Hello everyone,
There’s been a couple of threads now attempting to address the frankly abysmal arena participation numbers we’re seeing in WoTLK classic. I would like to make this thread to offer some suggestions to the developers on the matter.
To preface this and give some credibility to this post, I have gotten Gladiator every season of classic thus far, and am currently in the top 100 at 2300 in 3v3 arena on two characters. I reached gladiator last season on both my mage at 2916 in 3v3 and my paladin at 3244 in 2v2. While I raid multiple times a week across my characters clearing 5/5 heroic 50 attempt runs, I mainly play this game for the PvP aspect. I’ve been playing WoW off and on since 2005, and have been playing classic non-stop since Nostalrius came out in 2015. I love classic WoW, and I love classic arena. I’m not an amazing player by any means, but I would like to count myself among the most dedicated of players currently doing arena.
With that out of the way, I would like to share some ideas that the upper-end arena community rather largely agree on.
- Rating requirements on PvP gear
Arena rating requirements originally were designed as a sort of carrot on a stick mechanic. In the old days seeing that gear on a player was something to envy, something to aim for. In these days, it’s not so much anymore. In fact, it’s become a major deterrent to the average player attempting to step into the arena. Currently, the challenger cutoff which indicates the top 35% of players above 1000 rating is sitting at 1650. That means, at minimum, 65% of the player base(it’s more) does not have access to the majority of the current arena set. This leads to players feeling discouraged, as attempting to compete with worse gear isn’t fun and leads to many simply giving up. A vast majority of people who play arena simply do it to get better gear to do battlegrounds with. Since they can’t get any gear outside of gloves and pants, many simply do not bother engaging in this content.
- Honor gear being 2 sets behind
This is actually something that many players do not even realize. The current honor set, deadly, is 38 item levels behind relentless. I want to express here as an experienced player that gear this far behind will mean you get absolutely obliterated when facing players with even furious gear. The stat difference is massive, unlike TBC where it was minor between seasons. If you’re attempting to push rating, it becomes harder and harder the closer you get. Unless you’re a gladiator level player, you most likely will struggle attempting to climb being so far out geared, and may simply give up.
- Lesser quality gear for arena points, such as furious or 245 1800 weapons
These items being on the vendor for arena points are an absolute bait tactic. Spending your hard earned arena points on gear that is outright inferior will always feel bad, no exceptions. The idea for people who cannot reach the rating requirements to spend their points on the last seasons gear as a stop-gap is good in theory, but once you factor in how long it takes to get arena points it becomes frankly obvious how bad of an idea it is. If you do buy the inferior, last season’s gear, then you will find yourself in a situation where you flat out do not have the points to buy the current gear when you do finally reach it, leaving an ever more bitter taste to contend with. The 1800 and 2200 weapons for example cost the exact same amount of points. I don’t know about you, but spending 3-4 weeks farming an 1800 weapon that is flat out inferior to any weapon out of the heroic raid feels very, very bad. This is especially true once you think about how easy heroic ToGC is.
With these points laid out, I’d like to suggest a couple easy-to-implement changes that would vastly increase arena participation and encourage new players to step into the arena.
- Removal of rating requirements on all main-set items, caster off-hands, shields, relics/totems/librams, and wands/thrown
- Furious main-set & furious 238 weapons for honor
- Reducing the 258 weapons to 1800
- Reducing the furious 252 weapons to 1600. This would upgrade to the 258 weapon for a small additional cost of arena points.
- Reducing the relentless 245 weapons to 1400. This would upgrade to the 252 weapon for a small additional cost of arena points.
- Removal of the accelerated weekly MMR inflation added in S5, as it is no longer needed. Normal inflation should remain to encourage ladder activity.
- Double the daily BG & quest wins to 50 arena points each.
The above suggestions would dramatically encourage new players to enter the field. A solid starter set is easily farmable for honor, and the major goal of weapons is readily obtainable. These weapons are similar in power to the 1800 weapons in TBC. They aren’t BIS in PvE, but are strong enough to encourage players, especially alts, to engage in arena gameplay. They’re also layered to give that carrot-on-a-stick feel, and to encourage players to continue progressing upward. These are more closely similar to the difficulty in acquiring a weapon from the current raid tier, which is frankly very easy. The additional daily quest win arena point reward will help as both a catch up mechanic and to encourage more BG participation. The 6th suggestion is mainly for the upper-end players, as the endless inflation adds some serious detriments to end-of-season title pushing that results in the entire season being irrelevant. More players engaging in arena will by default increase the competition for title spots, as more spots will be available with the increased player pool. These changes will also have a two-fold factor of encouraging people to roll more alts, which as always are the lifeblood of WoW as a whole. This game is the most lively when gear is easy to get and alts are abundant. ToGC is honestly turning out to be one of my most favorite raids yet, as it’s quick and relatively easy compared to the slog that was Ulduar. This means I have the time to run it on more characters then I otherwise would. The same situation can be true with arena.
I sincerely thank everyone who bothered to read this far. I truly believe reducing the barrier to entry would do absolute wonders for player participation. I know the WoTLK arena meta isn’t fun for everyone, and that’s OK. More casuals dipping their toes in would do wonders for the entire community, even if they decide arena isn’t for them. If anyone has any questions on my experience, or the opinions of the higher-end PvP community in general feel free to ask.