Giving PvE players their own Arenas
Here's an interesting idea that's cropped up on the official forums: PvE arenas. In short, the idea is as follows:
- Round up four of your friends and form a party.
- Talk to the PvE arena master and get dropped into a cage match with a random dungeon boss from classic or BC, tuned up to level 80.
- If you win (that is, the boss dies before the last member of your party), your PvE arena rating increases. If you lose, it decreases. Bosses have their own rating, which develops week-by-week similar to players', so beating the harder bosses will do better for your score, and they'll try to match your team up against bosses that are an appropriate level of difficulty for you.
- PvE arena points are earned just like PvP arena points, and can be spent on rewards in a similar fashion. An alternate suggestion (also by the OP) is to reward badges based on PvE arena rating, which I think is a better idea, as well as being easier to implement, because it ties into the existing badge system.
Even Tigole thought it was a "cool idea," so there is the ghost of a chance that we will see it in a Wrath content patch. I would definitely enjoy the chance to make a quick pass at a boss or two with four of my friends, and get some extra badges for it at the end of the week. It would also be really fun to get to face some old bosses again, especially given Blizzard's steadfast refusal to implement heroic Deadmines.







Reader Comments (Page 1 of 9)
Lilpoker Oct 8th 2008 5:03PM
This reminds me of the MPG Trials from back in EQ.
WoWie Zowie Oct 8th 2008 5:57PM
hmm definitely an interesting idea. i'd be willing to give it a try too.
joggoms Oct 8th 2008 8:33PM
Based on the popularity of holiday bosses, I think it is very clear that players want a way to group up and quickly fight an interesting boss.
However, I'm afraid this concept would be looked at as 'too much fun' for players and therefore would never be implemented by Blizzard.
Sayce Oct 8th 2008 5:06PM
Pure Genius.
Do it Blizz... for all of us "carebears" out here ;-)
Manatank Oct 8th 2008 5:12PM
Honestly. This sounds like the most fun idea I've ever seen for WoW. Ever.
Kassu Oct 9th 2008 10:07AM
Umm, how does this sound good?
PvE arenas = Instances
Why would we need 2 of the same thing?
eROKv Oct 8th 2008 5:07PM
this is a great idea. like an amped up nagrand ring of blood. its infinitely scaleable and totally fixes the biggest problems i have with raiding: 1. hours and hours of pointless trash and 2. having to put up with 24 idiots for hours and hours.
PimpyMicPimp Oct 8th 2008 5:07PM
Except you would need a personal rating of 2250 to unlock this feature.
Sayce Oct 8th 2008 5:19PM
Lol, no doubt. They would make it a pain in the butt to become eligible, just because if they didn't all of their forum trolls would disappear.
jbodar Oct 8th 2008 7:51PM
Dude, you just made me snarf my Wheat Thins. Oww.
Xero Oct 8th 2008 5:07PM
I think this could have so push behind it. I like the arenas and this sounds very interesting and fun. +1
Clinton Oct 8th 2008 5:08PM
I personally think this is a great idea that I would love to see implemented. I think this would be a great continuation of Blizzard's raid philosophy to make it easier to group with your friends and not have to min/max quite so much. It would also let people who came in after BC, such as myself, to see old world content which is never a bad thing. All in all I think this is an awesome concept.
slunk Oct 8th 2008 5:09PM
Dungeons without trash clearing? COUNT ME IN!!
Runstadrey Oct 8th 2008 5:10PM
Great idea!!!
No more slogging through trash for 45 minutes before getting to a boss. What's the purpose of the trash mobs anyway?
VSUReaper Oct 8th 2008 5:41PM
The point of trash mobs is to give a chance at earning some rep (for raids that award rep), a way to offset repair bills, and allow for some lesser epics to be distributed. If you kept the random epics from trash and just them on the bosses table, you would either get 10 epics from the boss, or each item would drop less often. As any tank can atest to, Kings Defender already drops rarely enough.
And as someone else already stated - goody more welfare epics for the lazy wow player. Just what we need.
I would be more interested in this if we could use it to test bosses, as in I take my ten-man group and choose patchwork and go to town on him as a warmup/practice for a real raid.
Tarbh Oct 8th 2008 6:15PM
Pacing, perhaps context/flavour, time investment and something to work trough before reaching the climax of an area.
Respawns also deter unsuccessful groups from attempting something over and over, normally it's taken as a sign to stop and maybe work on things before running into the same brick wall again.
...... also rep and trash epics.
I would not remove trash, in some places I would perhaps modify or replace those which are particularly mind-numbing, but I don't think it's a bad thing that they are there.
However, the idea of a PvE Pit does sound quite good, I would love to see what kind of fun they can put behind it. They could even bracket it too, 3 man encounters, or even 2.
But one thing we learned from putting people in a ranked environment is they start to QQ even more hardcore about their viability in those situations, this is why we can't have nice things. :(
d503 Oct 8th 2008 6:16PM
The true point of trash is pacing. Rep and Trash epics are simply a method of making trash less painful.
If you had no trash in BT, the instance would take an hour or so, and frankly, wouldn't feel very epic. Also, the content would have probably havebeen cleared within days of release...
The only people that are annoyed by trash are those that generally don't have the time to progress raiding in the first place. This would be an awesome type of gameplay for those folks!
gridwerk Oct 8th 2008 7:55PM
"... people that a... generally don't have the time to progress raiding in the first place. This would be an awesome type of gameplay for those folks!"
I dunno, this would seem like a major shortcut and if it dropped badges then no one would take the time to get a group and run the instance the way it was meant to be.
Why go through the trash mobs or the headache of getting together 25 people when 5 of you can repeat over and over and over till you have all the boss drops and badges you could ever want. T6 would take hours instead of weeks to month to even years. People would be uber in the space of a sunday afternoon.
Born would be the 5-man guild.
superfrank Oct 9th 2008 7:33AM
also trash allows you to use some of your abilities that bosses are immune to!
Rugus Oct 8th 2008 5:10PM
Lovely idea... I personally don't like PvP and would love to see PvE arenas.