Agreed with some of the points in the OPs post, in spite of the other crap. Swtor as a general video game is fine, needs serious work to ever be more than that. Pro Tip OP, SC2 is like the most skill intensive game in the world. In Korea they have houses where people do nothing but place SC2 all day against other pros to get ready for tournaments, most of the serious "western" pros travel to Korea to train in these houses at some point in their career. As games go, SC2 is serious business. Don't recommend listing any SC2 creds unless you are GSL caliber or masters minimum

Right now they provide a brand new set that is better than the previous set that anyone can get. People like me are too lazy for that so mr. noob 85 actually starts a little ahead of me on gear. So this is no longer true. It is impossible for anyone to outgear anyone else on day 1 of the season unless they didn't even try to gear up....

This has been an interesting thread. Reading through all the replies I feel comfortable breaking everyone down into 4 responses. 1. Don't want areana because it puts balance under a microscope. 2. Do want arena but think the game needs to be tightened up and cleaner before it makes sense to try it. 3. Delusional about it killing world pvp or something similar. 4. Delusional about something with gear or something else that is wrong. I think 1 and 2 are both valid. Some additional thoughts - PVE did as much damage to PVP in wow as PVP did to PVE. That is really the hardest thing to reconcile about a game that has PVE and PVP as end game. - Arena was never about gear except for people to lazy to find out why they really lost a game. All of the gear problems that were real were powerful weapons and trinkets from raiding. Any way to prevent raid gear from showing up in rated PVP should be taken seriously by the devs. - I would be happy getting my gear one time competing with that indefinitely. If it worked that way you would get no complaints from me. My least favorite thing about MMOs by a long shot. Good luck convincing MMO developers to stop turning their game into a gear treadmill. Get over it, stop using it as the excuse. - People get gladiator with classes and specs that are underpowered every season. Fotm comps are a good way to get rival, anything above that you better be able to outplay people if you want to win. - It would be perfectly fine for the only rewards to be titles and maybe a mount. All the other stuff gets vendored eventually anyway, who cares. - Even if Arena were implemented some day, it would be a mistake to not treat it as a niche of PVP for the hard core competitior. Rated warzones should also already be live and equivalent rewards for similar ratings. - I can't take any desire for zerg vs. zerg PVP as "competitive" seriously just because raw skill required goes down as you add people beyond small group vs. small group. This type of gameplay is fun, it just doesn't need to provide any rewards beyond doing the lemming thing for valor.

Maybe they can put a huge bouncing red arrow over the tanks head that says Kill this guy

I think we are starting to understand huttball losses, nobody wants the ball.

If anyone has greens, I leave If more than 2 people go left in Alderran, I leave If anyone dies in fire or acid, I leave If my team isn't mostly Sorcs/Sages, I leave If everyone on my team isn't a Battlemaster, I leave If someone doesn't heal me, I leave If I call inc and 10 people don't show up to help me, I leave If any non-stealth go right in Voidstar, I leave Just kidding, I have no idea why people rage quit all the time in PVP. They claim to like PVP, but you would never know that from seeing how they act. You will run into this in any game I have played, just a lot of bad losers in the world I guess.

It depended on the state of the game. I played Warrior, no reason at all to wear PVE gear in TBC. ArP was just too good in WotLK to pass up (PVE gear from raiding). Cataclysm back to no reason to wear any PVE gear except maybe a supertigerbloodonkulus trinket from the easy mode raids. In addition to the challenge of balancing classes for PVE and PVP this is like the other side of that coin. Keeping PVE gear out of rated games PVP is not going to be easy. It's not fair to raiders to skimp on gear for them, and it's not fair to PVP to have PVE items be that good. This game already has some complaints about that with some 2 piece bonuses on the Rakata set. I don't know about specifics of which 2 piece. It's just part of that whole thing of having PVE and PVP in the same game where people do both. I am not jealous of the guys who's job it is to sort all this stuff out and make everyone happy lol.

Didn't say full PVE gear, said PVE gear. Weapons, trinkets usually.

You're fun, please keep posting these gems of wisdom.

They do wear the same gear. Your post basically gives away that you have zero experience with the subject. The overpowered gear all comes from PVE raiding and is by no means a guarantee that you will do well at all.

