Blizzard announces global arena tournament

As far as I'm aware, this is totally out of the blue and hasn't been pre-announced. Blizzard announced on worldofwarcraft.com today that they are holding a global 5v5 arena tournament:

• We're pleased to announce our plans for the inaugural World of Warcraft Arena Tournament, scheduled to begin on February 16 in Europe and North America and March 3 in Korea. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade players in these regions who consider themselves to be among the best in the game at player-vs.-player (PvP) combat will soon be able to prove it to the rest of the world. Will you and the rest of your team be up to the challenge? If so, gather your cohorts and begin preparing for the largest World of Warcraft competition ever held.

Blizzard's page on the tournament is fairly thorough, so be sure to check it out for full details. In short, though:

1. Make a 5v5 team and compete on your server.
2. One or more teams per battlegroup will be selected to compete in the qualifiers, which will run from April 20 to May 4 and pit all the region's qualifiers against each other. The teams will be copied to a private server for this.
3. Each region's top eight teams will compete in live regionals, date and location TBA.
4. An uncertain number of winning teams from the regionals will compete in the global finals.
5. One team will win, thereby winning the title of "bestest 5v5 team in the whole wide world."

For me, the most interesting thing about this whole event is that it's global. Never before has there been anything that's united the different regions, to my knowledge. I'm not even much of a PvPer, but the opportunity to "determine the best World of Warcraft PvP team in the world," as Blizz puts it, has me excited. No word on prizes or anything, but stay tuned.