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.) There are no NPC merchants in Arena games. ^[1]

The developers have repeatedly stressed that the PvP and PvM games are entirely separate in Diablo III, and that if any skills need to be tweaked to make Arena more competitive, this will not affect the same skill in the PvM game. (This was a major complaint about World of Warcraft's PvP, that skills had to be nerfed in PvM when they were tweaked in PvP.)

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:^[2]

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.

Dual Specing

Many RPGs allow "dual spec" characters; one version for PvM and one for PvP. This is a way have two versions of the same character, with their equipment, skills, traits, and everything else entirely different. Diablo III is not planning to allow this sort of thing, and players will need to decide if they want to optimize their character for PvM or PvP.

All characters must play PvM to level up, but thanks to respecs and other such features, it won't be hard to level a character to the desired PvP level, and then pass them new equipment through the shared stash and respec their skills and traits.

@Diablo commented on this in November 2010: ^[3]

Hi, do you have any plans on allowing the items, traits, skills etc. used in PvM to be swapped for a PvP build on the same character? --Nielsdue

No current plans for a dual spec or other quick-swap mechanic to change into a PvP build. --Diablo

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. It's expected that matches will become longer and more strategic as players gain skill and use their own characters, but the basic game design is for a "best of" series of matches, with numerous deaths in a short time. It's not meant to be a long, drawn out, one-fall type of battle. (Though it might become that way for Hardcore dueling, depending on how that feature is implemented.)

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. Its design was fairly similar to the interior of Bastion's Keep, perhaps coincidentally.

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. ^[4]

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 Maps

Nothing is yet known about the variety, size, tile sets, or other issues about arena maps. There was only the one layout available at Blizzcon 2010, and the team has made very little comment on more varieties and types of maps.

Fans expect that there will be a wide variety of tile sets, representing many of the environments seen throughout the game. Different arena layouts and sizes are expected as well, though it seems likely that the developers will limit the sizes and make sure that every map has a decent amount of (but not too many) obstacles so that the arenas are fair for all the different classes.

For instance, an arena with too many posts would work against ranged attackers, while one that was wide open, with lots of holes or other ground obstacles would be a killing field for ranged attackers.

The only official quote thus far on Arena maps came from @Diablo in December 2010, and it was entirely non-committal. ^[5]

We’ll have as many arena maps as we can. --Diablo

Arena Balancing

Diablo III's PvP is not meant to be perfectly balanced, especially for 1v1 matches. There is just too much potential variety with character builds, plus equipment variance, skill runes, and more. D3 is not meant as an e-sport in that way. The "balance" is meant to be found more in the 3v3 duels, where teams can form and compensate for the weaknesses of any particular character in the group.

Bashiok spoke on the PvP balance issue in February 2011. [1]

We intend to get PvP as balanced as we can, because we want it to be fun and have some meaning to it. But, PvP balance is not an integral goal to releasing the game. We want PvP to be fun, not necessarily balanced to a razors edge. With the huge number of combinations per character compounded by team comps, balance is not going to be something we’d hold the game for. If we did it might never come out. It will be balanced as much as we realistically can expect before releasing the game, and we’ll certainly continue to make changes to try to keep it fun and interesting.

Arena Death

Dead Barbarian.

Dying in the Arena is very common, and encouraged. Matches go quickly and without any pause between the rounds. Each arena match ran for 15 minutes at Blizzcon, with numerous rounds per match. A typical score for the full 15 minutes was something like 10-7, with most rounds lasting less than one minute.

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. Many Hardcore players have pushed for some sort of non-lethal practice mode, to allow HC players to play as much arena as they want, rather than only doing it on very rare special occasions, since so few players would be willing to risk their characters in duels. Blizzard has not commented on that concept.

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.^[6]

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.

World of Warcraft PvP Influences

While none of the Diablo III developers ever mentioned WoW's PvP system during their many comments on the Arena from Blizzcon 2010, one of the WoW developers did.^[7]

John Legrave: You know, one of the great core values of our company is “every voice matters” and they certainly consulted us. It’s their own, and they have great designers doing their work there, but we’ve certainly done strike team work with them and talked about what they’re doing. So yeah, absolutely, but the majority of that work is their own baby.

