#1 - March 15, 2012, 10:19 p.m.
There will be exceptions obviously.
But I think the majority of people who play Arena can agree that it's been getting less and less fun as time has gone on.
There needs to be a large overhaul of the Arena system.
Firstly, the whole "play to gain gear" from Arena is obsolete these days, however since it's an MMO, obtaining gear is always going to be a driving point for a lot of people and something Blizzard won't change.
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, the points you gain can be used to buy that set so you can use it outside Arena, for example for BGs and so on.
This improves the competitiveness of Arena already, because people that only care about getting gear from Arena do not make it competitive.
You can have incentives for gaining rating, like cosmetic changes for your character at x ratings, as has been shown a lot recently, people are more than willing to try to earn something which only gives them a cosmetic change to their character, hell people are even buying such things (like mounts from the Blizzard Store).
But the reality is, if people do not want to play Arena for fun/competition than these people shouldn't have to play Arena, nor should we want them.
Secondly, seasons need to be much shorter.
This is what happens in your usual Arena season.
First 2months a lot of teams are playing, people push up high early on to get a higher cap/2.2k weapons.
Next 3-X mounts (X being the last month before the end), most people stop playing a significant amount, you'll get sporadic games here and there but really most top players will do about 70~ games during this time period, which works out around 1 game per 2 days ~ish.
This basically means the entire mid-season is pointless and it's boring for most people, the only thing this does is make people wanna quit the game, the only thing is does is make people unsub.
So much shorter seasons are far more likely to keep people interested and playing.
I would personally say that 1 month seasons would be ideal, but 2months shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Thirdly, you have to start giving our desire-able rewards.
When I play a new seasons I don't get exciting about a 10th recoloured mount, I don't think the majority of players get excited about gaining the same title they've had multiply times over (this goes for Challenger, Rival, Duelist and Gladiator).
Cosmetic items, tabards, mounts, pets, special trinkets (that don't have stats or anything like that, example would be Sylvanas' Music Box, not that item, just something long the lines of that) and cycle through items like this, like 1 season you get a pet, another you get a tabard and so on.
And only give 1 chance to get these items, if you didn't get it then too bad, try harder next time.
The Arena scene is becoming very stale, it needs new life breathed into it.
Lastly, you've gotta stop messing around with Balance, the age-old Blizzard way of "let's change everything so people don't get bored with the same-old" isn't working anymore.
People are tired of their favourite classes being overpowered 1 season and broken the next.
Let people choose what they want to play, without having to worry about this.