From this 8/11 article in IGN, we know that the same character will be able to participate on one team from each bracket: 2x2, 3x3 and 5x5.

How does this impact the acculmulation of arena points? Does a person who plays in all three brackets earn points from each that go into the same pool? If so, does that mean a person who participates in all three Arenas can acculmulate points at three times the rate of someone who only participates in one bracket?

I posted the question above to the General forums, but since it dropped to the fifth or sixth page, I thought I'd ask here. Have we received word one way or the other? And wouldn't it make sense if it did work like that?

I'd imagine "Arena Points" would be from any Arena Event, since them being seperate catagories seems not very intelligent.

aye, although if you want to be ranked fairly high you'd want to spend a 3 month period heavily focused on a single bracket before maybe trying out one of the other two brackets (Blizzard have already stated that each season is roughly 3 months long to allow for some rewards to be seasonal).

Personally i think it's a great way to easily access meta gems.

Im pretty sure the arena system is going to be set up so that you wont have to focus a ton of time on it like the current pvp honor system.
If you can go 10-0 each week in all 3 brackets that is going to net you a lot more total points than going 30-0 in a single bracket.

I've read that the rating system will be an ELO system but how are points awarded to the team. Whats better? two teams or one?

10 people, one team. Ranked #1.
10 people, 5 in each team. Ranked #1 and #2.

If two guild teams are at the top of a bracket would it be better to just combine the teams and regulate play resulting in higher points/person? If its shared points you make two teams. If everyone gets a set amount of points its better to have one team.

I think it's the latter Marketa, so it's better to have one team with 10 assuming all 10 get to play at least 30% of the time.

In my mind - which is an admittedly messy place - I've got the following scenario playing out:

You'll have the teams of people who PvP for the love of PvP and will do it, their scores be damned.

Then you'll have the min-maxers. They'll play in teams composed of the smallest number possible and play the minimum number of games. And they'll do that for each bracket. Thirty games of very intense action is a lot of games and should be enough to sate the hunger of most people.

Further, there's no time -> Arena point conversion like the time -> Honor conversion now. You could very easily end up reducing your score. Further, there's no guarantee that teams who are able to offer you a challenge online at any given moment. And, if that is the case, the time between games may be exhaustingly long depending on how fast they set up the search algorithm to expand.

The problem I see with having teams larger than the minimum number required is one of logistics. If you only have 2 people on a team, you are free to play 10 games or 100. If you have 4 people in your 2x2 bracket team, then you start having to deal with logistics. I don't know what support they'll provide to allow teams to track how many games who has played, but heaven forbid they don't provide any support at all.

We've got to remember that an Arena fight will be mentally exhausting. Every fight, you have a good chance of going up against someone of equal skill - at the very least, they've been able to produce a comparable ELO score. Many people here are quite used to rolling over their opponents in Arathi Basin in organized guild groups. Fewer of you are used to fighting equal or superior organized groups. Possibly, you've never encountered it. As a person who has done it, I can tell you it is mentally exhausting, emotionally trying and often frustrating. It's also a great intellectual challenge and a great rush, win or lose. This is why I do it.

For those people who want more, they'll do simpler things to relax. Like go into an Arathi Basin, world PvP in Nagrand, or, heaven forbid, find someone to practice with so they can refine their technique. For those who don't know, the Arena in Stranglethorn Vale is a free for all where everyone who is not on your team can be killed, Alliance or Horde. They hold the pirate gold contest there for that reason.

So am I missing the purpose of "focusing" on a bracket?

i was under the impression that you have to have your arena team be twice the arena size bracket. i.e. for the 2v2 games you must have a 4v4 roster, and everyone has to play at least 30% of the games. i remember reading this awhile back though, so it may have changed, or i may just remember wrong.

Skiace,

I don't think you could enforce a rule that says a team must have the max allowable players at all times if only for logistical purposes.

From the article I mentioned above, bold is mine:

While far from definitive, I think allow suggests more flexibility than had the author used "requires." Please note, I'm not advocating keeping teams to a minimum to inflate the scores of the individual members somehow, since you can't. I'm simply suggesting that it may be easier from a logistical standpoint to knock out 10 games if you have the minimum number of people in your team.

You are right about the part where you have to participate in 30% of the games to receive team points.

If anyone wants to go over the basics of the Arena team, you can find a lot of blue commentary on the the topic here.

It's been confirmed that you can form a team with the minimum number of players. This discussion mirrors one on our guild boards - efficient way to distribute teams. I'm finding it hard to justify having a team larger than the minimum size with the current information, really - though if you want to promote the strength of a single 5-man unit it might be a better idea to have the members all in the same 3v3 and all but 1 in the same 2v2 team, to give the players more familiarity working within each subunit of the 5v5 team.

So true, I can't wait. While it is exhausting and I wouldn't want to do it all night, that kind of play is extremely appealing, probably my favorite thing in WoW. Shame it's so hard to find matches like that in the current system. The arena system has single-handedly sold me on TBC.

I would be pretty certain that having a team of the minimum size wont give each member more points per win. Whether your 5v5 team is 5 people big of 10 people big you will get the same amount of arena points each week based on how you score and who you defeat. The only drawback to having a bigger team is you will have to involve each member in at least 30% of the games so that they can get credit for the points earned.

The current dilemna we thought about is, would it be better to make 1team with the 10 best players, but a lot of the time, people will be extremly bored cause they won't be able to play, or 2 teams of 5players, with the possibility that both rank high and as such, one of the team make the other lose points once they face each other(resulting on drama probably ^^). It's somewhat a tough choice.

Also there will be the problem of battlegroups, they're still pretty small. Atm when you play random BGs, there's a lot of games, but you can consider 3/4 of them are pugs and as such are worthless if you're playing as a team. Out of the rest, it depends on your skill, but if you're a "good" team, you can say another 3/4 of the 1/4left is not good enough anyway. That doesn't leave a ton of people, and these people will be who you'll be matched with based on victories. You'll have the luck to play your own faction too, so that adds a few teams, but in the end you might just face the same people over and over. I hope they make something so we can fight other battlegroup teams for arenas, maybe on specific days or something, and maybe only top teams, so it gives an even better reason for people to keep playing at the top once they bought all their sparkling epics.

One can only hope ^^

Answers to a few more things in this thread.