2013 Ladder Season 4 is drawing to a close, and all ladders will be locked soon.

Here’s what this means for you:

- During the 2013 Season 4 lock, you can’t be promoted or demoted from your current league or division, and your bonus pool stops growing.

- Though you’ll be locked to a league and division, you'll still be able to play out your remaining bonus pool and compete for standing within your division until the end of the season.

- If you're pursuing a league promotion, then you still have a chance to get there. The 2013 Season 4 lock will go into effect on August 19 9:01AM CEST.

The hidden ratings used to determine promotions and demotions will continue to be used for matchmaking purposes, and will continue to update during the 2013 Season 4 lock. So if you play significantly better or worse than your assigned league at the time of the lock, you may find yourself in a different league when 2013 Season 5 begins (after you play your first placement match). Your games during the lock still count.

Season 5 will begin at 09:01AM CEST August 26, 2013, right after the conclusion of the WCS 2013 Season 2 Finals at gamescom. Season milestone rewards will be locked in at this time, and bonus pools will reset. The game will continue doing matchmaking and league placement using results from the previous season.

We will have an updated map pool for Season 5, and we’re happy to announce that the 1v1 portion of the map pool will mirror the map pool used in all regions for WCS Season 3. We’ll have more specifics on map pool changes for you soon.

With the beginning of Season 5, we will be applying a free character name change to all accounts that do not have one available at that time. Character name changes do not stack (you can only have one free name change at a time), so if you’ve been thinking about changing your name in StarCraft II, you have until August 26 to make that decision.

To learn more about this year’s ladder season and related subjects, check out our League, Ladders, and Seasons FAQ.

We heard and agree with feedback from many of you that a complete alignment on the 1v1 map pool across all 3 regions as well as ladder would be cool to try at least for 1 season to check if this direction is better.

We've been discussing with all of our partners on what exact maps to have next season and here's the current list we're thinking on.

Removed Maps:
Neo Planet S
Newkirk Precinct TE
Red City LE
Star Station
Korhal Sky Island LE

3 new maps:
Yeonsu - new TL map contest map


Frost - new TL map contest map


Polar Night - new GSL map


4 returning maps:
Akilon Wastes
Belshir Vestige
Derelict Watcher
Whirlwind

Just wanted to let you guys know asap also in order to hear more feedback. Thanks