The new season 4 arean rating requirements have me seriously reconsidering buying a better computer and Age of Conan. I love World of PvP and often enjoy BGs. I want to be part of big epic battles where I kill Alliance (especially gnomes), not a 2 on 2 against other Horde in an arena match that is totally meaningless.

Except arena is the only way to get serious gear for PVP, which sucks for people who don’t have fun in arena. Raiding Stormwind is hard, why doesn’t that make me eligible for gear? Defending Thrall against 200 Alliance would be tough too so why doesn’t that make em eligible for gear? Because when I walk into Stormwind, I want as much resilience as possible. When I’m in AV I want as much resilience as possible.

These are my choices as I see them:

1. Spend many hours not having fun in arenas hoping to get a high enoughr ating to purchase some S4 gear. Then do the stuff I enjoy in awesome gear.

2. Do the stuff I enjoy in pve gear and the limited pvp gear I get from BGs. Basically meaning I have to be a rogue or a paladin. I’d like to play a shadow priest but their survivability in pve gear sucks. Eventually I could do enough BGs to get all S2 or better gear, but I don’t like grinding BGs…

3. Quit “world of arenacraft” and find a game that actually supports world PVP.

3 is lame because I hate starting over. I do have close friends playing AOC and if they say it’s cool I’ll have to consider it.

2 allows me to spend most of my time having fun, but pvp is more fun when I live and it doesn’t give me access to a lot of good pvp gear.

1 means I spend a lot of time playing a game and not having fun doing it. I might as well just work and earn some money while not having fun.

So I’m gonna try choice 2. We’ll see what happens.

Possible objections – I know some people will say that this is good because it rewards the serious pvpers. That is an exaggeration though. This system rewards the serious arena players. I am or would like to be a serious pvper, in battles with hundreds of other players. However for pvpers like me there are no gear rewards.

The rules we’re tlaking about by the way:

When Season 4 begins, Season 3 items will be reduced in personal and team arena rating requirement to:

Shoulders: 1950
Weapon: 1800

The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements:

Shoulders: 2200
Weapon: 2050
Head: 1700
Chest: 1600
Legs: 1550
Gloves: none
Off-hand: none

In addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement:

Boots: 1700
Ring: 1650
Bracers: 1575
Belt: none
Necklace: none
Trinket: none

The Season 2 items, which will move to the honor system when Season 4 begins, will continue to have no rating requirement.

Here’s one from Zazael – hopefully the first of many!

We just had an awesome world pvp event.

Lavianna and Diabolicus were in felwood killing some felpaw ravagers or something, pretty well mobbed up. Lavianna is 52 and Diab is 53. this…drum roll please…

level 70 draenei paladin name…lol…”Dethgiver” attacks me from behind while I’m mobbed while lavianna was also mobbed. The battle lasted like 3 full minutes. He took potion, bubbled, bandaged, all that…

I dotted him up and Lavianna was out of mana so she worked him with her wand. she bandaged once and potioned twice and ice blocked. I siphoned life, drained life, dropped one healthstone and one potion…we had him down to 10% when he killed me but I was soulstoned so I popped back up when he jumped on lavianna…must have freaked the shit out of him. God I love being a lock. Then I blasted him and ran around dotting him up again and emoting lol…we were running in circles around him laughing! it was fucking awesome. Finally he goes down and it all paid off. I cannibalized him while he watched, laughed, and spat on the ground. then we hearthed out to shattrath…sweet victory. We got 13 honor each for that. look up Dethgiver if you have time…rofl

Just a few ideas that Blizzard could do if they care about us World PVP fans:

Make honor kills in World PVP worth more honor than Honor kills in BGs.

Everyone knows that the only way to farm honor is to hit the BGs. Capture the flag is not half as cool as finding 3 Alliance in Tanaris fighting a scorpid and an air elemental (I was on Goldsong around 44, before the move to a PVE server) and killing all 3. Yeah they were at half health and poisoned or whatever, but still there were three of them and we were about the same level. It was amazingly fun but pretty much worthless in terms of honor. So instead of looking for more fun I go play more capture the flag to get more honor…

Have a real World PVP daily quest.

Standing in an empty tower for a few minutes is usually pretty boring. How about “Kill five players from the enemy faction in Terrokar” or something? Maybe they only count toward completing the quest if they are the same level as you or higher.

Have raid quests for enemy cities (with sweet quest rewards the first time and make them repeatable for honor and gold like a daily).

Have enemy leaders drop something meaningful.

