Arena

Battle Arenas were unveiled at Blizzcon 2010. They are a specialized game type, available only over Battle.net, in which players can engage in PvP combat in a controlled, regulated environment.

Arenas exist solely for PvP play, generally in 2v2 or 3v3 teams. They are not part of the normal PvM game and there are no monsters or items to find in the Arenas. (Though these are possible additions for future Arena game modes.)

PvP in Diablo III

A new round begins.

The basic logic behind the Arena was explained by Jay Wilson in a short interview answer in the Blizzcon 2010 show program:^[1]

This is the first time you’re showing Diablo III’s PvP combat. What can players expect from that aspect of the game?

Jay Wilson: Diablo II had a big dueling community, but there was really no in-game support for it. You could go hostile and duel, but there were no ladders, teams, or really any structure to it. In Diablo III, we wanted to create an arena-style environment where players could fight each other. The different combinations of skills, traits, runes, and items available lead to an almost endless variety of builds, so rather than try to achieve perfect 1-vs.-1 balance, we focused on team-based arena PvP -- so even if one class or build is stronger than another, it’s complemented by the other classes on a team. We’ll have support for matchmaking and ladders, and we think players will have a lot of fun seeing what their single-player characters can do in an arena setting.

Arena Gameplay

Battle Arena is match based play, based on a 3 vs 3 format. Blizzard chose 3 vs. 3 as a way to help eliminate some of the balance issues from a particular build / class combination. However, they have also stated that they would like to support 1v1 and other duels of a custom size, and perhaps even some other game types, so expect to see more than just the 3 vs. 3 format with the shipped game.

Early testing of the matches at Blizzcon 2010 showed that most of them were very quick and brutal, typically lasting less than a minute per round, with the pace of gameplay fast and fun.

Arena health orb.

The only battle arena we have seen so far is a small area with several obstacles laid out symmetrically across the map, and four health globe spawn points centered in the middle.

Diii.net posted a lengthy Arena hands-on report from Blizzcon 2010 play experience. Reading it is highly-recommended for anyone who wishes additional information on the playing the the Arena. The introduction describes the basic playing conditions of the Arena demo at Blizzcon2010. ^[2]

There was no character customization allowed in the PvP characters. They were all level 30 (I think; around there, anyway), with all their skill points and traits assigned. All of their skills were maxed out at level 5 (higher skill point totals will be unlocked in higher difficulty levels), all of their trait points were already assigned (it looked like they had a lot more than they should have for their level; probably part of Blizzard’s balancing the chars for the Arena), and all of their skills already had runes socketed into them. All the runes I looked at were fairly generic in their function; +dmg/effect, or lowers resource cost. I think the idea was to improve the skills, but to keep them fairly near their normal function.

All of the characters were wearing basic plate armor. Non-magical; they looked like they were in Sigon’s Set in the inventory window, but nothing had any modifiers on it. Not even the weapons; the Wizard had a plain 2H staff, the Witch Doctor had a plain dagger, and the Barbarian had a plain 2H axe.

The characters were tweaked in some way to give them all roughly equivalent hit points. All had around 850-950 to start with (in the normal game a Barbarian in plain gear would have far more hps than a Wizard or WD of equivalent level, so perhaps the Wiz and WD had lots of trait points in +vitality, as part of the balancing?) I didn’t take note of the character resistances and defense, but they all balanced out fairly well. By that I mean the damage each char took from the spells and skills was fairly close to what those skills listed as damage. You saw the damage constantly, as numbers popped up during combat, and you could always see your own and everyone else's hit points on a bar over their heads. Even the Mongrels displayed their hit points in that fashion.

Arena Death

Dead Barbarian.

Dying in the Arena is very common, and encouraged. Matches go quickly and without any pause between the rounds. A match last until all the players on one team or the other are dead, and this doesn't often take very long in the cramped confines of the arena. In early testing at Blizzcon 2010, most 3v3 games had a round more than every minute, with 15 minute battles winding up with scores in the vicinity of 10-7.

Dead players can no longer interact with the living. Upon death you become a ghost, able to move around and watch the action, but invisible to the others. In theory a dead player could scout enemy locations for his friends, if he had voice chat or they were playing in the same room, but this would be of very minor assistance, given the small size of the Arena and the fast pace of the action.

It's been promised that hardcore characters will die permanently in the arena, which means the image below might be the last sight a player ever sees of their beloved character.

Dead, but only until the next round begins.

Arena Evolution

The Diablo 3 developers have not said much about how the arena system was designed or developed. Since the game's launch they repeatedly said they didn't want uncontrolled PvP as in previous games in the series, which made some sort of Arena dueling area seem a logical alternative. Precisely what developments they went through on their way to the current system is unknown.

Jason Bender spoke briefly about it from Blizzcon 2010.^[3]

VG24/7: Has Arena PVP always been a priority for you? When did you decide to implement it?

