It's certainly not a system for everyone. I personally don't favor the arenas either, so I make the choice not to spend much time with them. I think the issue most people have is that the arenas provide the only source for the best PvP gear in the game. We are working on an improved system by which we can measure skill and contribution in battlegrounds so that more competitive rewards can be obtained via means other than the arena.

With Arena Season 5 launching on December 16, we wanted to provide some helpful information. The method in which Arena or Honor items can be purchased will be slightly different then how it was before. For Arena items, there will be 3 tiers of purchasable set items that includes pieces for the Head, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, and Legs as follows:

Tier 1 - Superior (blue) quality items:
* No rating requirements
* Costs Honor and Arena points
* Equivalent to heroic dungeon items

Tier 2- Epic (purple) quality items:
* Medium rating requirements
* Costs Arena points
* Equivalent to 10-person raid items

Tier 3 - Epic (purple) quality items:
* High rating requirements
* Costs Arena points
* Equivalent to 25-person raid items
* This tier will also contain Arena weapons

In addition, there will be two tiers of Honor items that includes pieces for the neck, ring, boots, belt, bracer, and trinket as follows:

Tier 1 � Epic (purple) quality items:
* Medium rating requirements
* Costs Honor points
* Equivalent to 10-person raid items

Tier 2 � Epic (purple) quality items:
* High rating requirements
* Costs Honor points
* Equivalent to 25-person raid items

• Players may now create death knights on any realm once they reach level 55.
  
• Bonus Armor: The mechanics for items with bonus armor on them has changed (any cloth, leather, mail, or plate items with extra armor, or any other items with any armor). Bonus armor beyond the base armor of an item will no longer be multiplied by any talents or by the bonuses of Bear Form, Dire Bear Form, or Frost Presence.
  
• Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You�re not seeing things.
  
• Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.
  
• A new mailbox is now available at the Crows Tavern in the Dalaran Sewers.
  
• We have added over 60 new graveyards to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.
  
• The run speed in spirit form has been increased by 50%. Night Elves in Wisp form will now move at 75% speed.

Well we agree that swapping talent specs isn't quite enough. No use having a whole load of glyphs for your tanking spec that are almost useless when you're dealing damage, for example. We'd also like to swap over action bars too -- it'd be a pain if you're trying to Mind Flay and you end up trying to Flash Heal!

So yes we have taken these kind of considerations into account and we'd like the feature to do more than "just" swap talent specs.

Because it is a bit more featured than originally mentioned, we'll be needing to do a bit more work on it before we can share it with you. So we're hoping to bring this feature to you in our next major content patch, but only if we're happy enough with it to make it live.

We have talked about making some of these changes and wanted to provide more details. You should be able to try these out yourselves on the PTR before they go live.

Our reason for most of these changes should be obvious, but some common themes are:
-- Making tanking still rely on cooldowns, but rely on them a little less.
-- Make Blood a more attractive spec, and particularly for tanking.
-- Chill out some of the defensive capabilities all DKs have in PvP.
-- Avoid having to use Death and Decay as an out-of-combat runic power generator.

1) Rune Strike -- damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
2) All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
3) Anti-Magic Shell -- cooldown lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
4) The healing of Blood Aura, Blood Presence and Death Pact has been doubled.
5) Bone Shield -- mitigation reduced from 40% to 20%.
6) Icebound Fortitude � now reduces damage by 20% instead of 50%. The amount of damage reduced increases with bonus Defense (to about 35% for 540 Defense, but it can go higher). The stun immunity is intended to be its primary role in PvP.
7) Frost Presence -- bonus armor increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%. We wanted to reduce the effectiveness of cooldowns but bring up base mitigation to reduce damage spikiness.
8) Corpse Explosion -- damage increased substantially, added 5 sec cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.
9) Heart Strike � we overhauled this ability. It no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets like a cleave. It still hits for more than Blood Strike, but you can still use Blood Strike if e.g. you don�t want to break CC.
10) Horn of Winter -- now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 30 sec cooldown.
11) Night of the Dead -- now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
12) Outbreak � this talent no longer receive bonus damage from Pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.
13) Bloody Strikes � the bonus damage from Pestilence has been moved here to help Blood AE slightly.
14) Pestilence -- no longer has a 10 sec cooldown.
15) Raise Dead -- now split into two spells: Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member (at no reagent cost).
16) New runeforge rune -- Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
17) Shadow of Death -- duration reduced from 45 seconds to 25 seconds.
18) Unholy Blight, Dancing Rune Weapon and Hungering Cold � cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.
19) Vampiric Blood -- in addition to its current effects, also adds 20% health temporarily.
20) Will of the Necropolis -- now reduces the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded,
21) Many death knight glyphs have been changed. In many cases the negative consequences were removed.
22) New death knight sigils are now available, primarily from vendors, including a tanking-oriented sigil.

The buffs here are designed primarily to make Arcane more competitive with Fire / Frostfire builds in PvE. Because they could end up buffing Arcane in PvP, we are prepared to adjust the damage of say Arcane Barrage if needed, but we want to see these in action on the PTR first.

Mage PvE damage in general is something we are keeping a close eye on. With the recent hunter changes, many of which were nerfs to PvE damage, we want to make sure mages now don�t break away from the pack of damage-dealing specs.

1) Evocation � cooldown reduced to 4 min.
2) Arcane Flows � now also reduces the cooldown of Evocation by an additional 1 / 2 min.
3) Arcane Blast � overhauled. Will now increase the damage of your next Arcane spell by 15%. However using Arcane Blast itself does not consume the charge, but instead increases the mana of your next Arcane Blast, up to a maximum of 3 stacks (and a 45% buff). You can alternate Blast and Barrage to keep buffing Barrage, or you can build Blast up higher for a heavy mana cost.
4) Torment the Weak � now works with Arcane Blast and does bonus damage to targets afflicted by any kind of slowing effect (e.g. Thunder Clap).
5) Elemental Precision � renamed Precision and now works on all spells.
6) Improved Blizzard � snaring effect reduced to 20/40/50%.

EDIT: We recently made the Arcane Blast stack 15/30/45% to your next Arcane spell.