I'm just not in the mood...

Really, I had written about four paragraphs of text that really was trying to be a little more professional than this and I just deleted them. I can't really explain my love for the 2v2 bracket... if you did 2v2 with a friend competitively, you will understand why I say this. There was just something magical in discussing strategies before, during, and after matches. There was a touch of splendor when you land that perfect amount of cc/dps/healing/whatever that is so rare; regaling your teammate of your amazing play after a match: "Oh man, I had the best Feral Charge, Bash, Cyclone chain while you nuked the other guy down... it was beautiful." There was nothing better than both of you unwilling to give in and lose a match... fighting, for hours sometimes, against seemingly unbelievable odds to get those 5-15 rating points just because you had too much pride to let go of the match.

I really do not believe that the 2v2 bracket is or ever was balanced. I don't think it CAN be balanced without drastically changing most class abilities and reworking the PvP infrastructure from the ground up. I think that 2v2 was the best thing PvP-wise to ever happen to the World of Warcraft, and I will be truly saddened to see it go by the wayside, ignored and forgotten by many, lost and lamented by too few. So long as it exists, it will be played, but not truly competitive any more, given the changes that Blizzard plans on implementing. No longer will we see a mirror match clash-of-the-titans battle last more than 10 minutes, or for that matter last more than 30 minutes as neither team is willing to submit. Never again will we have the last-minute dash for the top100 in the final days of a season to try and ascertain that gladiator title that is so elusive to so many. Likely, never again will see have 2000 word diatribes by myself discussing the pros and cons of specs in the arena given that our most-played counter-comps are X+Y... more likely my posts will be downtrodden and broken mashups of the week's matches in 3v3, completely betrayed by the 50 matches we did in the 2v2 bracket which didn't matter but were 100 times as fun.

Who am I kidding? Probably no one... I will still be doing 2v2 and talking about it ad nausiem, it just won't carry the weight it once did. Now, when I say that we had a great match against a really good dk+priest that lasted 20 minutes and ended in an epic struggle of CC and dps dominance, culminating in an otherwise amazing victory, the question will be asked "but how good could they be if they're in the 2v2 bracket?" or "how did you beat a team with full s7 gear when you don't have any yourself? They must just be messing around," or "why are you talking about 2v2... 3v3 is where it's at!"

I do, and always will, play multiplayer games with my brother. We had a long hard discussion in the TBC days about PvP in general, and how we probably wouldn't be playing WoW if the other didn't play. Essentially, nothing has changed except that Blizzard is going to demoralize us by making our bracket of choice superfluous in the grand scheme of arena PvP. Sure, we are going to try and get a competitive 3v3 team up and ready for season seven, and sure we will probably get everything (except the tier2 weapons)... but it begs the question:

Will we continue playing 3v3 once we get our gear?

Likely, the answer to this is "no". There will be no caveat, we won't keep playing if we think we can get Gladiator, we won't keep playing if we can make a stab at tier2 weapons, we won't keep playing if... We will simply cease playing 3v3 having gotten everything we need to excel in the 2v2 bracket. Do we play 2v2 currently for gear? Sure, you bet, but what do we really play the 2v2 bracket for?

Fun.

That's something that will surely be missing from most of season seven, and I don't think Blizzard has realized it yet. Nor do I think Blizzard will ever realize that fact. We don't play 2v2 because it's easier than other brackets... we don't play 2v2 because we are perceived to be overpowered in that bracket... we play 2v2 because it is the best showing of skill the arena has to offer and because doing so is fun. Mark my words, if the other combatants in the 2v2 bracket don't return to it in season seven because there is no gear in it, then the competition will die out, and it will cease to be fun... and blizzard will be losing ~30 bucks per month; that I can guarantee.