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Arena
From WoW: IncGamers World of Warcraft Wiki
Read Arena FAQ as well
Contents |
Intro
For the most cold blooded fighters in the World of Warcraft, The Arena is a gladiator battle system where they can fight for honour, glory and power. The Goblins of the Steemwheedle Cartel have put together a brutal sport of violence for the enjoyment of the world. Here, every team fights for themselves, and members of the Alliance and Horde fight indiscriminately against the opposing teams, regardless of their faction membership.
If you think you are rough enough, you can gather a team of allies, and do battle against merciless opponents for glory, and powerful rewards.
Goal of The Arena
Blizzard's goal of the Arena PvP System is to give players a highly competitive environment that focuses on playing skill rather than the Battlegrounds' time investments. As the Arena System is intended to be the defining PvP sport, you are required to be lvl 70 to join an Arena Team. It is still possible to do skirmish matches if you are of a lower level than 70, but these training matches will not give you a Team Rating or Arena Points that are needed to gain Arena Rewards.
Overview
Basics
The idea is that you join in with friends to create an Arena Team of the size of 2, 3 or 5 players, and join in the ranked games. When you defeat an opposing team, you will gain Team Rating in accordance to how high rating your team and theirs had before the match begun. If you have a low rating, and defeating a high rated team, you will have a biger increase than if you defeat a team that have the same or lower rating than yourself. The opposite is true if you loose. If the winning team had a lower rating than you, you will loose a lot of rating, but if they had a higher rating, the loss is smaller.
Once every week (at maintenence), your Team Rating will be compared to the other Arena Teams in your Battlegroup, and you will gain Arena Points based on your ranking between the teams. You can then trade the Arena Points for epic PvP equipment at Area 52.
Skirmishes
Skirmishes are training matches within the Arena System. They work like the Rated games, with the only difference that you do not need an Arena Team to play, and you get no Team Rating or Arena Points when defeating opposing teams. For a skirmish game, you can join alone, and be hooked up with other random players, or join as a group. You can join 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 matches.
Rated Matches
Rated matches is the "real thing" the The Arena. To be able to enter, you need to be lvl 70 and create an Arena Team with some allies. In doing so, and joing the Arena fights, you are also competing for the rewards associated with The Arena. Your individual win or loss will not gain you Arena Points, like with the Honor System, but rather affect your Team Rating. You will not get any points until the realm maintenence, but after that you get to go to Area 52 and change your points for Epic equipment. You need to play at least 10 matches to be eligible to get Arena Points on a given week, but any games above that will not in themselves give more points. Only winning, and gaining a higher Arena Rating will give you more rewards.
Arena Teams
About Arena Teams
In order to play a Rated match, you need to be a member of a Arena Team. A team works very much like Guilds, as they are persistent groups of players with their own name and their own symbol, but there is also differences. Bing member of an Arena Team will not affect your Guild membership. You can have members from different guilds in your Arena Team if you wish. There is three types of Arena Teams:
- Two versus two (2v2)
- Three versus three (3v3)
- Five versus five (5v5)
The main difference to a guild is that you can be a member of all three types of teams at the same time (and still be part of your guild), but you can only have one membership per type of team. This means that you can be a member of one 2v2 team, one 3v3 team and one 5v5 team. The team earns the most Arena Points per week is the one you will gain points from. The others will not generate additional points. However, if you at the end of the Arena Season should gain the highest rank in the Battlegroup with more than one of your teams (highly unlikely), you will get multiple Arena Netherdrakes in the mail.
