Think of WoW (I referenced WoW I must be a fanboy) and how their non rated games consist of constant leavers and teams who just charge in with no strategy. I wouldn't mind if they made a split non-ranked and ranked mode, so that if you don't want to fight against the more serious, you don't have to.
While I only played cataclysm for the first month or two of its release (before rated bgs) your statement would be true for BGs. However, with a silent rating system for diablo, if you are a "serious" pvper, after you've stomped on enough non-serious pvpers, your rating will be putting you up against other servious pvpers and strategy and competition will emerge.
The fact that they have a rating just shows me that an officialized competition is possible, and that players will be able to determine their own skill well enough. By that I mean, the pvpers will have one or more pvp-centered d3 websites and then get an orginization of some kind going to track their own standings. the silent ratings will just let good players fight good players when they're not using any private/3rd party system.
I personally wouldn't mind that one's rating be public, but I understand blizzard's desire to not want to open that can of worms.
A MMS is a huge stepping stone of the work of making a pvp game an e-sport, so should the time come where they feel comfortable enough that pvp won't wonk-up pvm, they'll make the ratings public or add some other feature with a similar effect.
No, I totally agree that the WoW audience houses a great number of Diablo players (or potentially new diablo players).
/snip
Equally clearly, they've responded "these are not the droids you are looking for."
My last sentence was a little tongue-in-cheek.
I agree that the shared space of the diablo3-wow player venn diagram has a lot of overlap, but also has sections that do not.
I wasn't arguing in favor of pvp. Its not going to be my focus, but i do plan to give it a shot every so often.
I do however think that there are enough pvpers that either, later in the game's life, or for an expansion, there will be some pvp content added/refined.
I don't know how many times someone has to say it, but this game was not intended for the WoW audience, and the pvp-players of WoW in particular are not the people intended to buy and enjoy D3 in the long-run. They've made it abundantly clear their target market is the relaxed PvM (pushing for more co-op) player who may on occasional dabble in shooting at other players. Just that mention of healers alone makes me shudder to think of what the wow-arena population would do to the Diablo community.
Minor nitpick: the WoW audience is sufficiently large that i wouldn't be surprised if over 75% of the people who pick up d3 have more than a year of WoW under their belt.
Just because WoW and D3 are different games does not mean that they are targetting different audiences. In other words, the same people can like both. I'll even bet there are people somewhere who like neither (shocking! DUN DUN DUNNNNN).
While I only played cataclysm for the first month or two of its release (before rated bgs) your statement would be true for BGs. However, with a silent rating system for diablo, if you are a "serious" pvper, after you've stomped on enough non-serious pvpers, your rating will be putting you up against other servious pvpers and strategy and competition will emerge.
The fact that they have a rating just shows me that an officialized competition is possible, and that players will be able to determine their own skill well enough. By that I mean, the pvpers will have one or more pvp-centered d3 websites and then get an orginization of some kind going to track their own standings. the silent ratings will just let good players fight good players when they're not using any private/3rd party system.
I personally wouldn't mind that one's rating be public, but I understand blizzard's desire to not want to open that can of worms.
A MMS is a huge stepping stone of the work of making a pvp game an e-sport, so should the time come where they feel comfortable enough that pvp won't wonk-up pvm, they'll make the ratings public or add some other feature with a similar effect.
My last sentence was a little tongue-in-cheek.
I agree that the shared space of the diablo3-wow player venn diagram has a lot of overlap, but also has sections that do not.
I wasn't arguing in favor of pvp. Its not going to be my focus, but i do plan to give it a shot every so often.
I do however think that there are enough pvpers that either, later in the game's life, or for an expansion, there will be some pvp content added/refined.
Minor nitpick: the WoW audience is sufficiently large that i wouldn't be surprised if over 75% of the people who pick up d3 have more than a year of WoW under their belt.
Just because WoW and D3 are different games does not mean that they are targetting different audiences. In other words, the same people can like both. I'll even bet there are people somewhere who like neither (shocking! DUN DUN DUNNNNN).