Season 4 has arrived! Season 3 milestone rewards will be locked in at this time and bonus pools will reset. Hidden skill ratings used for matchmaking and league placement will carry over from the previous season, so players who have completed placement matches in a previous season will only need to play one new placement match. Don’t forget to review the map changes which are coming in Season 4 as well.

Beginning with Season 4, two changes are coming to future ladder seasons:

• Each season will now last for approximately two months.
• Grandmaster league placement time will be reduced to one week (from two weeks) to account for the reduced season length.

Good luck, have fun!

After reviewing player feedback, we’ve selected a 1v1 map pool composed of tournament-configured maps for the upcoming Season 4 of the StarCraft II ladder.

Six of the eight total maps in the Season 4 1v1 map pool will be maps that have been used in tournaments around the world. In addition, Shattered Temple and Metalopolis will be returning to the map pool, with close spawn positions disabled. Two non-tournament maps -- Abyssal Caverns and Nerazim Crypt -- will also be included. Players can veto these two non-tournament maps and still have a single veto remaining for the remaining maps, just as a player would in a major tournament.

These maps will be removed:

• Backwater Gulch
• Searing Crater
• Typhon Peaks

These maps will form the new 1v1 map pool:

• Abyssal Caverns (non-tournament)
• Antiga Shipyard
• Metalopolis (close spawns disabled)
• Nerazim Crypt (non-tournament)
• Shakuras Plateau
• Shattered Temple (close spawns disabled)
• Tal’darim Altar LE
• Xel’naga Caverns

Depending on the feedback we receive regarding this approach to the 1v1 ladder map pool, we may move further toward a tournament-configured map format in future ladder seasons. We look forward to hearing what you think, and we hope you all have a great Season 4!

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The transition between ladder seasons is generally a time when we take the opportunity to make adjustments to the ladder map pool. In Season 4, the 1v1 pool will remain unchanged, but we will be removing the following maps from the 2v2 map pool:

(4)Khaydarin Depths
(8)Tempest

They will be replaced with the following maps:

(4)Lunar Colony V
(8)Magma Core

We have chosen to remove Khaydarin Depths and Tempest from the 2v2 ladder pool because expanding can be a challenge for certain team compositions on these maps, and they aren’t as balanced as we would prefer for other team compositions. We also wanted to focus on maps that start 2v2 teammates closer together at the beginning of a match. Lunar Colony V and Magma Core are maps that should address these issues.