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World of Warcraft Team Ratings, Arena Points, and Sweet, Sweet Prizes

Each team has a Team Rating. This rating reflects how well your team is doing in the Arena System; the higher your rating, the better. When you queue up for a fight, the matchmaking system uses your rating to find a suitable match if the average personal rating is a 150 points range of the team rating. Every time your team wins a match, your rating goes up, and every time you lose a match, your rating goes down. The amount by which your rating changes depends on your team's rating compared to the other team's rating – if you win against a higher ranked team, your rating will improve more than if you steamrolled a weaker team. Similarly, losing against a weaker team will hurt your rating more than losing against superior enemies. The exact formulae are a bit more complicated than that, but the basic idea is similar to the Elo ranking system used for professional chess.

At the end of each week, your Team Rating is used to calculate how many Arena Points your team will receive for the week. Your team must have fought a minimum of ten matches per week to be rewarded with Arena Points, and a player must have been in at least 30% of all your matches to be eligible for that week's points. It is important to note that the points you receive in a given week is determined by only one team, and not from a combination of all your teams. Whichever team you are a member of that would receive the most points after accounting for Team Rating and team type becomes the sole source for your points for that week.

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. In addition, 2v2 and 3v3 teams are subject to a handicap where they receive less points than a 5v5 team with the same Team Rating.

Arena Calculator
Three Different Arena CalculatorsColor-coded FieldsReference Sheet
The Arena Calculator is a tool that allows you to do a number of helpful calculations for when and how you can spend your arena points. Choose one of the three useful calculators to help you answer the following questions:

How many arena points will I earn this week?
What's the average rating I'll need to get my desired arena reward?
When can I expect to get my desired arena reward?
Read more about the Arena Calculator.

Purchasing Arena Rewards



Arena Rewards include epic weapons and armor sets and are exceptionally useful for PvP combat, as they are loaded with PvP-centric stats such as Resilience and Stamina. These items are purchased with Arena Points, the currency of the Arena System. Arena Points do not decay and you can stockpile a maximum of 5,000 at any given time. To claim your rewards, visit the Arena vendor in Area 52 in the Netherstorm region of Outland. You can also find an Arena vendor in Shattrath City. Go here to see a list of rewards.

Arena Seasons and Special Prizes
One very cool aspect of the Arena System is the introduction of seasons. Each season lasts several months, and at the end of a season, the top ranked teams are rewarded with some unique prizes such as special mounts, titles, or anything else the season's promoters deem worthy of the best gladiators.

The top 0.5% of Arena teams in each battlegroup will receive a Swift Nether Drake at the conclusion of the Arena season. This awesome mount travels faster than most normal epic mounts at 310% flight speed!

The current ladder season is Arena Season 4 (June, 2008 - ?).

Previous Arena Seasons

Arena Season 1 (February, 2007 - June, 2007)
Arena Season 2 (June - November, 2007)
Arena Season 3 (November, 2007 - June, 2008)
Arena Season 4 (June, 2008 - ?)

Seasonal Rewards
The start of every Arena season is accompanied by an all-new set of Arena rewards that are slightly more powerful than those of the previous season. For example, at the start of Arena Season 2, new Arena Season 2 rewards became available for purchase from the Arena vendors. Those who had arena points saved up at the beginning of the season could have purchased some of the new items right away. The previous season's items are still available to purchase at a slight discount. For the onset of Arena Season 4, Season 2's rewards are purchasable with honor points instead of arena points. This trend may continue in future seasons.

Arena Titles
At the conclusion of each season, members of highly-ranked teams receive special titles to honor their achievements:

Gladiator (Top 0.5%)
Duelist (Top 0.5% - 3%)
Rival (Top 3% - 10%)
Challenger (Top 10 - 35%)
Beginning with Season 2, special titles are given to the #1 team in each bracket for each battlegroup. The special title was called "Merciless Gladiator" for Season 2.

Arena titles last until the end of the following season, at which time they are removed and redistributed to that season's top teams.