Yeah I know there's an arena thread somewhere below this one but I really need to have the first post here. And after reading the replies to that thread, all I can say is wow.

People make such sweeping subjective claims about arena it is absolutely ridiculous, if this were the first MMO forum where I had seen this I might be even more surprised, but unfortunately I'm not. Rather, I am just disappointed with the community.

"Arena killed WoW" - Obviously not true at all, it was INCREDIBLY popular during the first expansion, with participation numbers cutting in about half with each subsequent expansion (but just because Blizzard kept making more bad changes than good ones to the arena as well as class balance doesn't mean Zenimax will, and if you already don't trust them to do a decent job developing the game then why are you even here?).

"Cyrodil is better" - Maybe for YOU? Some people like to have alternatives, and get bored repeating the open world zerg fest occasionally. On a map so large, from a statistical standpoint it may take quite a bit of effort for smaller groups to find other similar sized smaller groups to skirmish against for fun, and in order to draw the attention of those other groups you will probably have to grind up on some chump guards for awhile (YAWN... BORING - for me at least).

Don't get me wrong I love MMO-PvP in general it is the origin of addictive multiplayer gaming for me, so I will participate in and probably enjoy Cyrodil as well as any other form of compelling PvP that zenimax decides to include. But I don't understand why more options hurt... if ESO fails and there is a shortage of PvP activity in Cyrodil then MAYBE you'd have an argument for arenas pulling players away from being able to populate the larger sized battles. But again, that means you're operating on the assumption that the game is going to fail, don't forget, this is a mega server and you can hop around different instances of Cyrodil with your friends. It would have to fail PRETTY BADLY for you to not be able to find ONE map where there are actually players. Also, don't ASSUME that just because during a couple of expansions in WoW, arena players had access to better gear than the rest of the PvP players, that you would see the same thing here. On behalf of all of the scum over at Arena Junkies, I can assure you that gear is the least of our worries. We fight for trolling rights and prestige (ladder positions / mounts / titles / visually different gear), things that are rare and limited to the best players but that do not necessarily have to have any effect on actual power, we CRAVE balance because it allows us to test our skill with as few random exterior factors interfering as possible, so why would we want to create an imbalance? And if you don't think elite guilds who dominate in Cyrodil as they gradually get all of their members emperor status are going to brag and start drama with all the other angry jealous nerds then you are KIDDING YOURSELF.

The prime reason I want arenas? BALANCED SMALL SCALE COMPETITION. When I say balanced I mean group size, so no making excuses like "oh well it was a 3v5 and we were fighting on their territory where they had guards so that's why we lost". As for the importance of the small scale, in a 3v3 for example (the main bracket in WoW arena) you personally are 33% of your team's power. You are FAR more responsible for the victory or defeat of your team than you would be in Cyrodil where you're just a measly ant. You can make the whole "well you should be playing for fun win or lose" argument, but to that I say WINNING is more fun. And situations where I have more control over the win or loss are preferable (and therefore more likely to be fun for me) to ones where things are out of my control. In small scale PvP you can observe your personal mistakes closely and make changes that can actually yield REAL results on the next go-around. Sure, large guilds can try to do the same thing on a larger scale in Cyrodil where they coach their members after a battle, and that's great. But don't condemn arenas just because you've had a bad experience in WoW or wherever it is that you came from.

Which brings me to my next point.

I could be wrong and this is probably going to sound very pretentious, but I as a long time WoW arena veteran (2.6K rating, around the top 0.5% of the ladder but yes there were still many better players than me) have heard these anti-arena arguments from so many people at this point (across different mmo's, two of which were on the fence about including arenas due to the player response to the idea) that I feel I can say this without being too far off from the truth; most people who DO say they enjoy PvP but DON'T want an arena system in their MMO, are only or at least primarily opposed to arena simply because they svck at it and they know it but don't want to have to face that fact (which in my opinion is both hilariously trivial and cowardly, because if you don't want to play it then don't, or if your lack of skill actually bothers you that much then simply learn to improve). Such players are afraid of being bad on a level where their personal actions in game are under far more scrutiny than they would be in a large scale battle where nobody is really paying close attention to you.