What if a random person in the raid could come home with the Night Elf leader’s mount or something? Or an epic BOP? Or there was a chest with a buttload of gold in the boss’ room?

Have cool titles for players who have killed all the important enemy leaders.

Conqueror Goldsong or Conqueror Gnometosser sounds pretty lame anyway. And WTF is champoin of the Naaru? How about Champion of the Horde? That would be a sweet title.

Any more suggestions?

So a fiend (Diabolicus) and I (Gnometosser) are doing the escort in feralas and figure we’ll finish gathering yeti hides for mark of quality before starting the quest. So we finish getting hides and then come back to see someone has started the escort in the last few minutes. So do we wait for it to respawn or do we go see if it was an AF we can gank?

We go hunting and find Singleshot. We kill him. We go wait for the escort to respawn. Singleshot reses (out of range of my tracking) eat, drinks, summons pet, and returns. We kill him again, but this time he kills our warlock. We were in the middle of fighting a yeti when he attacked – the yeti killed my pet as I was finishing Singleshot and then me.

So we’re talking about how Singleshot is a good player and dishes out a lot fo damage. Looking at his armory (linked to above) we see a purple bow, lots of blues, +40 stam +12 agi on the legs, etc.

Now this was a good pvp expereince because I learned that my CC doesn’t work so well with a lock who like to dot everything. My traps and wyvern sting were pretty useless. That’s the best stuff in survival too…

So we return to our bodies and Singleshot is camping us. My friend decides to go get his main. I said well maybe he is just waiting to start the escort so I’ll res here once the escort starts and see what happens.

So he starts the escort, I res, he kills me easily (no pet, half health, half mana). So my friend is now certain that this calls for the main. I come back to my body and the Alliance bastard is camping me. I have nothing to do while my friend brings his main over so I res a few more times and they – I say they because he brought in reiforcements – gank me each time.

The reinforcements, Ferrisbueler laughs at me (well his targeting was messed up so he laughed at a yeti) after the 2nd or 3rd time they ganked me. I never have understood Alliance behavior – so a 42 rogue and 46 hunter were able to gank a 46 hunter right after resing? Grats?

Anyway, Zazael arrives and makes quick work of the Alliance bastards. It was pretty fun watching Ferrisbueler (I hate gnome rogues) run away as if he had a chance. The dots killed him before he got out of the cave…

So we had 2 meaningful pvp expereinces before the Alliance guys had to make it unfun. After we cleared them out we (me and Diabolicus) do the escort but somehow it fails – we lost track of the chicken at then end when we had to fight the 4 guys that jump you…

So I took Gnometosser to STV today at 43. I wanted to kill my shadowmaw panthers and stuff before I got too high level to make it worthwhile.

So I go to pick up my quests and a 39 druid takes me by surprise and kills me. Good job even if you do have stupid name Nelfdruid. Basically I was unable to get range and even when up close forgot to use deterrence / counterattack. And I clicked fire trap instead of freezing trap. So I got my butt kicked by a guy 4 levels lower than me.

It was a learning experience. My first World PVP in STV today was good even if I lost.

The next 10 or so were not so good. A 70 druid ganked me at Nesingwary’s. Nelfdruid teamed up with a 70 pally, Xtemplar. They ganked me a bunch of times. At Nesingwary’s at when I was killing Shadowmaws. Apparently Arena is not Xtemplar’s thing (even I know 1400-1500 ratings are nothing special) but ganking lowbies is something he can succeed at.

I also got ganked by a 70 rogue (another guy with 1400 ratings) and a 70 hunter (same bad ratings).

I wonder – do all Alliance punks who fail at arena come to STV to gank lowbies and feel better about their lack of skill?

Anyway, at the very end I found a 40 hunter. Close enough so I attack from my mount, without my pet. I put him to sleep with serpent sting, cast scare pet, summon my pet, and attack. I guess I was rushing things and not paying attention because he feigns death, gets up close, catches me in a freeze trap (only lasted a few seconds), and wtfpwned me in a shooting match. Well I had him down to about 20%. I didn’t lay down a trap – my mistake.

I res and he’s nearby so this time I am ready and things go much better for me. I didn’t scare pet or lay down a trap but I was ready for feign death, got him retargeted, and destroyed him. He had me down to about 600 out of 2600 health.

Another good world pvp experience because it was an even match that taught me how to improve my play. So my first and last were good experiences. But getting ganked by 70s 10 or so times in between was not real fun. I guess I don’t understand how it’s fun for the 70s but they kept ganking me over and over so I guess they enjoyed it – must be an Alliance thing.