Tbh I actively dislike modern Arena. Has it’s moments but in the BC days your rating was just for matchmaking purposes. You didn’t need a certain score to purchase the gear.
That more than anything needs to go. Because it just kills any room for experimentation or casual play. Everyone just goes with the safest specs, talents and team comps as a result. Which makes for very formulaic, samey matches where the winner is frequently determined in the opening salvo.
Which is boring.
Then the end began. The bell began to toll, dark sonorous sounds that caused the sky to crack and rain to fall. Thirteen times it tolled. Each ring of that terrible bell made the clouds darker and the rain thicker, until the streets flooded leading sewer rats to emerge from their hiding to gnaw and nip at the overworld inhabitants, spreading disease and death like wildfire.
That stopped in Season 3 for weapons and shoulders. It ended up leading to the good staying good, and cookie-cutter combos dominating the meta so much that mirror matches were common.
They’re removing rating-locked gear in Dragonflight. It was always ridiculous. You needed rating to get gear, but you couldn’t get rating without already having gear, since you would face overgeared players at low rating. It was like forcing normal raiders to fight mythic bosses.
Because gear has always been the bait. In order to keep the entire PvP scene alive with all it’s toxicity and hate, you need to entice players into a setting where they are the content. Why would your average player join a battleground if they are going to get spawn-camped and openly insulted by some inbred Xbox-Live mouth-breather?
Honestly I wonder if Blizzard always advocates for PvP environments because they thrive off the toxicity that setting fosters.
Almost sounds like a Loa of Toxicity.
No slime cat mount in LFR. The game was made by and for elitist jerks.
that was the name of Ion’s guild in WoLK. That’s how he got his job in the first place. Blizzard went to him and asked him how to make WoW a competitor in the Esports Market. And look at how WoW has turned out 
No wonder it’s been so terrible these last couple years
It was the go-to place for theory crafting. The bannings were documented in a rather hilarious way. That said it had a big dudebro vibe going on.
I still <3 Alamo.
If I had know this a few days ago I wouldnt have subbed for next month.
Zarno’s banned till October for making a joke Wranduin thread on GD.
I guess making a Troll thread in GD that grows wings and flies to the Story Forum is a delicate thing. You probably need the right amount of faux jargon, and you need to scrub any obvious sarcasm.
But man these punishments are cray to the bizone. People have been getting more than a month for pretty innocuous and silly things.
I’m ngl the changes DF purports to make all sound really good.
But they also sound really obvious. And so I’m still very skeptical about all this. Because I’ve never seen a company have such a hostile relationship with it’s customers. It took months for Corruptions to be purchasable on alts which actively discouraged people from playing if they were done with their mains. And of course the Covenant system went awry in the precise way everyone and their dog told Blizz it would. To the point where it’s actually preferable to think of that ripcord as a lie because they alternative is they wanted the game to be that tedious and frustrating.
Not to mention it didn’t even make sense of the context of the story. All the Covenants are aligned, you help eachother out frequently, and they all had 100% compatible goals. There was no reason whatsoever they should care if you wanna go spend time in another clubhouse.
The last time I was thoroughly enjoying myself was at the end of BFA. Because thanks to the purchasable corruptions and ability to get gear through Horrific Visions, I got my Priest, DK, Warlock and Rogue up to competitive play levels.
Which meant I was never bored. Because the gameplay feel between those 4 are so vastly different as to basically be different games all together.
The real fun of PvP comes from mastering your class. Everytime I lose I can usually see where I went wrong. Should’ve popped this CD, should’ve countered with that ability, should’ve waited to cast that, etc. And eventually when you do get it down pat it’s an amazing experience. Because you’ll have moments where you’re just in the zone and are absolutely dancing around opponents. And also moments where you run into someone better, and you get reminded there’s still a lot to learn.
That’s the core gameplay thrill for me. Making it a gargantuan undertaking to even get to that starting level with more than one class is what pours sand on my fun fire, and I’m just disinterested in having that happen again.
Nothing I have seen warrants buying the preorder. I feel like the longer the leave us hanging they deeper the hole they are digging.
Blizz just nerfed the Dracthyr racial and made Dragonriding feel worse.
well, it seems like they are getting the kinks out now and not after 10.3.5 goes live.
Wah wah why is media so political?!
Meanwhile 1957;
Also CW: 1957 vocabulary.
The only harm Rod Sterling was making smoking look so god damn cool.
Me wretching and sobbing
I’ll never be him.
Well this was an interesting day. Doing some random dungeons/raid and two people recognized me and asked “are you Zerde from GD/the forum legend himself”(would have prefer of the Storm Forum but oh well), lolz. That was fun and a nice ego boost 
Got quite the reputation there eh zerde? I’ve had people recognize me from the forums before. All good interactions.
I promise I’m a lot a lot nicer when I’m away from this cesspit of a forum 