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Arena (WoW)  

Arenas are areas in which teams of players can compete against each other in deathmatch-style PvP.

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Arena System Breakdown

Instead of objective-based PvP, such as Alterac Valley or Warsong Gulch, arenas offer players a small battleground designed around a team's ability to destroy the other team. This new system matches teams of equal strength to increase fairness and make advancement to the highest tiers more difficult and more rewarding. The arena is currently designed to allow 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 teams but your team may have up to double the amount required for one fight (i.e. a 2v2 team can have four people in it). Unlike regular PvP battlegrounds, the arena system also allows intra-faction competition, similar to the old honor system.

There are currently three different Arenas available at the following locations:

Only level 70 player characters can gain a Team Rating, Personal Rating or Arena Points. Characters under level 70 can still participate in arena matches, albeit only practice matches at this time. All teams require an Arena Team Charter in order to create an official team.

Arena Points are used similar to honor points to purchase Arena Gear, which are considered to be on par with some of the mid-to high level PvE rewards, Season 1 items being roughly equivalent to Tier 4, Season 2 to Tier 5, Season 3 to Tier 6, and the upcoming Season 4 to Tier 6.5.

Arena Terminology

The Arena uses its own terms and lingo and it can be a bit confusing for the newcommers, so here's a list of some common terms.

Rank- How your team compares to other teams. If you are "rank 1", you are the best team in your battlegroup.

Team Rating- Your team's "score". If you have a rating of 1, your team is the worst team on the server (and ever created). Team Rating is what the Queuing system uses to match teams.

Personal Rating- Added in patch 2.4.2, personal rating is your own rating within the team. Your personal rating must be at a certain level in order for you to purchase arena gear.

Arena Points- The points you earn to buy things from the arena vendor. These are NOT accumulated the same way as honor: kills or wins don't matter. They are converted straight from your rating during maintenance.

The Battle

Once the queueing finds a team for you to fight, you will be prompted to go to the Arena, upon doing so you will be put in the small room. While in that room, you will have the Arena Preparation buff (Which makes all abilities cost 0 mana/rage/energy) for 1 minute. This minute is meant to be used to cast Buffs and get ready.

After this grace period, the doors open and both teams are released in the Arena. The battle ends when all members of a team die or leave. When a player dies, he can leave the Arena or stay and view the rest of the battle as a ghost. Since Resurrection is sometime possible, it is wise to remain as a ghost if your team still has active player capable of resurrecting.

Consumables cannot be used in the Arena, with the exception of Star's Tears and consumable items created by class abilities (such as Healthstones). Abilities with a cooldown longer then 15 minutes are also unusable while in Arena.

After the game is over, a scoreboard showing killing blows, damage done, healing done and - if the game is a rated game - the point fluctuation to each team's Team Rating is shown.

Types of Game

You can Queue up for a Rated game, or a Skirmish,

Skirmish -

Those games do not require you to have a team and you can even Queue solo, letting the matchmaking system find partners for you. Skirmishes are a good place to practice.

Rated -

Where the real games happen. Only registered teams can fight rated games and you must be in a party with your teammates to queue.

Players fight against other players in 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5 brackets. The team who wins has its rating go up, while the team who loses has theirs go down.

Winning and Losing Team Rating

The rating calculation is based on the ELO Rating System, used in Chess, which calculate the odds of winning based off the socre of both team. As a result, a strong team losing to a weak team will lose a lot of points.

Example of a match rating calculation:

Team A's Current Score: 1500pt

Team B's Current Score: 1580pt

Team A's Chance of Winning: 1 / (1+10(1580 - 1500)/400) = 0.38686

Team B's Chance of Winning: 1 / (1+10(1500 - 1580)/400) = 0.61314

Now Let's say Team A won the battle then

Team A's New Score: 1500 + 32*(1 - 0.38686) = 1500 + 19.62 = 1519.62

Team B's New Score: 1580 + 32*(0 - 0.61314) = 1580 + (-19.62) = 1560.38

Now Let's say Team B won the battle then

Team A's New Score: 1500 + 32*(0 - 0.38686) = 1500 + (-12.38) = 1487.62

Team B's New Score: 1580 + 32*(1 - 0.61314) = 1580 + 12.38 = 1592.38

The K value used by Blizzard is 32. So each match, the maximum rating gain/loss will be 32pts. And if you play with a team with the same rating, you will gain/lose exactly 16pts.

