3.0.8 and the Future of Arena

It's really no surprise that Blizzard decided to throw a curve ball at the last second with 3.0.8. Apparently, they figured that the DK "nerfs" would be enough of a crowd-pleaser to blanket the fact that they were implementing and completely re-designing the arena ladder mid-season; clearly they thought wrong.

Blizzard has been adjusting and fine-tuning the arena system since the day it was first implemented. The addition of personal rating, variations in rating requirements for gear(raising them), and to a lesser extent, their attempts at deterring win-trading, have all been positive in terms of bettering the competitive aspect of the ladder. Naturally, some of them were counter productive towards designing a system that was appealing to all player-types, but it at least allowed the ladder to maintained some level of "skill" and managed to create some incentive at the same time. Many of the hardcore players have feared that their diminishing level of hope towards a fair and balanced arena system would be crushed to nothing, and it seems that with the release of 3.0.8, this fear could become a reality. I can't say there weren't warnings though,

"...diminish the degree of skill required to be successful in arena, so as to encourage as many people as possible to participate and thus inevitably maximize their profit margin. they are well aware of the fact that they will alienate the hardcore pvpers, but keeping a broad perspective in mind, that's a cost they are willing to incur."

In case you aren't aware of where this quote is from, refer to this post.

Was their some legitimacy to my developer post? Perhaps, but it's still difficult to determine based on the fact that Blizzard has always maintained a sense of catering to the largest group possible, thus the quote is rather logical based on their own developing patterns.

The matchmaking change is great on paper, however the implementation and execution is another story. As usual, Blizzard is rather vague with any response relative to complaints, saying that they will be monitoring it, and that it could be somewhat finicky at first. Apparently it's been random enough that they've had to disable the arena entirely until they figure out what the hell they broke this time. Time to start handing out ******* trophies.

But that's just the beginning with this patch. Apparently there are rather substantial bugs all over the place (wintergrasp disabled, multiple multiple glyphs not working etc.) It really makes me wonder if they completely rushed it. There are relatively serious bugs with almost every class. I had no idea they were even capable of doing this when some classes in question had only 1-3 simple changes as it was.

However, my biggest concern is what this new matchmaking system will actually be made into once it's fixed and working properly. Although who knows how the hell they're going to fix this one, it's massive. Assuming they do though, I think at this point, it's a safe bet to make that the final product will undoubtedly somehow make it easier for your lesser talented players to achieve high ratings with much less difficulty. This can be assumed based on the WotLK changes that have lowered rating requirements, allowed access to the best PVP gear via PVE, and the underlying damage issues plaguing the game right now. Not only that, but it seems that now personal rating and team rating will be mismatched, and the actual points awarded will undoubtedly be too generous.

While this really won't matter that much because bad players gaining access to good gear with little effort doesn't magically turn them into good or even decent players, there is reason to be concerned. There is no doubt that gear being equal among all competitors is far from a bad thing, however, this, in combination with an arena oversaturated with damage, unbalanced classes, and buggy maps, could become an issue. What little skill was involved in the arena before, is now diminishing at an alarming rate. There are gimmick setups right now that will take down any team, regardless of your next to flawless record. A crit can change it quickly. Although I'm sure the delusional majority will dub this as skill.

The biggest issue I can see becoming significant, even in the eyes of Blizzard, is that I'm not so sure that their biggest consumer base (casuals) will maintain contentment with the arena itself. Why? Well, the biggest incentive for casuals is getting the gear itself. Most of them never even saw shoulders in s4, where as the hardcores get the gear, and then are much more concerned with the competition itself. Since competition barely exists anymore, both hardcores and casuals will have little desire to compete just because 80% of the time it's easily the most frustrating thing to do in the game, and they'll already have all the gear they were playing for in the first place. Everything else will be such a ****-show that even the small amount of bragging rights that existed before will become meaningless. Ratings really mean ****, after all. Oh, whoopty doo, you have a title that isn't going to mean anything anymore because it's effortless to get anymore.

Tournaments really are the only possible way to distinguish skill, but season 5 is a far cry from the balance that season 4 had, and there is no reason to believe Blizzard will change any of the myriad of serious issues to the point where tournaments will actually be anything but rolling a dice to determine the winner. Without balanced classes, there's no hope for anything really in terms of future tournaments and competition. Maybe in time? Who knows, but it's hard to say that Blizzard really valued the potential e-sports side of the game at any point before, so why change now?

Anyway, at this point it seems like there's one solution. It's not a change to resilience or any wise-minded intelligent change that so many players have suggested. Rather, it's continuing down this terrible path until everything hits rock bottom, and there is little to no order with anything competitive. WoW will not die for a long time, and there's no arguing that. But once the casuals are pissed off, the game will see changes due to an actual drop in subscribers. Again, the only way I see it happening and Blizzard makes serious changes, is when everything becomes to trivial for the mass majority of players. And in reality, it's really not that far off. Every PVE encounter right now is puggable, so toning down arena requirements is the next step, but I personally think that this will hurt the longevity and replay value of the game, which will in turn, start affecting even casuals.

Everyone can theorycraft, everyone can make suggestions, and everyone can cry that the game is unbalanced and a far cry from what it used to be. But until numbers start dropping, I don't think Blizzard wlll make any serious, drastic changes. It could never happen, but I think that is a reality that many players have to come to terms with, and just aim to be the best in whatever constricted system they can pull the most enjoyment with, be it PVE or PVP.