JB: I can say that we tried a few different things. The sky’s the limit when you first start out. And we zeroed in on [arenas} iteratively. You know, of all the things we tried, it just tends to come back to that being the most solid, the most fun, and the easiest to jump into. Having tried a whole bunch of different stuff, that's the one that just popped up as being the best on its own. That's what the feedback was. That's not to say we didn't learn a lot about other possibilities. That's the one that just really nailed it.

Arena Rewards and Achievements

The developers have been vague about what sorts of rankings and rewards arena players can look forward to. They have stressed that the basic game is about PvE; players will need to battle monsters to obtain their equipment and experience. This equipment can be put to excellent use in the Battle Arena, and there will be rewards for the winner, but probably not of anything concrete.

Arena rewards will come from higher rankings, and perhaps achievements. Jason Bender spoke about this from Blizzcon 2010. ^[4]

In a panel, some of your fellow Diablo III devs were discussing the fact that the game’s PVP reward system isn’t based on loot or gold or other traditional Diablo standbys. Instead, it’s all about earning titles, achievements, and the like. Why’d you decide to go that route instead of giving players new toys for all their hard work?

JB: It’s definitely more of a Call of Duty-style progression speaking very generally. Part of the reason is that we want to make sure you’re playing PVP for the right reasons. We want PVP to be inherently fun. And Diablo is primarily a PVE game – cooperative with lots of loot, right? We don’t think the best way to get loot should be to grind in PVP and be like “Well, I don’t really like PVP, but it’s where I get the best loot.” We really want to make sure you’re playing PVP just because it’s fun and for bragging rights. We intend to support it, but really, PVE and cooperative is where the loot’s at.

Arena Matchmaking

Red vs. blue teams. Pets and spells are also marked.

While it will be possible to play in the Arena with or against your friends in established teams, the D3 Team are going to create a large matchmaking system to allow strangers to quickly get into games against opponents of equivalent skill, any time of the day or night.

Julian Love spoke about this in an interview from Blizzcon 2010. ^[5]

We’ll have a system very similar to how StarCraft works in terms of trying to match people up fairly. Part of the reason is to avoid people saying, “I’m going to go get my level 80.” “Well, I’m going to go get my level 90.” That kind of thing happened in Diablo 2 where people would just one-up each other to the point where it was a fair fight, at which point everybody left because nobody wants to do that. It’s a lot more fun when everybody is playing together and they are much more on the same level.

Jay Wilson also spoke on this issue from Blizzcon: ^[6]

We’ll have matchmaking, yes. We’ve not implemented that into Diablo III yet, but we have a lot of company experience with matchmaking in World of Warcraft and Starcraft, and what we’ve found is to consider character level, and then a [hidden from the player] skill ranking. The skill ranking is usually sufficient to make good player matches, because even if there’s a vast difference in gear between the characters, that’s reflected in the skill ranking. That’s what we’ve talked about for Diablo III, at least.

And you’ll also be able to go in with organized teams, or to play alone and get slotted into a random team.

Arena Will Focus on Diablo III's Core Game

The Battle Arena is a game type presented to players via Battle.net. It won't be open to modding or variations created by players. This point was stressed by Jason Bender in an interview from Blizzcon 2010.^[7]

VG247: How open is Arena PVP going to be as a platform? Where does it fall in the great Blizzard divide? Is it like StarCraft II: potentially able to house everything from puzzle games to Left 4 Dead rip-offs? Or is it like WoW, which is pretty much locked up tight aside from the occasional UI mod that skitters through?

JB: We're not going to be very mod-heavy like StarCraft. We're not supporting them the same way. So Diablo, for example, is really about us providing [the content]. That’s why it has randomization. The way you find the loot and all that stuff is really fair. Obviously, it’s not an MMO, so the problems are a bit different. But we really do want you to jump in with your buddies and slay the monsters and get the cool stuff.

That extends to PVP. So currently, we’re not gonna ship an editor that you can make your own maps in or anything. That’s not planned. But I can say that we’ve learned so much from Battle.net and StarCraft that there are a lot of other ways we think we can make the experience much richer. I think StarCraft has taught us so much; things like achievements and titles and things of that nature, how people connect, how we match people up – ladders and such. We have a lot of work we can do there to really make the experience awesome in a whole bunch of other ways.

Hardcore Battle Arena

Jay Wilson announced, with something of a gleam in his eye, that Hardcore characters could play in the arena, but that it was the real thing. Hardcore. Permanent death to the losers.

Details were not given; whether it would be single-fall, some sort of best of 3/5/7 competition, team based, etc. But it's clear that Hardcore characters will get to play in the arena, and that dying there will be as serious as dying anywhere else.

Arena Gameplay Video

Arena gameplay was first introduced by a short video shown at the Blizzcon 2010 opening ceremonies. You can view that below.

Several minutes of Arena matches were shown at the end of the long gameplay movie released on the Blizzcon 2010 press kit. You can view the PvP portion from the end of the video below.