Ladder Resets

[Kevin]

Jay Wilson said in the video Foxbat linked to that they actually have PvP tables that would enable them to alter cooldowns as well as the length of time effects have on players. I guess the game code knows to use the PvP tables if you're in a PvP arena.

Good to know. They did build the base engine with PvP in mind and give it a way to more subtle tweaking for balancing in the arenas. Of course this isn't going to stop the whinging for "world PvP" that can't be balanced for in the same way because cooldown and duration changes would then affect PvM as well.

My other points about similar class based type games changing things for PvP affecting PvM still holds, as does my point that most successful PvP game tend to have classes that are very similar or essentially the same (which you and Bolty also covered).

Unless Blizzard makes arena have NO connection to PvE, that means you don't use the PvE stash or gear or skills (and with separate tables you won't be using PvE skills even if they have the same name and graphics) then trying to balance PvP will have some effect on PvE. Sure those could be positive. Things like making better gear more readily available in Hell difficulty so that you don't have to play inferno if you want to be better at PvP would actually be good because that would be a step in the direction of truly making inferno a bonus difficulty and not the next difficulty in the progression. But it is a PvP change that affects PvM. Yes they could go the WoW model and introduce PvP gear vendors and create a few stats that only give benefit in PvP, but that didn't really work all that well in WoW (it also didn't work all that well in Rift which had better distinction because you had the same issue that in some cases the best PvE gear was from PvP and the best PvP gear was still from PvE).

Again the idea that balancing it is easy is not true. Ripple effects can reach very deeply and I've yet to see a game that was designed to be primarily PvE get PvP properly balanced or never have a PvP change affect PvE. So I too was happy to hear everything about PvP being a minor concern. I also stand behind the idea that if you want PvP you design and balance for that, then add the PvE on after because it's will be much easier to balance both. Guild Wars took this approach and while it had it's issues and ripple effect problems, it offered the better experience.