When reading about the world wide arena tournament i realized you only have 2 months to get your arena gear. We first assumed it would be 3 months and I determined that the top 15% of teams would be able to get full arena gear. But now that its only 2 months i decided to redo my calculations.

8 weeks means 8 chances to get points. you need 15750 points as a hunter to get a 2 hander, ranged, and 5/5 set. This means you need to gain 207 rating each week to get the full set before the season ends. That means you need to play more than 10 games a week and win. Your end rating will be 3156 and that rating means less than 1%(I didn't figure out exactly) of the teams will get the full set. This is all things being equal where you will play people of comperable rating and keep winning. I suspect after you get pass 2500 you will only be getting 2-3 points per win and losing 30 points if you lose 1 game which means playing 100 games and not losing once to be able to get the nessesary rating.

I don't know about you guys, but even being in a (I think) top team, I seriously doubt I will be getting that high.

Well, you can get 2432 rating on the first week and keep it for 8 weeks, you'll get enough poitns to get the full set. Howver, even at 1700 rating myself, I'm noticing most matches im only gaininst 8-10 points.

Elo rating systems aren't really about progressive rating gains - the idea is that they level off after a while after teams reach their "true" rating, or the rating that is reflective of their true strength. If teams play a lot in the early weeks, they will approach their true rating rather quickly. I'd be absolutely shocked if any team ever reached a 3156 rating.

This is true. My simulation had everyone getting their rating within 100 points in 5-6 weeks. Your true strength would need to be close to 9500 to be able to get a 3100 rating at the end of 2 months which would put you in the 0.00000001% bracket. Yes, thats near impossible and I'm probably off by a few decimal places.

For a comparison for people less knowledgeable about probable ELO ratings. The highest ranking chess Grand Master(whose name exscapes me but is Russian) has about a 2850 rating. The best chess computer(few generations after Deep Blue) is estimated to have just over 3000 rating.

Though chess starts at 1000 rating, they also play semi random people of differring ranks. They do not play only people as close to their rating as possible as we do in WoW which should further reduce our chance to get any higher than a 2500 rating.

In chess, there are zero random factors. The entire game is based purely on skill -- analytical ability combined with play experience and memory. That means that a grand master is going to beat a beginner every single time. There are, in practice, no exceptions to this. That means that in terms of the ELO system, the grand master's true strength is indeed quite high compared to the novice. However in an arena match, the chances that even a novice team could beat a team of experience pros is much higher than in chess. It's still a very small chance, but it's orders of magnitude larger than in a chess game.

Magic: the Gathering's rated ELO system is a great example. Simply because of the random elements in the game, an amateur player could beat a player like Kai, Finkel, or Kibler (heh) a lot more often than in a chess game. It was still quite rare, but it did happen. Correspondingly, the highest ratings in the system hovered near the 2000-2100 range, starting from a baseline of 1600. I think that WoW's system will develop a lot more like M:tG than like chess.

Actually in chess, a draw is the default result, and white has a huge advantage. That means a 2500, with white especially, should be able to draw a fair portion of the time with even the strongest player in the world. Chess does not start at a 1000 rating. It doesn't start at any fixed value at all, but a provisional rating, which is based on your results and your average's opponents rating for the first 20 games, during which period you barely affect your opponents (not zero-sum) Obviously this isn't possible when everyone starts at the same time. In the FIDE system, there is a floor of 1800. in the USCF system, there is no floor.

Chess players don't play random opponents at all. They play in tournaments where everyone is of similar strength. A top tournament would have a range no wider than 2700-2800, which is probably less than the range for these arena pairings.


I don't know how you can say people would need a 9500 true strength (obviously not possible, no one's true strength will be much over 3000, if at all). I guess you are assuming they are playing 10 games a week only, but nobody is going to do that the first week. You can play as much as you want, and if your true strength is 2500, you can get to 2500.

Of course, in the beginning, the range won't have spread out, so you will be playing underrated people, but over the course of the first couple weeks, it will get easier and easier, and should be possible by the end.

I don't understand why it matters arena points, I was led to believe, don't "expire" so you can carry a balance forward into the next season. Get a few items the next 8 weeks, a few more after that...

As a derail, are there really teams out there who are winning every game? I haven't joined a serious 5v5 team yet, but my duo isn't doing nearly as well as I had hoped. I'm chalking a lot of that up to the fact that I have become a big PvP-skill-less carebear in this game (as has my partner), but I find it hard to believe that there are really teams who are going anywhere near undefeated. Maybe Igni and his ilk have had much better results though.

First things first,

Undefeated teams won't exist over an entire PVP season. People get DC'd or somebody strings together 2-3 huge crits on your healer. Skill and class balance make up the largest part of your rating, but there's always that 2-3% of luck and unlucky waiting to screw you. Strongest I saw today was:

Druid (Feral)
Shaman (Resto)
Paladin (some form of Holy/Prot)
Rogue
Warrior

..they pick a target, Shaman pops Heroism and the amount of DPS on that person is really, really insane. Druid pops out, Cyclones your healer. They've got totems. Just about everything you'd want, honestly. Mortal Strike from the Warrior or Wound Poison from the Rogue. They had two true healers and a 3rd hybrid if needed. All very skilled players. Rough team to play against.

This entire thread is based off the assumption that arena points expire, like ranking. As spronk pointed out, is that even true?