Oh Arena, I do love you!

So, I’ve finally restarted Arena. I’m in both a 2v2 and a 5v5.

Arena is one of those things I share a real love-hate relationship with. It’s something I’m never going to be *supreme* at – at the end of the day I have to choose between PvE progression and PvP progression and my heart lies with PvE. I find it impossible to believe anyone with as much to do as I do could possibly excel in both. If I wasn’t doing a degree, a certificate, didn’t have a full time job and the 18,000 other things IN WoW (5 85s, 1 80 and 2 lowbies to level) that seem to occupy my time maybe but…that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.

So, why do I do arena? It’s a mixture of two things. 1) is my eternal goal – achievements and achievement points. I love them. I am such an OCD collector I constantly want more. I’m sitting on something like 10,300 at the moment (I think), and last season, from our 5v5 team, I managed to net myself the Challenger title. I was really, really proud of that title. It took me a long time to get decent enough to hit our 1550 rating and I was genuinely proud of myself – of all of our team – when I logged in that day at the end of the season to be presented with the flash of the Challenger achievement.

And the second reason – my friends are AWESOME.

I’m currently playing in the 2v2 with my best friend, and then the 5v5 consists of me, the shadow priest from 2v2, a mad chicken named Thimian (who moved from Terenas with me), my boyfriend (Fury Warrior) and our awesome paladin tank friend Thysian. Last night our raid was cancelled, so we were mostly at a loss of what to do. And then it struck us – although we may have a neon yellow tabard (black mushroom in the middle and a black border), and have named ourselves Cheesewheels Inc. (our paladin is from Cheshire, and there’s this running joke that he carries a cheesewheel around under his arm all the time…it’s funny to us…), we hadn’t actually…played any matches.

So we signed ourselves up. And we waited. And waited some more. 20 minutes later, our queue popped and we got thrown into a match. And annihilated. Completely. Not a great start. But we picked ourselves up off the floor and started again. Quicker queue, we went in and…we won. And then we won again. Lost a couple of times, but came away from the evening with 5 wins and 4 losses.

And we had an absolutely fantastic time.

Over the evening topics of conversation ranged through:

- the fact I was really glad this season it wasn’t me that always got picked on first, it was the Fury Warrior and his full sparkling PvE gear. (lol)

- my shadow priest buddy could make a sound with his throat/nose that sounded JUST like a clown’s honking noise

(those of a sensitive disposition may wish to skip the next one)

- that when clowns climaxed, they came with confetti.

- that it’s not a good idea to enter an arena match laughing about the above because you’ll forget your keybindings, your plan and your general strategy and just become floor smears because you’re all laughing too hard to select a target.

- that I only live 10 miles away from our paladin (spooky)

- and a variety of other strange random facts.

I’ve come to the main conclusion that arena is really really good fun if you can laugh at yourself.

It’s not the same in PvE. A boss wipe caused by one person – even though they are only 1/25th of a group, is a bigger deal. It’s a problem, it’s an issue. Because it’s about progress, about ratings, rankings, moving forward, competing with other guilds, being the best (or trying to be). That one person will undoubtedly feel my internal wrath even if I don’t show it externally (I am exceptionally restrained sometimes, which surprises even me). But in arena…if someone fucks up, I don’t really care. We just…requeue and give it another go.

I wonder why this is? Will I feel less like this when we’re in the 1400s+ and every loss costs you 20 points when you only get 1 for a win? I don’t remember feeling that way *last* season.

I don’t know – maybe because I will never take arena as seriously as I take PvE I’ll never be as upset about it.

I’d be curious to hear from any true hardcore PvPers to see whether it is as big a deal as a progression boss wipe is. And how do you choose your teams? I see so many advertisements in trade for 3v3, 2v2, 5v5 – people looking for random strangers to complete their team and hit their massive ratings. Our group comp is odd and unbalanced and occasionally unfunctional…but I’m playing the game with my friends.

Surely that’s all that matters?