Drysc posted yesterday to tell us a bit about what will be forthcoming when Season 4 hits the servers. It's honestly mostly stuff we knew already. Season 4 will not begin immediately upon the release of 2.4. Season 1 will go the way of the old level 70 honor gear and disappear from vendors, Season 2 will be gained via honor, and season 3 will go down in price, while still keeping the personal rating requirement to purchase the shoulders and weapon. However, the surprising little tidbit is how little they currently plan to change the requirement. Drysc quoted a requirement of 1950 for the shoulders and 1800 for the weapon. That's a total drop of only 50 points for each item. Of course, he also stressed that this information was not final, and neither the final requirement drop on season 3 nor the start date of Season 4 had been announced yet.

There is some concern from some comers that that drop is possibly a bit too low. Drysc responded to one player's voicing of those concerns with a somewhat cryptic reply that he thought they were making a few too many assumptions. I'm not quite sure what he could mean by this. I myself can't imagine a team that would climb to 1800 rating and simply satisfy themselves with season 3 weapons when they could make one last push to season 4 rating, so to me, the confusion is justified. Perhaps Drysc is hinting at a mechanics change in the way arena rating is calculated, or the fact that his numbers could easily change themselves? Perhaps he simply means that Blizzard is actively trying to shake the "welfare epics" stigma, and that people shouldn't assume they're entitled to low requirement ratings on the season 3 gear. I'd tend to lean towards that last one myself.

What do you think? Are these numbers too high? Are you expecting Blizzard to change them? Or do you applaud this as a step away from making Arena gear a welfare system for those who can't or won't raid or save badges?

Wreck from Addicted to WoW sent us his interesting opinion on the Season 3 gear required ratings. Why, he asks, didn't Blizzard put rating requirements on all the gear? When season 3 starts, the season 3 shoulders and weapons will require a high Arena rating to own (2000 and 1850), and Wreck wants to know why only the shoulders and weapons got put behind a rating wall. Why not make all the gear that much harder to get?

As far as I know, the cited reason behind the ratings was to keep raiders from losing in the Arenas and still getting gear. The weapons in season 3 are terrific, even compared to the mid-endgame raiding gear, and so raiders were playing just their 10 games every week, saving up Arena points, and grabbing the hot weapons. Blizzard didn't want that happening, so they put the requirement on the weapons-- you have to be good to wield those now.

But the shoulders I don't quite understand. I've been told that the shoulders are the most obvious piece of "leet" armor, and that Blizzard, as Wreck says, really wants seeing those shoulders on someone to be a sign that they're really good in the Arenas. But shoulders? As a few players have said, give them a title or something if you want them to be recognized. There's good reason for putting the weapons behind a rating, but if you're going to put shoulders back there too, you might as well require the rating for all the pieces, or leave the armor out of it completely.