Blue Posts and Other WoW News: Arenas, Arthas statue

by Adam Holisky Mar 16th 2012 at 10:30PM

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Blue posts

Nakatoir -- Arenas

Quote:

There needs to be a large overhaul of the Arena system.

We can see some reasons here why you feel this, but what is the over-arching reason for why you feel that the arena system currently does not function optimally and needs to undergo such dramatic changes? As of right now, I feel that the arena system works quite well. I am enjoying myself when I enter arena because of the competition side of it, as well as looking forward to both upgrading my gear more and ...hopefully...winning a title and mount at the end of the season :D

Quote:

So what should happen is that when you join Arena you get a full set of Gear and when you leave it, you no longer have that set

So you would like to see standardised stats and gear for all who enter arena so that the gear you have earned does not affect your performance? This could cause a large number of the PvP community to stop arena as they would no longer see a result of earning their new shiny gear, I agree that the standardised gear would make the playing-field more even but where would I be able to let loose with all of my awesome new gear? :'( How could such a problem be remedied?

Quote:

Thirdly, you have to start giving our desire-able rewards.

The reason I see that players aim to receive the title and mount is for the prestige that can be displayed with them. However if you feel that this can be done better through different types of rewards, what type of prizes for the seasons winners would you like to see?

Quote:

But anyway, lets get back on topic please!

I agree, this thread looks great so far, everyone. Please remain as constructive and on topic as possible, we do not want to see this thread become derailed or have any other similar issues, so stay on topic. ^^

-----

Quote:

You could give rating based gear that has diffrent colours? Just give it no stats so you can transmog into it to show off your rating you've achived?

So, you do not want your Arena gear to give any stats - just something you can transmog the gear you get from other sources into for the looks and your stats are standardised in your arena matches?

source

Sideshow Unveils Arthas Statue -- Pre-Orders Now Open

We were simply blown away when we saw the final painted prototype of Sideshow Collectibles' Arthas Menethil statue on our recent trip to their Thousand Oaks facility.

Blizzard Entertainment and Sideshow Collectibles are proud to announce this incredible new polystone statue that perfectly captures the former paladin's icy terror. Meticulously sculpted by fine artist Brian Fay (whose body of work includes the Headless Horseman and Arthas deluxe figures from DC Direct) this museum-quality maquette realizes the Lich King as never before at a massive 19 inches (482 mm) high, atop a glacier-blue base. Hand-painted, frosted, and finished with unique edition numbers, Arthas represents just the first in an as-of-yet undisclosed new series of collectible offerings for 2012 and beyond.

To see more images of the final piece or to pre-order the limited edition collectible (shipping Winter 2012 at a suggested retail price of $349.99), head on over to Sideshow's website.

source

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Noyou Mar 16th 2012 11:57PM

"You could give rating based gear that has diffrent colours? Just give it no stats so you can transmog into it to show off your rating you've achived?"

Translation: So you can show off how big your epeen is. Sad, sad, sad.

Lizenz Mar 17th 2012 12:39AM

At the end of the day, that's all people really do with their gear anyway. 2200 rating gear is bragging rights just has Heroic gear is bragging rights, I for one am all for standardizing PvP gear and making the rewards cosmetic. It resolves a lot of the issues people are currently faced with in PvP. Issues, for example, such as barrier of entry.

Scorfula Mar 17th 2012 1:48AM

I'm really not sure why people are always so negative about others wanting to show off things they worked hard for. You do it every day in your real life, and some people value in game achievements as much as they would from any offline hobby and why shouldn't they?

Is wearing your recoloured 2.2 set any different than putting your latest fishing trophy on the mantlepiece? You can argue until you're blue in the face about people being wrapped up in their in game worth but I maintain that WoW is a legitimate hobby and there's nothing wrong with wanting to excel at it and let others know you excel at it.

Noyou Mar 17th 2012 3:17AM

Showing off, in RL or in game is just so superficial. If you get off on that, more power to you I guess.

Killik Mar 17th 2012 6:31AM

There's nothing wrong with showing off your WoW achievements, if that's your bag. It's not something I like to do, but who can begrudge someone else the pleasure they derive from a fairly light-weight passtime?

Shrikesnest Mar 17th 2012 3:58PM

I dunno. For once, I'm kinda with Noyou. Kinda.

Yeah, alright, there's nothing inherently wrong with showing off some of your achievements from within your hobby, but there's a fine line between your reward being exclusive gear and your reward being the envy of other people, which is absolutely not healthy. An achievement that you could link would be one thing; "Check it out, guys! Unique achievement!" But gear and a mount that nobody else can get makes it explicit: the entire point is to fly around Stormwind/Orgrimmar and have people say, "Woah, I wish *I* could look that cool." And then to reply, "But you CAN'T! Ahahaha! Great job on working sixty hour weeks last year, LOSER!"

