ArenaRating
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Arena rating requirement likely 1800 or 1900
The big news on the forums today is arena weapon ratings-- Blizzard announced last month at BlizzCon that they didn't want players just putting their time in every week to rack up enough arena points to grab the weapons, so they're putting a rating requirement on those next season. Drysc says the exact requirement hasn't been set yet, but it'll likely be around 1800 or 1900.The main problem with this, as many players say, is that it's not those folks who need the weapons. Why give the best weapons to the people who are already winning at PvP. That argument doesn't really hold water (because the whole point of the game is to reward the best players with the best stuff), and the fact is that this change won't really affect that many people anyway-- as of each new arena season, the last seasons' weapons will have the requirements removed and be available for arena points only. So if all you want to do is the minimum number of arena matches and save up your points, you can still do that-- you just can't get the latest and greatest.Blizzard's said before that they want arena PvP to be the peak of player-versus-player combat skill (or at least know-how), and a change like this makes it clear that they don't want to give out any free rides to the top.
Blizzard puts Hall of Fame in the Armory
Well it's not quite a row of statues, but, as Elizabeth mentioned the other day, Blizzard has created an Arena Hall of Fame over at the Armory. They've compiled, from season one, a list of all the teams that finished in the top .5% of their team bracket, and they're all browseable by battlegroup or realm.Unfortunately, they don't show many overall stats-- I'd like to see, for example, the numbers of teams from each battlegroup or realm (checking my own realm shows me that no teams made it, but you'd have to check every single realm to see numbers across the board). Do you think PvP realms turn out more successful Arena teams? I'd also like to see the average rating of the teams that made it-- just a random browse across realms shows that you'd have needed at least a 2200 rating in 5v5 to get in. The highest teams hit around 2500, it looks like, and here's an interesting point: The arena rating is based off of chess' ELO system, and in that system Gary Kasparov, the best player in the world, was the first to break the 2700 rating. So my guess is that we'll see generally higher ratings than these in season two, and so on.Anyway, a nice little tribute to players who were successful in season one. Hopefully, we'll see better insights coming out of these numbers than Blizzard has provided here, but in the meantime if you want to see who on your realm is a heavy hitter, the HoF is the place.
How to calculate Arena Ratings and Points
If you've been playing arena PvP every week and wondering just how your rating translates into points, wonder no more. Our friend Boubouille has created a nifty and easy little Arena Rating calculator-- just punch in your ratings (or your points, if you want to know what rating you'll need to get a certain number of points, and hit calculate and you're set.The mathematical relationship is a little complicated (hence the reason for the calculator), but the rules of earning Arena Points aren't real hard to figure out-- every week, you earn points according to the highest team rating you've got. And a higher rating on 5v5 is worth more than 2v2, because 5v5 teams are harder to both fight and keep up with. This leads to a little bit of system gaming (and a lot of team jumping), but so far Blizzard has been fine with all of that-- they want 5v5 to become the most rewarding type of arena match, and they're willing to accept that you can often earn more playing 5v5 than 2v2, even if you lose.Unfortunately, the actual Arena Rating system is a little more complicated-- it's based off of a chess rating system called ELO (named after the guy who made it, Arpad Elo), and the rating of your opponent actually determines how your rating changes as you play. Unfortunately, with no way to tell who your opponent is before you play a match, it's extremely hard to figure out your rating depending on how many matches you play (players are generally saying that the fewer matches you play, the better, as the higher your rating gets, the more difficult opponents you face). But of course the best way to come out with both a great rating and lots of points is to, y'know, actually be good.
