I would give an extensive history on my very intimate relationship with the Arena back during old guild, but I was just as toxic as many players in there.

   However, I do not think the entirety of arena is inhabited by people who just want to win and stroke their egos as a result. [i]It was just most of us, at the time that it was most active.[/i]

   At any rate, the subsection is pretty dead now. Still, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with combat-centric roleplays. However, the tier system, rule set, and every other rule therein is colorful nonsense that gets taken way too seriously.

   HOWEVER.

   It can be satisfying to participate in a fight that involves actually outsmarting a character IC. What isn’t fun, is arguing in the OOC - like many people in old guild’s arena [i]often did[/i] - about inane garbage. It’s also not fun when you have people blatantly twist logic and power scaling in their favor just because they want to win. It’s that inherent desire to win that makes for a toxic environment sometimes.

   I can attest to how butthurt losers get, too. Although I wasn’t especially bad in the glory days of arena, I would do as I’ve mentioned above on multiple occasions, and get frustrated immensely whenever I lost. Others would downright abandon threads when I used the ‘fair and balanced rules’ to ‘pubstomp’ them, even if I was quite literally abusing them to win.

   Of course I rarely ever lost 25/5/1 get at me casual trash huehuehue /egostroke 

   Looking back on it now, some of the most entertaining fights I had ended in draws, with each character surviving.