Guy stands there and lets you S key and keyboard turn around him while you beat no him with your Karazhan weapon, partner dead and hunter not peeling you at all. You sure it wasn't more like 1400? Do not post stuff like this please, I'm a nice guy and don't like to have to call BS. btw, this is what warrior PVP during TBC looks like for 2400 MMR. http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=158517 http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=159361

That was a good rating for the highest rated players in the game on BG9 in TBC. Why do I think you are making stuff up on the internet.

If Arena was really 99% comp, then the guaranteed way to get Gladiator every season is really simple. You and two of your buddies roll new characters a month before the next season starts for whatever the fotm comp is going to be. Plenty of time to get to max level and get the new starter set to start working on your free Glad title. Wait that doesn't work? You picked the right comp, and started on equal gear. Amazed you aren't going to Blizzcon. Maybe it's because there are players that can do stuff like this http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=198629

It is usually more in class abilities where the problem is. Example healer X is very good in PVE but terrible in Arena/PvP. You have to be very careful on how you buff healer X for PVP so you don't make them the only healer people want for Nightmare mode.

The problem is not whether or not you enjoy a type of gameplay. People really don't care what your personnal preference for PVP gameplay is. The ideal design is for there to be several ways to PVP competitively and you can pick the one you like because the rewards are equivalent.

Eve looks dumb.

Main reason I don't play Rage is it is a dumb spec that is very easy to shutdown by anyone that is awake. For Rage to do good damage you need to be fighting clueless people. Are we really playing a game where anything that you can't counter completely by accident needs to be nerfed? Wait, don't answer that.

That isn't the point of arena. At low ratings, sure there is a lot of cheese and it can deecide matches. You aren't going to beat any high rated team without outplaying them to a win.

First 5 posters only read the title lol.

Rage/Focus Juggs have a pattern for when they are going to use Smash/Force Sweep. Look for stacks of http://www.torhead.com/ability/93kzlR7/shockwave http://www.torhead.com/ability/c6KPeec/singularity Spam the 99 ways to stop a melee and focus them down, never take a crit Smash again.

So what happens when a Sorc friendly sees you in a stunlock and drops a Static Barrier on you and a few heals. Is it balanced if the team-play is where it should be for good teams/players? There is a reason this stuff is not as easy as "I died during X, BW must nerf!".

Game isn't balanced for 1v1. So if we use that "other game" as an example of why this is an okay idea but not really workable. I played several Warriors over 6 years and change. Terrible 1v1 class, amazing class on a team in the hands of a great player. At the top of our game there were several classes we could not beat 1v1 if played by good players, this was balanced because we were irreplaceable on a team. Bioware might crack the puzzle on how to do this, I'm not saying it's not possible.

I agree this is very annoying. These trolls would find something to say though, so ignore is the way to go. Problem is, often times where PVP is concerned there is some validity to a high rated player (not a level 10 troll) telling a low rated player they don't know what is and isn't overpowered or that their opinion on how something works is wrong. Take the example of Deathwish, it is very powerful if not dispelled. A high rated team will dispel it or CC the person 100% of the time. A low rated team might not even know you can.

Arena both provides solutions to old problems as well as creating new ones. If the only end game was PVP it would be easy to solve, Blizzard would have locked this down a couple of expansions ago. The problem is keeping everyone happy with PVE and PVP, a change made for the good of either almost invariably does something negative to the other. It's not really even about what Arena did to PVP, but what having Raiding and Arena did to each other to constantly create tough problems to solve. My position is that Blizzard's biggest mistake with implementing Arena was not putting in Rated Battlegrounds at the same time. Many people simply prefer that type of PVP, and they are a lot easier to balance for. Elitism, there is nothing a developer can do to prevent it. People who choose to be jerks will find something to do it over. I think a lot of people had bad experiences with Arena simply because it exposes everything you are not good at. You might be an overall decent player but don't communicate well, disastrous for Arena. Anything your team are weak at will reflect in your ratings. As a completely isolated way to play the game Arena is the most fun I have ever had, the most educational experience too. You find some good partners and start playing games and it is like a firehose of learning and improving, "synergy" in a way that actually means something tangible. It feels great and is rewarding on a completely different level from crushing bads in a Warzone. As for World PVP it existed in WoW until you could queue up for everything without actually moving your character. Anyone who was around for Isle of Quel'Danas (a PVE quest hub) can explain to you what makes world PVP actually work. The tl;dr here is that I love Arena but understand the problems with it in a mixed PVE and PVP game. If they seriously pursue it my recommendation is lots and lots of testing, and possibly isolating it to a designated "e-sport" or "Arena" sever per geographic region.