- Author: Taladril
- Date: June 22, 2021
- Updated: June 22, 2021
- Expansion: TBC Classic
Arena Matchmaking
We received two announcements today. First, Blizzard has gone into more detail about how Arena ranking will be implemented. Every player will be seen with two rating scores: a team score and a personal score. The team score lives with the team and depending on how well the team does, that score will go up or down. In addition to the team score, you have a personal score. Specifically how well you do will be tracked. This follows you if you change teams. There is a cap of 1000 team points that would be transferred with a new player coming into a team. You can see the scores in the PvP frame to track how well you do, and know that these points are used for determining end-of-season awards.
The points people have also calculates out for a matchmaking rating (MMR) that will try to pit like skilled players against each other. Each game calculates out the MMR and the more games played the more accurate that score becomes. The MMR score follows the character so even if you change teams don’t expect to start off at the bottom.
Midsummer Fire Festival
Normally it’s time for Midsummer Fire Festival but given that TBC has been out only a few weeks, Blizzard wanted to postpone it a bit and give people more time and less stress to get to 70. So the festival will go on as planned but be delayed with a start date of July 20th. Next year it will be released at its regularly scheduled time.
Spirit of Competition
In exciting news, Blizzard will be releasing the Spirit of Competition event. This is an event that only took place once in the history of the game, so it will be exciting to relive it once more. It was an event that celebrated the 2008 Beijing Olympics and provided prizes of the Competitor’s Tabard and the Gold Medallion which summoned a small Chinese dragon pet. The tabard can be obtained by participating fully in any battleground, while there is a chance to get the medallion by winning a battleground. Thankfully the chance is high so it shouldn’t take too many battlegrounds to see it drop, so prep yourself as this event will be dropping the week of July 20th and this might be the last time we see it.
With Burning Crusade Classic launching only three weeks ago, we decided to postpone the Midsummer Fire Festival this year. It felt a little too soon to have players who might be taking their time feel the need to level up (or level up their alts) so they could make the most of Ahune, among other things. But we don’t want to skip a whole year, so we’ve decided to open the Midsummer Fire Festival in Burning Crusade Classic the week of July 20, 2021. It will return to its usual time coinciding with the real-world Northern hemisphere solar calendar in 2022.
Speaking of the week of July 20, there’s something else going on that week that we’re going to celebrate. The 2020 Summer Olympics is set to kick off that week, and we see that as the perfect opportunity to reintroduce the Spirit of Competition. This event only occurred once before in the history of WoW, to coincide with the 2008 Summer Olympics during the original Burning Crusade. We’re really looking forward to getting into the spirit again.
We’ll update the World of Warcraft blog with more details on both of these events in July.
Over the first few days of ranked Arena play in Burning Crusade Classic, we’ve seen some feedback and inquiries from players that we’d like to answer with a brief explainer.
There are multiple PvP performance ratings used by the game. Every Arena team has a team rating that starts at 0 and increases as the team plays Arena matches together. Additionally, each player who is on a team has a personal rating that is calculated based on the results of the Arena matches they’ve played as a part of their team. If a player leaves a team, their personal rating associated with that team will be reset. If a player joins a team that has already played matches, the player will join with up to 1000 rating points of the team’s current team rating. These values are displayed in the PvP frame, and they are used to determine end-of-season awards and weekly points.
To keep players matching against opponents of similar skill, the game also calculates a matchmaking rating (MMR) for each character. After each match concludes, your MMR is updated to better reflect your skill level, and your team rating and personal rating are updated depending on the match result and the matchmaking calculations. This MMR follows your character from team to team, so when a player leaves a team and joins a new team, they will immediately face similarly skilled opponents, even if that new team starts at a team rating of 0.
Ultimately, the more games you play as part of the same team, the closer your personal rating will get to your MMR.
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