Phase 1: Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, and Magtheridon’s Lair Raids will open Phase 2: Serpentshrine Cavern, Tempest Keep, and Arena Season 1 Phase 3: Hyjal, Black Temple, Arena Season 2 Phase 4 : Zul’Aman and Arena Season 3 Phase 5: The Sunwell and Arena Season 4
This Phasing is going to kill pvp early on. Early pvp gear are quite underpowered in terms of stats and res. If you only open season 1 when T5 drops this means arena will be dominated by T4 geared players and your honor pvp gear would mean nothing. Given the amount of arena points required to buy arena gear which means most players will need 2-3 weeks to even get 1 piece of gear. Soon enough even in S1 pvp will be dominated by T5 geared people and there is not much point to even get arena gear. Just imagine the first week of Arena Warriors will be smashing your mace in with their stormheralds and rogue mage in T5 1 shotting every healer. Given arena gear isnt that great for PVE until much later in the expansion, the best phasing in terms of balance between pve and pvp, having played in many TBC pservers in the past 5 years is this:
Yes this thread needs to be supported as much as possible. If blizzard currently rolls out their plan for the arena seasons, it will skew everything with massive unintended consequences in terms of pvp, which is a huge part of this expansion. Please support this thread and threads alike. We need massive attention to this.
This is really the only problem I had with all that was announced at Blizzcon. S1 really should start some time in P1, S2 in P2, S3 in P3/4 and S4 in P5.
That said, Technically TK, SSC and Hyjal were available during S1. Players just weren’t good enough to get through it by the time the seasons rolled over.
Bump. Should get a petition going perhaps. S1 not starting 2-3 weeks into P1 is absolute stupidity. There’s a massive number of players who are drawn to BC arena and will likely not raid. Pushing them to not play because arena won’t be available 3-4 months after TBC launch (if classics content launches are the parameter) is a huge mistake. Not to mention as already said in this post the gear alignments of PVE-PVP gear from the listed phases / seasons don’t line up correctly. I know blizzard thinks they know best, but just follow the BC private servers examples, they understand the PVP/PVE balancing perfectly.
Season 1 is currently scheduled to launch in P2 with TK and SSC according to there chart. So for the first tier of raiding there is no arena season.
Current Schedule:
Phase 1: Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, Magtheridons Lair and no Arena Season.
Phase 2: Tempest Keep, SSC and Season 1
Phase 3: BT and Hyjal and Season 2
Phase 4: ZA and Season 3
Phase 5: Sunwell and Season 4
What I am implying is that all the arena seasons (bar Season 4) are pushed back 1 phase.
Doesnt make much sense though. That would mean either your first season is much shorter, which wouldn’t make sense, or your first phase is 20 weeks of Kara which no one wants.
Nothing is getting “ruined”
It will obviously be available much sooner than 3-4 months. There is also some ambiguity there. Some sites are publishing that S1 starts with Phase 2, but others are publishing P1 which would make the most sense because we can probably expect P1 to be shorter than some of the other phases.
Classic timeline
p1 ony/mc - aug 26 2019
p1.5 dire maul - (early release) oct 15 2019
p2 world bosses/honor system - nov 14 2019
p3 BWL - feb 12 2020
Why would it obviously be available much sooner than 3-4 months? I’d happily do kara+gruul+mags lair+season 1 of arena for 3-4 months. However 3-4 months of this content without arena is just plain and simple bad for the game.
It would make the most sense to add arena S1 to P1 1 month after launch, much like dire mauls introduction. Although I personally would prefer it slightly quicker, more like 2 weeks.
Please release Season 1 DURING Phase 1. Have a slight delay in the release of it, and it will give people time to level up and clear some heroics and get some raiding in. Have something like a phase 1.5 for the release of arena! Arena is a big part of the experience in TBC and I feel like not having this out for months would really hurt some of the potential fun that could be had during the beginning times of TBC. I would love to see something like a 3 week delay for arenas to come out.
if classic TBC continues to be PVP dominated by min/maxers then that’s probably the end of ‘classic’ for me. thats not the classic experience or game and i tolerated it to a extent in vanilla classic.
but i think if TBC is allowed to be super fast cleared min/maxed…and things like the glaives become a common everyday sighting like thunderfury did. that’s probably it.
if they need to make changes to the classic game to adjust for the super try hard no lifes…then do so. I guess.
bump thread, s2 needs to be during t5 at some point (earlier better), t6 and s3 should also overlap BEFORE za release - the ideal situation is s2/t5 and s3/t6 are identical release dates, seeing as the PvP gear is not better than the PvE gear of the same tier, let alone the tier above it
I see mostly positive reception here, hopefully they see this thread and change it. Can’t imagine playing TBC for 2-4m without arenas. The PVP without it will be like P1 but worse, the WPVP will be suffocating for a lot of people considering how small the zones are even tho there’ll be layers. And then there’s just bgs. Everyone has to do bgs anyways the first week.