I understand why you might hate it when players who are better at something than you are able to reap better rewards, especially if that thing (arena in this case) is not something that you are personally interested in (it's hard to be good at something you don't enjoy). But IF the true reason for you disliking arena is just because you prefer large scale or more objective based combat, THEN WHAT'S THE PROBLEM, DON'T PLAY ARENA. Simply urge the developer to ensure that they balance the rewards out (make it require a ton of arena games to earn the same quality gear that you could get in a long world battle) if they DO start talking about including it... rather than being completely irrational and sending Zenimax these signals that you and all your friends are just going to up and quit the game if they even implement arena at all. JESUS.

Or science, whatever.

Why would you create another thread when you can post in the one already there..we would have easily just as read your comment on that active post.

They get ignored in my experience, also that guy's thread title and OP were awful. "People r dumb".

Don't bother Convectuoso, the people on this forum who hate Arena aren't going to change their minds. They cling to their idea religiously that "Arena kills MMOs" even if it is obviously not true, and the real truth is that they just don't enjoy it(for whatever reason, heh.).

attention starved I guess. Needs to feel important, your basic control freak. I might have missed it but isn't gear used in both PvE and PvP in ESO? Once they figure that out these threads will dry up

@STX

I fail to see the problem with not enjoying Arena style play. Honestly it serves no purpose, except to give kiddies bragging rights on the playground the next day

It's nothing to do with love or hate of arenas. It's about keeping the main aspect of PvP (which in this case is somewhat unique in the current MMORPG market) alive and well.

By providing rewarding small scale PvP people will be enticed away from the campaigns, regardless of fun involved but for the rewards (something that happened in WoW with PvP servers and open world PvP - why look for and fight for small rewards when the small scale one removes searching for fun fights and yields far greater rewards over time with more certainty - it also happened in WAR with Skirmishes). If there is no reward system in place then I suspect there would be far less draw for arena combat and arena would then be starved of players.

People make such sweeping subjective claims about arena it is absolutely ridiculous.

Out of curiosity did you read the latter half of your post? You are as guilty of what you say as others may be.

I have never said it is wrong to not enjoy any style of play. I am not the one attacking a portion of the player base. You are calling players who participate in structured PvP "kiddies", which is just one example of disrespectful remarks from people today in the "hate arena" camp.

edited, wrong post.

I have not even read the Arena posts besides this one. So what is the legitimate stance of the anti-arena crowd. I honestly see no reason why we should not have one I feel like it would be a nice bonus.

It would just be another basic WoW / Swtor. If Arenas come it needs to be different, unique in some way. Anything besides running around a podium/healing for 10-15 minutes.

The basic arguments from the anti-arena crowd is that the balancing that would be necessary for smaller fights would ruin other areas of the game, and that other pvp options would take too many players away from Cyrodil campaigns.

There are of course reasons why these are not true:

1) Small scale battles happen in Cyrodil anyway, so balance will have to be enforced regardless.

2) PvE balance has ruined small scale PvP balance before, why is this okay, but not the reverse?

3) Just because balance is less necessary for larger siege type battles, doesn't mean it is okay to leave the game unbalanced.

As for taking players away from Cyrodil...

1) Those players who would rather play structured PvP might not have been in Cyrodil anyway.

2) Those players may not have even purchased the game, knowing there was no structured PvP.

3) Mega Server. Keeping campaigns populated shouldn't be an issue.

4) If players want to leave Cyrodil for structured PvP, why is this even bad? Players should be unable to play the game how they want?

Anyway, I don't want to get into another heated debate. But that is just my summary.

assuming this is true, why would they need to balance any classes for arena anyway? I mean people could just make strategies for 3v3 battles.

I'm ok with arenas as long as they have no rewards (other than bragging rights).

Small scales fights in Cyrodill are ganks, they aren't 1v1 encounters with both parties ready.

