With the first round of qualification for the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament underway, we wanted to provide a schedule for the remainder of this qualifier and details on what each of the phases entails.

Phase 1 – The Practice Phase – Currently active and completes on April 22, 2008

  • There is no penalty for changing your team and you are free to move teams around.
  • At the end of this phase all arena team ratings will be reset to 1500 during maintenance.

Phase 2 – The Competition Phase – Active from April 22, 2008 to May 6, 2008

  • Every team will be reset to a 1500 rating and official rankings begin.
  • There will be a 150 team rating penalty for any player added to an arena team.
  • At the end of this phase all arena teams will be locked down and players will not be able to switch characters from arena teams.
  • Registration will also close at the end of this phase.

Phase 3 – The Final Phase – Active from May 6, 2008 to May 20, 2008

  • Registration is closed for this phase of qualification.
  • Players are no longer allowed to switch arena teams during this phase.
  • At the end of the phase, the top 4 rated teams from the Battlegroup will be invited to the regional qualifier if they meet all eligibility requirements.
  • Eligible teams must have played a minimum of 200 games during Phases 2 and 3 to be able to qualify to advance to the regional qualifier.
  • Each team member must have participated in 30% of their team’s games to be eligible to qualify.

First Qualification Round Schedule for North America:

  • Phase 1 ends and Phase 2 begins: April 22, 2008
  • Phase 2 ends and Phase 3 begins: May 6, 2008
  • Phase 3 and the first Qualifier ends: May 20, 2008

We just posted here that the practice phase was extended an additional week for this qualifier:
https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5784443252&sid=1

All teams are supposed to be locked down so I believe the ability to create teams is also disabled. If a character on a team has played less than 30% of the games, that character will not qualify, but the team will.