Devlog - January 6, 2025:
Arena teams have been an important part of the game from TBC until late MoP. In Patch 5.4.0 (and WotLK Classic) they were replaced by personal arena stats. We think Arena Teams are a good feature, it adds personality to the game, it makes you 'bond' with your Arena Partners as it requires effort from all members to get an Arena Team to high ratings, team names also add a certain charm.
There is one big downside however, it makes playing arena with your friends a lot harder as you lose your win/lose stats and team rating when you switch to a different team.
As such, we think it's time to make a couple changes, modernizing how arena teams work and making it easier to play with others. We are however still bound by the 3.3.5a game client and as such cannot remove arena teams entirely.
We have the following changes in mind:
- Arena Teams will remember stats of its members after leaving.
- Players will regain their stats upon re-joining an Arena Team.
- The personal rating will decrease by 50 points every weekly flush in teams you have left.
- Any Team Member can invite other players to join an Arena Team.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the weekly arena point flush and end-season routines will not change, you will only gain points and end-season rewards from teams you are active in and fill the criteria for.
We believe these changes will not change the core value of arena teams: Working together to get a team to a high rating, while still allowing the freedom to play with others.
We will await player feedback before we implement the above changes on TBC and WotLK. Please provide your feedback in this thread.
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Update after feedback:
The 'solo queue teams’ idea is indeed an option to consider, but we’re not looking to overhaul the whole arena team system at this moment. Especially not mid-season.
We might reconsider this at a later date, but there's a bunch of technical hurdles to overcome before we can do that.
Our belief is that the changes that were suggested will add more flexibility and quality of life without requiring a complete overhaul.
We accepted the feedback for removing the weekly -50 personal rating penalty for inactive team members, since it won't really add anything to the experience.
As such, we will move ahead with the suggested changes, most likely by the end of the month or even before it. The devlog will be updated when we do so.