So to sum up: there's nothing wrong with putting a fishing trophy on your mantle, but strapping it to the hood of your car and driving around town yelling at people, "Hey! Look at my trophy! It took me hundreds of hours of sitting in a boat drinking beer to get and YOU CAN'T FUCKING HAVE ONE!" is a whole different beast.

Mycroft Mar 17th 2012 1:22AM

The ui for the arena system is still clunky - I have to tab out and Google for commands on how to quit/disband an arena team, which have to be typed instead of clicking buttons.

Do they really think the gear treadmill is that beneficial? Keep grinding away, week after week, in order to get the best gear, because if they normalize gear people wouldn't play? That only sounds like they want to delay the inevitable quit, instead of focusing on making it always fun.

Jebediah54 Mar 17th 2012 4:39AM

I only say this as a concerned citizen, but I'm pretty sure you can right click on your name when you're looking at your arena team to quit/disband.

Jyotai Mar 17th 2012 2:08AM

The number 1 reason Guild Wars is considered the top choice for MMO-similar PvP (not a full MMO, but super close) is because PvP gear -IS- standardized - and winning just rewards cooler looking gear.

In other words:

Yes, standardize the sets so anyone in an arena has equal gear to anyone of their class - and for a reward, give out super cool Arena only transmog sets that people can display in PvP or PvE. (if you have that set, let it be the look of your PvP standard gear. Let the basic PvP gear that people start with before earning anything otherwise look like 'greens' - generic to show that these folks ain't got nothing yet.

Result: PvP winners can show they are kings (and queens) of PvP by pure human skill alone, and not via eBay. When they want to stretch their geeky e-peen, its geeky e-peen they and others know they earned.

That's why folks are still playing Guild Wars arenas this late into that game, with no updates in content for years other than new fashion accessories. Because when you win there, it was you that won. Not your gear.

That's why I really have zero respect for even a top WoW PvPer. All that means is they can grind/buy gear better than me. But folks who beat me when I used to PvP in Guild Wars - I knew they were better than me, and the ones I beat knew I had something on them.

That gave a certain geek-cred you just can't earn in WoW. ;)

WoW pvp is fake-pvp. Its really just a gear race.

Vegetto375 Mar 17th 2012 6:17AM

Whir I don't PvP arena I think making progression be just about looks is a bad idea. Saying "Win PvP get good looking gear", however good looking is in the eye of the beholder. What is cool looking to one person may be ugly as he'll to another. So PvPers go "grind" your ass off so you can get worse looking gear than the person who rarely plays, yea! That's a great incentive.

Another problem I see is in order for those people to show of that gear they CAN'T transmogrified it. To show that you are advancing you got to wear gear you may hate and not be able to transmogrified even if that's something you enjoy. Would people play heroic raids if they offered no gear upgrades what so ever? Some maybe but I almost guarantee that a lot less people would do it.

Spellotape Mar 17th 2012 8:09AM

This is a pretty arrogant comment. What you're saying is you assume no one is truly better than you - they simply have better gear. Some people are very skilled at PVP regardless of the gear they have.

Nagako Mar 17th 2012 8:13AM

Yeah its not like WoW pvp has anything to do with skill. I know if I had the gear I'd be 2.2k in arenas.....

Greg Mar 17th 2012 10:54AM

Barring a few minor issues- a legendary here, an OP trinket there- PvP in WoW has never really been about gear.

It's true that gear makes a difference at low levels. A player in the latest season's top rewards will have a significant advantage over everyone else stepping into the arena without resilience. But that is for toe-to-toe, knock down, drag out, slug fest fighting. The gear does not do very much for changing the dynamic of team coordination, layering crowd control, target swapping, and game knowledge.

To that end, I've seen players step into the arena in vastly inferior gear, and beat teams with significantly more resilience and matchmaking rating (1200 versus 2400) and still win. They were able to do this because they understood all the tools of their class. They knew what abilities their opponents brought to the table. And they developed the reaction time and team coordination required to compete at high levels.

Nobody is fantastic when they first start to PvP. It took me 4 years before I was able to achieve some of the goals I set. Gear helped. That's why in one aspect, Cataclysm was great for PvP: gear is very accessible. We just need to amass the honor to get it.

But for all the gear I had, the largest part of reaching my goals was learning. I had to get in there, get bloody, and lose many, many matches and duels before I learned how to play my class. There is no substitute for practice. And if you aren't making the progress you think you should be, then seek out good players who are willing to observe, listen, and assist. They exist- really. But just like in real life, you need to go through a LOT of jerks before you find a decent person.

I know it can be frustrating to take a game so seriously, just for the sake of being competitive in PvP. But that is what the top players do. If you want to play with them, then you have to do it too. Gear won't make make you enjoy the game any more; only skill can do that. So get out there and develop it!