The only Arena I would like to see is Players VS Waves of mobs. AKA Arena type dungeon.

As for PVP, I think a simple Option to Duel other players will do nicely. This would help people get into shape before heading to the war front.

Dueling I consider a separate issue from the structured pvp thing, but yeah... if there is an option to auto-decline duels for people who dislike them, I really don't see any possible reason not to have duels. Lots of good uses for them and they are fun!

instanced pvp did not kill wow

it killed wow open world pvp

before the instanced pvp in wow, there where lots of big fights in the open world(even with no rewards for it) after there was none

this game is designed for open world pvp, so we dont want to kill the open world pvp

if there was instanced pvp with rewards, then 95% of the players would do that instead,

because queing for a few mins, then a 15 min fight, and then rewards, is likely more efficient than roaming around hoping to find a fight

and people will do what seems most efficient 95% of the time, and yes that includes me even though i love open world pvp and hate instanced pvp

now if they include arena's where people can duel and maybe even duel as groups, that would be fine, as long as there is absolutely no rewards from doing it, besides maybe learning a few tricks

name me 1 game that has instanced pvp with rewards and successful open world pvp?

anyway as this game is designed for open world pvp, if you dont want that, play one of the multitude of games with instanced pvp

I disagree with the argument that instanced PvP killed world PvP in WoW. Flying Mounts are responsible for that.

Before flying mounts, world PvP was abundant as ever.

I still rememebr the valorous South Share Battles... That and that Keep in the Hitherlands was a hot spot for ganks.

Also instance pvp did kill World Pvp... before battle grounds blood was shed everywhere. (Ranks were something), then after they were introduced.... As Alliance I remember the Commander Room in Ironforge over filling with idle people waiting for que to pop....

The history of pvp in WOW went sorta like this....

1. Pvp was started by to opposite facton members seeing each other. 2 Options happened... Either

A. /Wave and most of the time no fight would start. (Was the universal... "Hey whats up, just passing through, not looking for a fight").

B. One player goes nuts and begins the attack.

World PVP was everywhere.... In front of instances (Looking at you Ubers and Lbers), Great Farming Spots (Essance of life from the tumbler cave), and the classic... Kite World bosses to Player towns (SW, Lakeshore, Org, ect).

2. Blizzard just came out with weather details and PVP Ranks. Everyone went crazy!!! Only way to gain a higher ranks was to kill people (No battle grounds were created yet). The lands were covered in Ally and Horde blood alike. The 2 Options above were thrown out the window, /wave had no effect.... BTW this was the most fun days to play and the Spotlight of World PVP for WOW.

3. Blizzard Released Battle Grounds!! AB, WSG, AV. This is the day many vets will remember the starting days of death for World PVP. Not all World PVP was destoryed because players had to go loctations to Que up at the Battle ground of their choice. During Que horde and Alli would fight in these areas for a few reasons....

A. Plain Griefing

B. Bordom (Que's were very long)

C. Just to scare the other faction before fighting them inside the battle grounds.

Besides these hot spots of World PVP, the rest of the world was now dead....

4. The final nail in the coffen was struck.... Players could now Que into battle grounds from 1 location in captial cities.... This was the Day World PVP died...

Players would now just sit in the cities at the battlemaster Que NPC and waiting for que to pop. There was no reason to go out into the world.

5. Since World PVP was no longer around... Flying mounts came in, Arenas showed up, Que was no longer linked to NPCs but could be done on the players UI....

In short.... by the time Arenas came into play.... World PVP was already dead... It was ---> Instanced PVP + A master Que Location inside a Safe enviroment (no pvp) = Death of World PVP.

History lesson over.

world pvp was dead before flying mounts as i recall it, and by open world pvp im talking about fairly big fights

unless you think about skirmishes between a few people questing or someone ganking quester's/travelers

The mega server one is important to stress, WoW players who (back in the day) said that things such as instanced PvP were detrimental to the "natural" flow of world PvP may have been correct. But when the only World PvP that is to be happening in ESO is going to be happening within one giant instance that you can switch between (and there are THREE alliances so that the losing two can gang up on the one who is currently winning) this should really not even be a problem at all.

