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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
1. Leaving one team to join no other team, the personal rating will drop - but whats with the "personal mmr" in regards to matchmaking?
2. What happens if a high rated player swaps teams to play with a friend who is low mmr, loosing a lot of games and therefore lowering personal mmr?
3. Is there gonna be a system to track individual players swapping from one team to another, in order to "wintrade" the other team up?
This changes don't solve the main issue which is when you leave your main team you still lose your progress (personal raiting, the only thing you carry to other team is mmr...). If two players who need gear wants to play, one of them still has to leave his team and join other team and start from 1k raiting which is issue we got now (nobody wants to leave their team to lose progress). Also when members can invite people in team, this might lead to people grief and drop raiting of leaders team when he is offline. Why don't you put same system we got in SQ for 2s and 3s also. It would solve all issue.
Devlog - January 6, 2025:
We are however still bound by the 3.3.5a game client and as such cannot remove arena teams entirely.
.
I mean, how does soloq work then? It's all personal bound?
The changes don't really make sense, it doesn't actually do anything, except allowing yourself to play with some people for fun? But if you want to que certain comps and push rating, it doesn't make any sense.
Not sure how soloq works for personal rating, but can just copy that system?
This changes don't solve the main issue which is when you leave your main team you still lose your progress (personal raiting, the only thing you carry to other team is mmr...). If two players who need gear wants to play, one of them still has to leave his team and join other team and start from 1k raiting which is issue we got now (nobody wants to leave their team to lose progress). Also when members can invite people in team, this might lead to people grief and drop raiting of leaders team when he is offline. Why don't you put same system we got in SQ for 2s and 3s also. It would solve all issue.
Hello, i'm a pve player. don't know how it works
Solo queue 3?3 arena 10 games per week count same as my regular team?
My friend don't like pvp (me too), but it looks a good oportunity to do week chalenge
It's realy good, since it's not about winning
I LOVE that you are bringing up this issue and trying to solve it. The changes are VERY welcomed, But I have to also agree with some of the comments here. Why not just make it like the Solo Queue team? That would literally solve everything. People can just invite to group and que whatever they want.
The way I see it, you can either create personalized arena teams like solo queue (which you don’t want), or link MMR to the arena team rating. Linking MMR to the team rating would allow players to team up with others who have lower/higher MMR than theirs, AND prevent people from MMR exploiting.