Blood Sport: Cataclysm PvP is theoretically awesome
Listening Music: José González's "Hand on Your Heart." One of my favorites.
Vanilla WoW PvP was very fun, even if the top raiders on the server had enough gear to kill you in a global or two. The speed of combat got progressively faster before The Burning Crusade came on scene; a full tier 3 player could change the tide of a battleground by himself easily. Resilience was added to the game to slow down the game -- and it worked! Arena games in The Burning Crusade took a long time to complete, but they were interesting and definitely had depth, even if they made you miss dinner once or twice.
Wrath of the Lich King revamped arena completely by emphasizing burst kills and huge crits. In Season 5, death knights and holy paladins were the best classes in the game because they could sustain damage for periods of time longer than 20 seconds. It was shellshock for arena players everywhere. The 30-minute games we had come to know and love were a thing of the past. Damage was king, and the law was a quick death.
Cataclysm appears to be returning to a Burning Crusade era of controlled arena matches. Giant crits and powerful damage combos are unlikely to be making an exit from arena, but their grip on PvP will be loosened when Deathwing's presence is felt.
Filed under: PvP, Blood Sport (Arena PvP), Cataclysm