wow-arenas
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Patch 5.4: Arena teams out, cross-realm arenas in
Patch 5.4 is already shaping up to be a big one, and today Blizzard announced some major arena changes in addition to the tie-breaking system. Aiming to improve the arena experience by making it easier for anyone to compete, arena players will no longer need an arena team (in fact, arena teams don't even appear in the UI on the PTR): in patch 5.4, queuing for an arena match will work similarly to queuing for rated battlegrounds. You'll be matched with other players queuing to fight with and against, based on your rating. Additionally, matches are no longer limited to your battlegroup: you'll be able to play with or against anyone in your region, and even be able to compete in cross-realm groups with friends on other realms. Matches themselves will stay (mostly) the same, though your conquest point cap and requirements to purchase items will be based on your personal rating. These changes are live on the PTR now if you want to check them out for yourself. See the full text of Blizzard's announcement under the break.
Arena points being reimbursed... for now
Players will be seeing the arena points they had left after season 7 ended be reimbursed in the near (if not immediate) future. Yesterday players logged on after maintenance to discover their points had been wiped, and that season 8 had not yet begun. Arena points are only wiped at the beginning of a season, not before and not during the transition between seasons. Crygil's full statement on the reimbursement is as follows: Arena points were wiped during the recent maintenance following the end of the arena season on January 19th. We initially intended to launch the next arena season this week, but it was delayed due to the minor content patch that needs to coincide with the beginning of the season having some last minute issues to resolve. Due to the delay in the arena season we are in the process of reimbursing arena points to all eligible participants. Characters will be returned to the amount they had on Tuesday, January 26th. All arena points will then be wiped when season 8 begins. We apologize for the confusion this caused and appreciate your understanding Rumors place season 8 beginning next week, although there has been no official announcement. Arena season 8 will begin with the release of patch 3.3.2 -- of which we recently discovered translated Korean patch notes.
The three reasons for the killing of Twos
Now you might want to kill off some Twos because they're skin jobs with such religious zeal to them they make the one track minded Replicants look like Titan A.E. robots. Or you might want to kill off twos because the bracket was nearly impossible to balance.According to a recent post by Ghostcrawler there are three primary reasons that they killed off the 2v2 arena bracket this season.First, the most successful compositions were dominated by classes that were "well-rounded... with lots of offense and defense..." Think Paladins and Druids. Ever try to kill a good Resto druid one-on-one? It can get a little bit insane. Same thing happens in the twos bracket.Secondly, there exists a problem with healer balance. Consider the following scenario: A healer can't keep himself and his partner up in 2s, therefore the healer would never be successful in 3s A healer can keep himself and his two partners up in 3s, therefore would be over powered in 2s
