The whole "Oh, but a lot of people enjoy Arenas so we can't just remove them" thing is fucking hilarious, too. No, a small minority of people enjoyed Arenas when i played - most of the people there faceroll their way to victory in whatever Cleave-gimmick team is strongest this season purely for the rewards. Change the arena rewards to superficial trophy items, and I guarantee that at least three-quarters of Arena players would go back to running instances & raiding. Blizzard really needs to get out of "E-sports".
I had a very strange conversation in a pug once with our decidedly bug-f*ck insane tank in which he was asking me questions about the druid class and what I thought of it.
Now I've levelled two druids to the level cap, in Wrath and in TBC, despite telling myself I wouldn't do so. I've gone back to the druid class many a time. I'm fairly comfortable with the idea that it's my favourite.
I couldn't figure out what this paladin was trying to get at though. Did he want me to say it's an overpowered or underpowered class? Eventually I realised he was talking about PvP and I explained that I hardly ever did it, mostly as filler when I'd run out of things to do in an expansion, and even then only BGs.
I've learned that an awful lot of the screaming, wailing and general insanity and moments of pure Are-You-Even-A-Human-Being-Behind-That-Toon in WoW comes from PvPers. I don't trust them to go somewhere else if the cool arena awards are taken away. I think I'd just see more of them in PvE.
Arenas are a good place to keep the crazy PvPers.