Allakhazam credits this article at WoWWiki for The Elo Rating example.
Licensed under the GFDL.

Points Earned

Points are acquired at the end of the week during maintenance and are based on your team rating (see above).

In order to gain points, you need to fulfill the following requirements:

  • The team must have played a minimum of 10 games this week.
  • You must have played a minimum of 30% of those games.

Points are NOT summated from bracket to bracket (i.e., if you're in three active arena teams -one for each division- your points are only taken from the team that would earn the most points).

The Arena point 'cap' is set at 5,000.

The formula for a 5v5 team is the following:

If X>1500: Y = 1511.26/(1+1639.28*Power(2.71828, -0.00412*X)) Else: Y = 0.22*X+14

Penalties:

2v2 teams earn 76% of the points of a 5v5 team with the same rating 3v3 teams earn 88% of the points of a 5v5 team with the same rating

There are several points calculators on the internet, including Blizzard's

Seasons

Seasons are like baseball seasons, except instead of just bringing about new rounds of competition they also bring out new pvp rewards. These are Blizzard's way of being able to reward newer prizes as the game progresses, always providing more and more incentive to go into the arena.

Season are called 'S' for short... so S1 means Season 1. Arena gear is often referred to by its season, as follows:

  • Season 1, S1 - Gladiator Gear
  • Season 2, S2 - Merciless Gladiator Gear
  • Season 3, S3 - Vengeful Gladiator Gear
  • Season 4, S4 - Brutal Gladiator Gear
So "S2 Gear" would mean Season 2 gear, or Merciless Gladiator Gear in this case.

Blizzard usually gives a 2 weeks warning when a season is about to end. Titles are awarded at the end of the season.

It is considered wise to cap your Arena Points to 5,000 before the beginning of a new season, so to get a leg up on the competition by buying new gear. Personal Rating makes this a bit more complicated however.

Current Season

The current season is season 3 (S3) and started on November 27 on the American realms and November 28 on the European realms. Blizzard has yet to announce the start of Season 4, making Season 3 considerably longer then the previous two seasons (Over 24 weeks/6 months already).

Past Seasons

  • Season 1 started on January 30th 2007 and ended on June 19th, with the release of Patch 2.1.2. It lasted 20 weeks.
  • Season 2 started on June 20th and ended on November 26 on US realms, November 27 on EU realms, two weeks after Patch 2.3. It lasted 23 weeks.

Rewards

The short term reward for Arena is Arena Gear. You can trade in your arena points for some truly powerful pvp gear.

The following are the arena cost and rating (both personal and team) requirements for S3 gear,

Slot Point Value Rating Min
Head 1875 None
Shoulders 1500 2000
Gloves 1125 None
Pants 1875 None
Chest 1875 None
Main hand weapon 2625 1850
Off hand weapon 1125 1850
Two handed weapon 3750 1850
Thrown Weapon 1000 None
Ranged Weapon 3750 1860
Caster weapon 3150 1850
Staff 3750 1850
Hunter Axe 1000 Hunter only
Shield 1875 1850
Totems/Idols/Tomes 870-1000 None

S1 Gear is now available for Honor.

S2 Gear is still available, for 15% less then the cost above and also requires no rating.

S4 Gear will take S3 gear's place, making S3 gear go down 15%, while S2 Gear will now be sold for honor. S1 Gear will no longer be available anywhere once the next season start. Season 4 is also adding much higher rating requirements and putting a rating on almost every piece of gear, including some Honor items.

Titles and Flying Mounts

At the end of a season, the system takes the final ranking of every active arena player and awards the team a title if they made the cut. To be considered active, you need to have played 20% of your team's game and have a personal rating within 100 of the team's rating.

  • Challenger = Top 35%
  • Rival = Top 10%
  • Duelist = Top 3%
  • Gladiator = Top .5%

On top of this, Gladiator also wins the prized Swift Nether Drake which flies at 310%, the fastest available mount speed currently in the game.

The team who earns Ranking 1 in every format also get a 'Season Suffix' Gladiator title (So the team that got Ranking 1 in S2 earned the Merciless Gladiator title).

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This page last modified 2008-06-06 13:01:19.