After this I’m done commenting mmorpgs for a while, because as I already explained it only leads to more and more. And I don’t intend to waste my time.

I was reading some news about WoW’s arena’s system. And those news fit exactly the model I anticipated and that I summarized with this lame image:

Now it all looks obvious, but at the time it was pure guesswork as we were five months before the release of the expansion and the PvP revamp. Everything I wrote in that long post was quite correct and I remember on the forums I had to fight a battle because everyone continued to repeat that Blizzard learned from mistakes and that you could save up arena’s points, and so, ideally save up enough of them to buy the best rewards.

While I was saying that no, Blizzard didn’t learn a damn thing and that no matter what people expect, the arenas system was made by Kalgan for his need of being l33t. And so they were going to add some kind of reset system to make Arena’s reward truly l33t, either by resetting your points after each arena season, or by adding rank requirements.

My point: nothing is going to change. They are maintaining the status quo where a small subset of players have access to the best gear, while the majority sits at the bottom of the pyramid. So making the elite stronger, and the noobs noober(?).

And now I read of the two upcoming changes:
1- They are rising rank requirements for arena loot
2- They are stopping powerlevelling

I never participated in a single arena’s match, but I’m sad to see I was right. From what I read you can’t purchase arena’s loot with points, but you also have to maintain a certain rank. EXACTLY LIKE IN THE OLD HONOR SYSTEM.

From Tobold’s blog comments:

This will remove most people below 1500 now from the arena, creating a whole new playing field. And arena ratings on honor gear? Ridiculous.

It seems to me like the Arena has turned into what the honor system was at it’s launch. Something for the hardcore players. And of course as usual, the casuals will be steamrolled even if they’ve got a set two seasons below the current.

It seems that with patch 2.4 and this PvP announcement that Blizzard is returning to the WoW 1.0 model of hiding gear and patterns in inaccessible raid dungeons and behind PvP rating/ranking obstacles.

There will always be teams who win against better geared opponents because they outplay them. But this will get harder and harder. Just think about how much damage a S4 warrior will do to a S2 equipped cloth or leather wearer. With an equipment spiral like that, skill matters less and less.

And I’m writing this because I’d really want to see in the face those that FOR MONTHS argued with me. And then make fun of me if I point out to them that once again I was right.

The morale is in the article:

Saving your points (or even your honor) for Season 4 may not be as effective anymore though, if you can’t also muster up the ratings to purchase the gear.

Last Kalgan’s move to catassing. You know he is l33t. And you know where he’s heading with all this.

Then there’s the powerlevelling. Every idiot playing a MMO knows that it would be stupid to let a level 1 player group with a level 60 player and gain the level 60 player’s experience.

Apparently, considering they are fixing it now, Kalgan didn’t think of this:

Together, these rules (which Tom Chilton alluded to but did not reveal in a recent interview) should mean that a person cannot simply ride a high rating team to victory, but will instead need to fight their way up the ladder to gain points regardless of what team they join.

Because before you could group with the l33t and get their points/ranks. Which created the perfect opportunity to offer RMT to be up there for one turn, grab the loot, and leave.

And with this Kalgan made the last move to make arenas exactly the same of the past honor (catass) system.

Congratulations. You are back home.

Old summary:
– The Honor system is pure catass, players complain for two years
– Blizzard gives up and transforms Honor points into currency
– But doing that then every player will be able to eventually get the best rewards! *SHOCK!*
– So they nudge back the Honor system in the food chain
– And add on top an Arena system that is more Hardcore than ever and whose rewards dwarf everything that was in the game till that point