This news item kicked off a huge debate about the shortcomings of WoW's PvP system, with most WoW veterans sure that Diablo III's system would be far more enjoyable.

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 these will be achievements and arena ranking, rather than items or experience.

Arena rewards will be earned by wins in regulation, 3v3 team duels against qualified opponents. Players will be able to create their own 1v1 or FFA games^[8], but those will not qualify for the same sort of achievements, since win-fixing would be easily done when playing friends rather than anonymously-selected opponents of a similar skill rank.

Jason Bender spoke about this from Blizzcon 2010. ^[9]

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. ^[10]

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: ^[11]

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.^[12]

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.

You can find much more discussion of this matter, with arguments pro and con, on the Hardcore article.

Arena Gameplay Video

two wide wiki table.

Arena gameplay was first introduced by a short video shown at the Blizzcon 2010 opening ceremonies.	Several minutes of Arena matches were shown at the end of the long gameplay movie released on the Blizzcon 2010 press kit.
Seventeen minutes of scrambling newbie action in the Arena.	Fifteen more minutes of Arena action filmed by the same guys. They played several games between the first movie and this one, and as a result the action in this one is much more skillful and entertaining.

The second of the two fan-recorded movies above has numerous excellent action sequences, and some analysis of key points was provided in the news post on Diii.net. ^[13] Refer to these if you want to know what to look for at the various times, since the action can be fast to the point of confusion for fans who haven't had a chance to play the Battle Arena yet.

3:40-4:00 -- Nice chase sequence with the two blue team wizards hunting down the last surviving red wizard. This happened a lot at Blizzcon with players using the posts for cover from Disintegrate and moving around the perimeter. Pursuers had to throw Hydras out in front of them to cut them off or Teleport ahead to get a firing angle. You could dodge for some time on the edge like that, but it was a doomed effort since you couldn’t get to the center where the health globes spawned, while your pursuers were able to grab them and heal up.

4:12 -- The red team Witch Doctor shows how paralyzingly slow Grasp of the Dead is. The Blue wizard under its effect is virtually motionless for several seconds, and only survives thanks to a lack of nearby Barbarians, Mongrels, and the WD not being quicker with his Firebomb. The Blue wizard’s round ends shortly afterwards after he takes a big Whirlwind, and then gets stuck in a Slow Time bubble with a Hydra banging away and a Meteor coming down.

5:00-6:12 -- Awesome end game fight with one blue Wizard (not the PoV) fighting a red wizard and barb, both of whom are very low on hit points. Blue Wizard does good work with taking cover, using hydras and meteors, and sniping Disintegrate, and gets the Barb, but he winds up stuck in a Slow Time and eats a Meteor when both he and the other Wiz were down to a sliver.

6:30 -- Shows the danger of teleporting towards enemies, as the PoV blue wizard bamfs across the screen and lands in a Slow Time bubble, then gets absolutely chewed up by Sacrificed Mongrels and some Disintegrate. His round ends seconds later.

7:36 -- Same problem, with a long Teleport into close range of another Wizard. Slow Time + no teleport for escape = dead.

7:38 -- Nice end to the round twenty seconds later as the one surviving blue Wiz runs for it, rounds a post with a Barb in pursuit, and crashes right into 3 incoming Mongrels. I had a few of those moments myself at Blizzcon. IMHO, if you’re going to die, you might as well die big!

8:44 -- Another awesome round ending as the PoV blue wizard, the last survivor on his team, runs from a Wizard, past his Hydra, and the red Barb yanks him back with Ancient Harpoon, right into a descending Meteor. Sooooo dead.

9:42 -- Nice sequence of the PoV blue wizard who is nearly dead. With a Barb right on his heels, he races through the middle and manages to grab all 4 health globes, narrowly avoiding an Ancient Harpoon on the way.

10:50 -- The PoV blue wizard does it again. Nearly dead, racing along with exploding Mongrels right on his heels, he grabs all 4 health orbs and goes back to full life.