How to create a Arena Team
The system for creating Arena Teams are the same as for creating a Guild. You need to purchase a Team Charter from an Arena Organizer (only available at the Circle of Blood Arena in Blade's Edge Mountains, Ring of Trials Arena in Nagrand and Gadgetzan in Tanaris), name your team and collect signatures to start the team up. There is a fee to buy a charter, based on the team's size:
- 2v2 = 40g
- 3v3 = 120g
- 5v5 = 200g
You need at least a minimum amount of signatures in relation to what team you want to start, including your own (two for 2v2, three for 3v3 and five for 5v5). You will have to stand next to the players that want to sign the team when signing. Once you have all the signatures you need, you can turn the charter in where you bought it and create the team. You will also have to pick a Arena Flag for your team. The flag is only visible in the information for your team and in the Armory. The flags you wear in the Arena are always standard flags. The other main difference between a Arena Flag and a Guild Tabard is that you don't have to pay for your flag design.
A team can include up to twice the number of characters required to start the team, so that you can have benchwarmers to fill in for your main members if they are not available.
Leaving an Arena Team
In order to leave or disband an Arena Team, use the "/teamquit XvX" or "/teamdisband XvX" chat command. Example: /teamquit 2v2
The Arenas
There is currently three Arenas in the Arena System:
Circle of Blood
Located in Blade's Edge Mountains, with a "ogrish" theme, and some physical obstacles.
Ring of Trials
Located in Nagrand, being an ancient orcish proving ground.
Ruins of Lordaeron
Located on top of Undercity, in the ruins of Lordaeron City. It has no actual World Arena representation, like the other two arenas have.
Fighting in The Arena
As soon as your team is set up, you can prove your skills in The Arena. It is probably a good idea to try a few Skirmish matches before trying the Rated Matches. You enter the Arena like a Battleground: talk to an Arena Battlemaster and select the type of match you want to queue for. You can choose between a "live" Rated Match or a Skirmish training match. As soon as you enter the queue, the Matchmaking System will start looking for other teams that have about the same ranking as yourselves to play against. When it finds a match, both teams are teleported into the arena.
Warmup
When teleported into a the Arena, it is randomly decided on what Arena you will be fighting in (look above for a list of the Arena System arenas). Players start in a "holding area" where the following happens:
- Health is restored to full
- Mana is restored to full
- Energy is restored to full
- All cooldowns of 15 minutes or less is reset
- All buffs are removed
- All conjured items are removed
- Any pets are dismissed
- Debuffs remain
Players also get the Arena Preparation buff, which removes the casting cost of all abilities (including [Soul Shard]s). That means that you can re-summon pets, and rebuff yourself, and still have full health and mana when the match starts.
After 60 seconds of preparation (and allowance for players with slower computers to load), the match begins!
The Fight
Arena fights have special rules that Battlegrounds, Outdoor PvP and Duels don't have:
- No consumables other than bandages and conjured items can be used while in The Arena.
- Abilities/spells/items with cooldowns longer than 15 minutes cannot be used while in the arena. This also applies to resurrection.
- There is no time limit for arena matches.
- There is a power-up that allows you to see stealthed or invisible players, but you lose 15% of your health for picking it up. This allows you to combat players who attempt to hide to delay the match.
- When players enter the Arena, all cooldowns on spells or items that have 15 minutes or less are reset. This allows them to have all their abilities available when the fight begins.
- The last pet a player had summoned will be resummoned outside the Arena upon leaving.
Every Arena Match is just one battle. After the match is over, you can enter the queue again, and will probably meet different players each time. Keep in mind that each time you fight, you will have no information about your opponents class composition or gear until the match begins.
Once a player dies, they can choose to release and observe the remainder of the match as a ghost. You will still have the same vision as when you were alive though. Once you have released, a message appears in the chat window stating, "You are in Spectator Mode. To abandon this battle, right-click the Arena icon on the minimap and select 'Leave Battle'". The only drawback is that if you release, you cannot be ressurected by a team member.
The battle ends when all members of one team is killed. If the two last players dies simultaneously (which is possible), the match ends in a draw, and no Team Rating is changed.
After the Fight
Just as with Battlegrounds, when the game ends, a statistics window is shown for everyone to see total kills, damage and healing done. The Arena window also shows the Team Rating adjustment as a result of the match, which is live immidietly. This differs from the Honor System where the actual Honor Points are calculated near midnight every night.
