Who wants the Arenas

Have you ever played Guild Wars?

I think Blizzard could take a page from ArenaNet and make WoW Arena PvP a lot like Guild Wars PvP. In Guild Wars, you are allowed to make a max of 4 high-level characters of any class with maximum-level armor at the start that can do PvP only. You unlock runes, weapon enhancements, and skills as you progress, but the point is that even someone who logs in for the first time has only minor gear/skill access difference between someone else who has been playing the game for a year. Also in Guild Wars, the weapons and armor acquired from PvE are no more powerful than the armor allotted to a PvP-only character. (Of course, GW has its own problems since you have to buy all campaigns in order to get access to have all the skills and classes, but they are relatively minor compared to WoW's flaws)

Compare this to WoW, where not only do you have to level every character you want to level 70, you have to do the infamous honor grind in order get satisfactory gear to ensure any success in the arenas. Say you get tired of melee dps as a Rogue and want to try your hand at healing or caster dps? Too bad, you will have to level a different class character to 70 and then repeat the honor grind. Or how about the racials? Say you start out as a Troll and then after all that playtime you realize that the Troll racials are pretty bad. Queue the levelling and honor grinds.

Add to this the insane idea of allowing superior weapons and gear acquired from PvE in PvP. The most notorious example is the Warglaives of Azzinoth from Illidan Stormrage, who was first killed in June 2007. Note that Arena Season 2 also began in June 2007. Compare the Warglaive of Azzinoth's 109.3 dps to the Season 2 1H sword's 97.7dps. Simply ridiculous! Now compare the very best blue 1h weapons that a fresh 70 will likely have to the Warglaive: 109.3dps vs. 71.7dps.

Not only do newer players have to deal with this gear disparity, they have to deal with such recent developments as team buying and point selling, ruining the fun for someone who expects an opponent to be similarly equipped and skilled.

Finally, one of the biggest issues is the (relatively) huge reliance on random luck in WoW PvP. Mace Warriors with Stormherald were the epitome of this, but it's died down since the release of the superior Season 3 gear. Mace Warriors could simply get lucky and get a Mace Specialization proc followed by a Stormherald proc, and if your trinket was already used, you were out of luck as you were beat on for a full seven seconds by a Warrior. The particularly irksome thing about this situation is that it was through no skill on the Warrior's part; he simply got two lucky consecutive procs that sealed your fate.

Of course, you can't leave a criticism of Arena without mentioning the (lack of) class balance, but enough has been said about that...

Again, I think Blizzard would do well to emulate Guild Wars PvP in WoW...it would revitalize the arena scene.