Couldn't agree more. For those wondering, Rocket Arena was an amazing team game (last team alive gets a point, or optionally CTF rules) where each player starts with ALL of the weapons, armor and ammo in the game. Since everyone had a rocket launcher, railgun, grenade launcher, shotgun, etc, this focused the game on team strategy / communication and shooting accuracy rather than on timing the weapon / player health spawns. This would have been awesome by itself, but Rocket Area also made it so that rockets didn't do damage to your health (though they did hurt your armor!) so you could freely move with rocket jumping. This created unbelievable mobility and many beautiful custom maps were made; just imagine huge castles where your skill at rocket jumping allowed you to soar from turret to turret.
This reminds me of Instagib mode in UT ... same gameplay twist: since everyone is on an even playing field with a hitscan instakill gun, accuracy and agility were much more important
Instagib was my favorite mode back in UT2003/2004. Really forced you to hone your twitch muscles. When you and your opponent were both missing each other, it only upped the frantic tension until one of you bursts into giblets!
One subtlety to observe in that video at the end when he wins is he walks instead of runs so you can't hear his footsteps, and keeps the rocket launcher armed until he has a clean shot because the railgun makes ambient noise.
Here's a good video showing the mobility and skill involved in using all the weapons at once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhzK5fL1mj0
Here's some of the maps that were common: http://www.bosskey.net/q3a/maps/standard.html