Arenas are places where teams of players can compete against each other in deathmatch-style PvP. Instead of participating in objective-based PvP, these contests will center around your team's ability to obliterate the other team. Blizzard has planned a system that matches teams of equal strength together to increase fairness and make advancement to the highest tiers more difficult and more rewarding. The arena allows for 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5, but your team may have up to double the amount required for one fight (a 2v2 team can have four people in it). Unlike normal PvP, the arena also allows inter-faction competition. Rewards are reported to be on part with the highest PvE rewards.
Currently two Arenas are known, Ring of Trials in Nagrand, Circle of Blood in Blade's Edge Mountains.
Arena rating system
Blizzard has already released information about how the current honor system is being changed in the expansion and becoming a point based system. The real interesting news is that they are releasing another honor system for the arena team battles. Community Manager posts describe the system as being based on the ELO chess system which uses statistical information to decide points in matches.[citation needed]
The ELO system takes the score of two opponents and calculates a statistical chance of winning based off those scores. After the match it uses the difference between the calculated chance of winning and the actual results. The difference between the two probabilities is then applied to the maximum amount of points allowed per match. Having a maximum amount makes sure teams have to play a large number of matches instead of just getting lucky and beating one team with a high ranking score.
Lets assume a score range of 0 to 3000 and a maximum of 100pt gain per match. I am just using random numbers here along with a simplistic system of calculating odds. Chances are that Blizzard will have a much more accurate system in place. Anyway here's a small example of how the system would work:
- Team A's Current Score: 1500pt
- Team A's Chance of Winning: 1500 / (1500 + 1580) = .48701
- Team B's Current Score: 1580pt
- Team B's Chance of Winning: 1580 / (1500 + 1580) = .51298
- Now Let's say Team A won the battle then
- Team A's New Score: 1500 + 100*(1-.48701) = 1500 + 51.299 = 1551.299
- Team B's New Score: 1580 + 100*(0-.51298) = 1580 + -51.298 = 1528.71
- Now Let's say Team B won the battle then
- Team A's New Score: 1500 + 100*(0-.48701) = 1500 + -48.701 = 1451.299
- Team B's New Score: 1580 + 100*(1-.51298) = 1580 + 48.701 = 1628.701
As you can see when a team with a higher ranking score wins a match against a lower ranking team they receive fewer points then if the lower rank team won. Such a system allows newly formed teams to quickly gain rank as they fight teams with much better scores then them.
Unlike the current honor system there will be a matching system which sets up teams with similar scores. This was the main problem with the current honor system since pre-made teams of epic equipped people were able to gain large amounts of honor by farming those with lesser gear. In the arena system, gear will still matter but teams will eventually only gain more points by wining against those with similar gear.
Arena Point Calculation
Graphical representation of AP calculation.
The transformation from your Team Rating to Arena Points starts off as a linear function, but once you go beyond a certain rating threshold, the function becomes logistic. This means that you will see a significant payoff increase once your Team Rating goes beyond a certain point, but the high-end spectrum of the ratings will eventually notice a decrease in how much bang they get for their buck. You can stockpile a maximum of 5,000 Arena Points.
Formulas:
- X = Team Rating, Y = Arena Points
- If X>1500: Y = 2894/(1+259*e^(-0.0025*X))
- Else: Y = 0.206*X+99
Strategy
Also the strategy will be quite different between current PvP and the arena system. Most PvP objectives nowadays involve holding or running flags which favors teams having certain classes rather then a overall strategy. Druids and Shamans are well know for running flags in WSG while the ability of a paladin to guard a flag is legendary. In arena PvP the goal will be to kill your opponents and every class ability will come into play. Tactics and coordination will be much more important in such an environment especially since you'll be facing both horde and alliance teams in the arena. The arena system may fulfill much of the needs of the ex-world PvPers and those who hate flag capturing as long as the rank decay is not too steep.
Sources
- The Arena Rating System by Relmstein