WoW: Burning Crusade Classic Arena Season 1 Starts Now

World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic's first Arena season has officially begun, allowing players to test their might against other players in 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 rated PvP.

By competing in Arena, players can earn Arena points on a weekly basis based on their team's performance, which can then be cashed in to acquire powerful weapons and armor. Teams will need to complete at least 10 games to qualify for points in a given week, with an individual player needing to have participated in at least 30% of matches played that week in order to earn points. The top .5% of players will also earn a Swift Nether Drake Mount, which will only be available during the game's first Arena season.

Arena mode was first introduced to World of Warcraft with the original Burning Crusade expansion in 2007, and has become a key activity in the game ever since. In later versions of the game, players could also compete in Rated Battlegrounds in addition to Arena to earn the game's most powerful PvP gear.

How Burning Crusade Classic's Arena system works is a little different from how it was back in 2007. In Burning Crusade Classic, players will start at a rating of 0, instead of the 1500 Arena rating all teams started from in the original game. As a result, Blizzard is making it so that teams with a rating lower than 1500 will earn a higher amount of Arena points than in the original game.

Certain pieces of gear will also have rating requirements that must be met in order to be acquired, something that was introduced later in the expansion's lifespan with the arrival of Burning Crusade Arena Season 3. Once a new season starts, gear from older Arena seasons can be purchased via points with no rating requirements. Burning Crusade Classic's Arena matchmaking system has also seen adjustments from the original game, with Blizzard tweaking its MMR system to improve match quality.

Blizzard introduced a number of changes to Burning Crusade Classic outside Arena, as well, when the game launched earlier this month, ranging from allowing players to purchase a level boost to how the game's endgame content is rolled out.