipresent, there was a two or three month period where several members of the top PvP guild NEVER logged off that I could tell. They were always on, I don't know how they did it. 6 PM they'd be on, 2 AM they'd be on, wake up early before work or school at 6 AM and check AH before going to school? Yup, they're still on.

[column]

Yeah the new honor grind is a joke,but I like it alot better. I can PVP a lot less but still get decent equipment. I just came back recently to casually play.

When WoW first came out I was so addicted I took my vacation time off work to get High Warlord. I will never do anything like that again, what a waist in retrospect.

One thing is we should be able to buy pvp pots without paying honor IMHO.

[Wilfan]

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

Thoughts?

Only join premades.

[Elvis]

Originally Posted by column

When WoW first came out I was so addicted I took my vacation time off work to get High Warlord. I will never do anything like that again, what a waist in retrospect..

freudian.

[Torrid]

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

I come to the conclusion that these fucking dipshits have no desire to play. No desire to get better, no desire to win. The only reason they exist in that BG is to get free fucking gear. I propose that this is the main change for the downfall of Horde PvP....people who previously would have no incentive to PvP are now in there shitting up the fucking BG's for people who give a fuck.

I say bring on the arena requirements for BG gear. I wasn't sure how I felt about it at the beginning, but I'm all for it now. This will require people to either fucking improve or get the fuck out. They'll need to learn how to play, or they're not going to have anything to buy. Either is preferable to the current situation.

I hear ya brother. I was pretty damn hardcore pvp wise for a long time, but the state of PvP in WoW has declined every patch to the point where it has ceased being fun except for rare and fleeting moments. Now a days a game I like to play is "count the 6k hp horde" in BGs. My 69 rogue in full "of the bandit" greens has 8500 hp.

People who don't care about winning are killing the fun of the game. Period. It's like playing Quake with teammates who don't try to kill your opponents. Blizzard made a system that, if not outright encourages losing, at least makes people not care if they win or lose, and that is poor game design.

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

I don't know why, but they provided an outlet for the unstoppable Horde ass kicking machine. I'm not so sure we wouldn't get that back.

That will never come back for two reasons: cross server battlegrounds and blood elves.

The Horde on PvP servers are generally much better than the Horde on PvE servers. This gap is smaller for the Alliance, plus PvE Alliance tend to have significantly better gear than PvE Horde, item level wise at least. Cross server BGs basically fucked the Horde.

Cross server BGs also killed any and all sense of rivalry in the game. Which is yet another reason to not care about winning. My PvP server never raced in AV prior to x-server BGs.

Blood Elves + gear reset also basically gave every shitty Alliance who wanted to play on the winning team reason to reroll. Now they have a model that is in the wet dreams of every mangina, plus another model that is very well suited for faggot Alliance players, and a way to easily catch up and start leeching off the good players in BGs.