Big changes are coming to the World of Warcraft arenas that will make them more convenient and competitive than ever before. Some of those changes will appear in the PTRs very soon.
Today's competition is limited to the realms of your battle group, and your ability to participate in the arena system requires having a static team of friends who are in the same realm. In the next patch 5.4, we are building technological improvements that we have been making over time (such as regional matchmaking), to expand the improvements we can make. With the upcoming changes, we would like to expand the competitor pool and improve the arena experience for all World of Warcraft players.
One of the first changes you'll notice in Patch 5.4 is that you no longer need to create or join an Arena team to compete. Queuing will now work similarly to rated battlegrounds: you can queue up for an arena battle in a group of the appropriate size (2v2, 3v3 or 5v5, as before) and your opponents will be selected in based on your group's average match allocation index.
In general, the mechanics of the arena will be the same: you will continue to win or lose in your personal ranking based on your wins and losses, although now your conquest point limit will be based on your personal ranking. The ranking requirements for purchasing items will also be based on your personal rating.
This change has several advantages over the old static equipment-based system:
- You no longer have to worry about invitations, joining an arena team, or leaving one. Now you can play with who you want, when you want.
- You can join a group between kingdoms and queue up for arena battles with friends from other kingdoms.
- Arena hierarchy will no longer be sorted by battlegroup. As with normal and scored battlegrounds, arenas will now be regional. You will compete with a pool of opponents that includes all the arena players in your region!
As before, at the end of an arena season the top players will win titles and mounts.
We are excited about these changes and eager to hear your thoughts. Join us in the PTR when these changes are implemented and try them out for yourself.