Here are the Season 4 Item Pricing, as expected - nothing surprising. If you haven’t been keep up-to-date with the news, there are some interesting rating requirements for S4 as well.

Following are the S4 Gear stats in wowdb.
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Some tweaks here and there:

Hunters

• Aspect of the Viper: This ability now grants an additional amount of mana each 5 seconds equal to 35% of the hunter’s level. - slight mp5 boost, 24.5 mp5 to be exact
• Scare Beast: The range on this spell has been increased to 30 yards and it is now instant cast. - This sounds pretty big vs Druids and other Hunter pets, especially Druids. Looking forward to what kind of impact it will have.

All ZG charms that were still useful has been rendered garbage. It’s nice to see that blizzard are timely on these fixes, especially after some people have invested 7 weeks in to getting them post BC.

Rumors of an epic version of PvP Trinket has been around, yet another 40k to grind - fun right? Full boring notes can be found here.

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New rules on season 4 gear was released today, wishuluck from our forums summed it up well. You can join the discussion here!

New Rating Rules:

1) If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating. This means that a player cannot join a highly rated team and begin earning points based purely on the pre-established rating of the team before they joined it. They’ll need to compete, improve, and gain a personal rating worthy of the points they would receive.

2) If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating. This means that players cannot join a highly rated team and immediately face highly rated opponents, easily and quickly bringing their personal rating up. Instead they’ll need to again compete, improve, and earn their rating.
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As promised, Blizzard has extended the practice time:

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

- Bornakk

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Update 3: Looks like things are finally fixed. If you been napping through the lag, now is the time to get your gear/enchants/gems!

Update 2: 4 Hours later, now the realms are crashing none stop.

Update: Tournament Realm is now up and LAGGING! Enjoy shopping for the next 4 hours.

The launch of the Tournament Realm will be delayed for a few hours as the final preparations are completed. We are still scheduled to begin today and will provide further details as they become available. - Bornakk

Hopefully by ‘few hours’ and ‘begin today’ doesn’t = 11:59pm…

Update: Looks like EU got similar delay…

As we’ve moved into Daylight Saving Time since the publication of the Arena Tournament Official Competition Rules, we’d like to clarify that the intended opening time for the Arena Tournament is 10:00 GMT, i.e. 12:00 (noon) CEST (Paris time) and thus 11:00 BST (London time).

Update 12:20 CEST: There has been a delay in opening the tournament realms. We will update you with new information as soon as possible. - Slorkuz

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