i keep counter-strike installed because it will always be better than WoW PvP - it's a game that relies on reflexes and skill, not warrior and druid. the only WoW PvP that i might have considered "fun" is AV for its focus on large-scale cooperation, and that's been turned into another opportunity to farm.

there is a cost to entry to both sides of the game now: for PvP, you must grind honor and arena points endlessly to achieve a very specific set of gear to have any hope of competing. for PvE, you must achieve a given gear level in general to perform in a given encounter. on the PvP side, entry is zero-fun-sir. you run the same battleground 20 times a day while half the team holds very still somewhere. on the PvE side, however, you run a huge variety of instances with complex mechanics, all while balancing the social dynamic of a group. that's what i find fun. you might like farming honor; ok. but here's the problem...

the people farming honor are better-geared for BOTH than a hapless PvE-lover in 70 blues, because the PvP gear has high-end raid stats, plus resilience. so the people who don't like PvP are disadvantaged by the current system, or forced to participate in an aspect of the game they hate in order to keep up with all the people who go greens-lolepix.

so separate away, please. send the nubbins in S1 lolepix trying to take my kara spot to another server. the only other salve for my woes is to make PvP gear unusable outside BGs and arenas, either by changing the stats or by literally implementing a lockout in PvE-land.

How about when you turn up for duty in the frostwolf tunnel to clean AV of those Allies you get issued with frostwolf armour ?

Maybe having a 6 piece set that keeps the rest of your trinkets, rings and smaller items, or just overwrites your tabbard, keeps your original look but overwrites your main 6 piece armour stats.

Same for Arena, where you have to earn (ratings) the right to wear the higher end armour.

Then when you step out of either you go back to your current set. Thinking on it though I had no problem with pvp before arena and the TBC jump to massive damage abilities. If WoW has a future they need to get back to the balance they originally achieved with WotLK and just let people have fun in BGs, like it is below level 70.

I am hoping here that they do split Arena off from PVE servers, personally I think it would kill Arena too, but since its been ruining my fun I couldn't care less about it. My hunch is though that in a years time if this current Arena juggling carries on I'll not be doing either as something better may well come along, I'm certainly not getting involved in WotLK if my TBC attempt to raid gets nerfed into the ground.

WoW will never separate. Hence more in-depth world PVP due out in the WotLK. End of story.

Besides, if every new player to the game could have a level 1 character or a fully geared 70+, where do you think the mass majority of newcomers are going to go (regardless of your experience)?

When changing that "ONE LOCK SPELL" pretty much breaks the entire class, there's a problem. Blizzard seems to increasingly be making PVP fixes that seriously hurt the PVE game, which is very strange for a game where PVP was just an afterthought for so long.

Yep, in Guild Wars, PvP characters are PvP only and start at max level with minimum gear. You have to win matches to unlock more gear.

PvE characters can PvP as they wish with whatever gear they have earned through PvE.

I played GW from the day it released until I switched to WoW a year ago. I had a PvE Necro (Kildred DeVine) that I PvPed with an insane amount of time.

Hmm...I don't remember GW's pvp being so in-depth. It was obviously always in depth, guild battles were a blast, but it seems that it's been upgraded quite nicely since I quit. Might have to pick it back up.

I completely agree with this statement. Part of the reason I play WOW is because of the huge variety of things that I can do. I love PvE, but at the same time, I love hopping into some battlegrounds and fighting on a large scale against intelligent, thinking opponents (as opposed to some AI scripted encounter). Personally, I think splitting the two would completely ruin the game for the average player.

For me that is excactly the reason they should split it. If I want to do pvp I'll reinstall UT. That game is made for pvp, wow is made for pve.

Why not just have abilities work differently in arena then in the rest of the game? Each arena should have a "coach" NPC for each team. The coach is on the sideline -- like in a boxing match -- and gives you a pep talk before you enter the arena. The pep talk gives you a buff that changes your abilities. That way, Blizzard can fine tune PvP as much as it wants and not have to worry about its effect on PvE and raiding.

As it is, balancing single player PvE and raiding PvE is hard enough, why doesn't Blizzard give itself an easy way out when it comes to PvP. The two sides of the game (especially when it comes to arena) are so different anyways, just accept it, embrace it, and make the classes act differently in arena and the rest of the game.