Team Ratings and Arena Points
Team Ratings
The Team Rating system, where each team gets their own rating (which gives the team some Arena Points every week), is based on the ELO rating system] (that is used for Chess) which uses statistical information to decide points in matches. The main principle is that you get bigger rating increases for defeating an opponent that have a lot higher rating than yourself, and you get smaller (or none at all) rating increases for defeating someone of a lot lower rating. The Matchmaking System tries to match you with even opponents, so in the end, you should have a rating that equates to your skill. The system also allows newly formed teams of high skill to gain higher Team Rating quickly, as they will start out fighting teams with a relatively lower skill than themselves.
The Arena Team does not loose rating does over time, even over an extended period, but you will only recive Arena Points if your team plays at least 10 matches that week, and if you are part of at least 30% of those matches.
Team Ranking
Your Team Ranking is not to be confused with your Team Rating. Your Team Rating is a measurement on how many Team Rating points you have within your Battlegroup. The rating is compared to other teams and your Team Ranking is a description of your status compared to other teams. For instance, you can have a very low Team Rating, but still have a high Team Ranking, if there is no (or few) teams in your Battlegroup with high Team Rating. Team Ranking is not used for anything but your own personal glory and measurement against others at the moment. Both Arena Points and your Arena Title are calculated from your Team Rating. is
Arena Points
| Team Rating to Arena Point Formulae |
|---|
| X = Team Rating, Y = Arena Points
|
Arena Points are calculated based on your Team Rating. It starts out as a linear function up to 1500 rating (the starting point), but after that point, the function becomes logistic. This means that you will get significant increases in Arena Point rewards each week once your Arena Team wins more matches than you loose, but at the highest ratings, you will will get relatively less reward for your standing. The idea is probably to make sure that there is a big difference in gear between mediocre players and that the top layers of Arena Teams will have about the same standing in gear, to more equally fight for the Arena Titles and Arena Mount.
You must fulfill the requirements of 10 matches per week per team, and you personally needs to play in at least 30% of the played matches to gain Arena Points. Blizzard has also deemed the three Arena brackets worth a different amount of points, where 5v5 is considered the most prestigeous, 3v3 less and 2v2 to be more of a "practice Arena".
- 5v5 recives 100% Arena Point reward
- 3v3 recives 80% Arena Point reward
- 2v2 recives 70% Arena Point reward
Arena Points are used as a currency in the Arena System. Arena Rewards doesn't have a gold price, but rather a certain amount of Arena Points. Your Arena Points will remain over time, even when the Arena Seasons changes. You can have a maximum of 5,000 Arena Points, and if you reach that, you will have to spend some before you will earn more points. You can claim your rewards at the Arena Vendor in Area 52 in Netherstorm. You can also brows for items that you can not yet afford, to plan ahead on what you want to spend your Arena Points on.
Arena Rewards
When you actively play with your Arena Team in the Arena, you have several rewards that you can claim through Arena Points or just by your Team Ranking.
Arena Titles
At the end of each Arena season, which lasts 3 months, Arena Team members who have been in at least 20% of their matches in each Battlegroup, will receive an Arena Title according to their Team Rating, compared to the other teams:
| First | Gladiator | Top 0.5% |
| Second | Duelist | 0.5% - 3.0% |
| Third | Rival | 3% - 10% |
| Fourth | Challenger | 10% - 35% |
Equipment
Arena Mounts
The players that managed the hard task of obtaining Gladiator title (or reach top 0.5% of the teams if they had received a Gladiator title previously Arena Seasons) will also receive an Arena Mount, which is a flying Netherdrake, that flies even faster than the regular Epic Flying Mounts.
Season Rewards
To see the rewards for the various seasons, including Armor, Weapons and Accessories, see the Arena Rewards page.
Tournament
Categories: Arena | PvP