Langis Langley Mar 17th 2012 11:23AM

Well said Jyotai.

And a catch-all head shake at the fallacy-ridden nonsense people are replying to you with.

Disclaimer: I don't play GW PvP. But I do have a brain.

Greg Mar 17th 2012 1:10PM

I strongly suspect that neither Jyotai, nor Langis have been above 2300 rating in arenas.

If permitted that assumption, it's safe to conclude that their opinions on PvP are those of the novice or beginner. Beginners will frequently be thrown into battle against highly skilled players (who have gear because they took the time to earn it) and often mistakenly conclude the gear is the only difference.

This is the one true fallacy of the beginner. PvP is entirely different from PvE. As en example, Cataclysm's final tier of raiding brings 8 bosses. That is eight different fights to master. Each one takes analysis, an assessment of individual/group ability, and much practice.

Consider that WoW PvP brings 30 different class specializations to the game- capable of arranging themselves in many different teams. Furthermore, the synergy between teams greatly varies with their composition. Thus the number of possible combinations is vastly larger than all the boss encounters of an entire expansion. That is a lot of scenarios to master- it takes time!

That is why I am looking forward to MoP. The addition of another class adds more than just three specializations of complexity. Additionally, the introduction of base resilience will help to reduce the frustration that new PvPers mistakenly attribute to gear issues alone. Instead, it will help to refocus people on the real issue: practice and skill.

Let me also offer these words of encouragement. When people in arenas start accusing you, or your team of being bad, ignore them. Validating their comments with a response only feeds the communication. The person who says this is really just frustrated that the team lost. There's nothing wrong with being frustrated. Losing is not as fun as winning, generally. You are not bad. You are merely learning. Stick with it, ignore the jerks, and seek out people that actually help you improve.

Then one day, you might see them again on the battlefield- and when you beat them, you can show them how to win with class.

Stilhelm Mar 17th 2012 1:28PM

Exactly, Greg. I recently stepped back into arena on my rogue (over 10K HKs on that toon alone, probably pushing 50K HKs across all my toons, so not really a novice) with a priest friend. Our first match was against a frost/fire mage combo, and we lost. Sure, they might have had better gear. Sure, the match was frustrating because of the sheer amount of CC that team had against a melee. However, I was within a hair of killing one of them while my healer was still up, which would have been game over. And you know how many times I used Smoke Bomb? None! Had I remembered that one simple ability at the right time, we could have won the game. If I had been able to use my other cooldowns just a little smarter, we could have won the game. If *we'd* have tried pillar humping, we might have won. The list of things we could have done better goes on and on. We didn't lose because they might have had better gear. We lost because we could have done a lot better with our skill.

I know very well that even if we had the absolute best PVP gear on our rogue/priest (so comparable gear to those at the top), we still wouldn't be competitive at the top, perhaps not even for the whole season. We have too much to learn, to many mistakes still waiting to be made and learned from. We have too many games to lose, astounded at the things the other team was capable of. Neither of us are really hardcore PVPers, so we may never get to the top, and we know that. It doesn't mean we won't have a lot of fun anyway. Those frustrating losses are more than off-set by the epic wins. And when we barely squeak by on a win against a team, and meet them again next match and beat them soundly, it feels good to know that instead of them figuring out how to turn the tables and defeat us, we learned how to dispatch them more effectively.

Langis Langley Mar 17th 2012 3:19PM

PROTIP: When someone calls out responses as being fallacy-ridden, it may not be wise to use a logical fallacy in retort, like "I suspect they've never hit X arena rating."

Jyotai would be correct no matter what his rating, whether he was a WoW beginner or the best PvPer in the world.

Stilhelm Mar 17th 2012 5:50PM

Langis, those of us that have done more than a little PVP know that gear isn't the only reason people hit 2300+. And if someone is good enough to hit 2300+, they will have learned by then that gear isn't the only thing that matters as well.

In any case, if you're so eager for WoW PVP where gear is a non-issue, then check out the Arena Tournament server when it opens again in May. I'm sure you'll be top-ranked in no time!

Langis Langley Mar 17th 2012 7:13PM

Nice strawman, but as valid as any other strawman.

Though I should know better than to not expect another strawman fabricated out of what I'm about to say, here goes:

Yes, skill still matters despite gear imbalance.
No, that doesn't even remotely defeat the argument for a level playing field.

Brazillian soccer players don't get rocket cleats, multiball, and 3 goaltenders. There's a reason for that, regardless of whether or not Rob Pardo wants to see it.

Greg Mar 18th 2012 10:54AM

Langis, I'm cont certain you understand the terms 'strawman' and 'fallacy'. You've now casually thrown them out, without illustrating your point.

The level playing field has been in place for years now; the arena tournament Blizzard hosts. Do you participate?

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