As for people talking about the gear rewards and such, it's not necessary that they provide NO tangible rewards for arena other than bragging rights, it's just important that they balance it. You shouldn't obviously be able to earn the same rewards during an hour of arena that you could for ten hours of world PvP. One way they could choose to balance it though is to make the entry level arena rewards or "points" be gained very slowly,and increase it the farther up you go. Because you have to play much harder opponents at the top of the ladder than you do at the bottom.

While the quality of the gear should be the same, I think it would be cool for the looks of the gear that you get from world PvP and arena to differ, that way you have bragging rights for "I got this in arena" or "I got this in Cyrodil", since different things are obviously important to different people.

Those small battles are much more likely to be random encounters, with random class combos. 3 players who just happen to come upon another random 3 players, with people not necessarily having their cool downs up and ready to go. It's generally going to be much less of a planned event with a less predictable outcome. These fights will typically be much different than an arena fight, where you know exactly how you're going to fight a certain comp before the match even starts.

Also, the problem isn't that the game is imbalanced. The problem is that it needs to be re-balanced for arena. If 3 players can synergize to do serious burst damage in pve, who cares? So long as their respective dps is roughly the same as everyone else's over the course of a fight, it doesn't matter. If those same 3 players synergize to do serious burst in arena, now we have a problem. If a team can consistently instagib an opponent, and the other team is helpless to do anything about it, that needs to be changed. So what wasn't a balance issue before suddenly is a balance issue now that we have competitive small scale pvp. Then we get changes to burst damage, or the introduction of stats like resilience, or other changes so those classes won't synergize so well, etc..

I'm actually fine with them adding some sort of arena, maybe even with a spectator function, so long as it has it's own separate skill balancing. Make it it's own mini-game, but don't go changing everyone's class simply to address issues that only arise in arena. This would work in reverse too, skill changes for pve or large scale pvp wouldn't apply to arena.

could not agree more with your timeline, before the que's ( convenience) were implemented the world had more life.

ESO is set during a time of WAR not peace... so gladiatorial matches wouldnt really fit with the lore.

If you want small-scale PvP it already exists within the Cyrodil campaign; small groups are free to fight each other around the periphery of the larger battles, no-one is forced to participate in massive sieges if that really isnt their thing.

If you want instanced PvP, please stop trying to ruin ESO and just go play a different game because its honestly the worst way to integrate PvP into an MMO designed for large-scale PvP from the ground up; WoW used instanced PvP only because it WASNT designed with PvP in mind from conception, PvP was an afterthought and the devs had no better way to add it to the game at the time - I also remember reading an interview from a WoW dev where they stated that they regretted introducing arenas to the game because of the unintended consequences it had on balancing and gameplay throughout all other aspects of the game.

To all the arena people:

Have you played good open world PvP so far? If not i would suggest you give it a fair try you might even enjoy it more than arena/instanced PvP. If you really hate it there is still enough time to cry on the forums and ruin the game.

I just don't get your mindset arena should be in the game because i should be able to play the game how i want blahblahblah.

TESO was specifically promoted with the big three faction PvP and the Elder Scrolls license. Good example where costumers actually had a point when complaining was the first person view (personally it wasn't important to me). But when you promote your game as part of the ES franchise you kind of had to implement the first person view..and they did after a lot of complaining. But when you market your game as large scale three faction keep siege PvP heavy i just can't see where all these "arena should/must be in the game" come from. Where did you get this idea from. It was never promised or mentioned by the developers. Just because it was in every mmo that you have played?

Or you pay for the game and thus have the right to play the game how you want? You're right thats a real valid point so if ESO [censored]s it up i propose you return to one of the numerous "World of Call of Sims C&C Last of Raider Simulator Duty" games that allow you to do just about verything you can think of just because you paid for it and they actually said so in their marketing campaign!