Currently, arenas count for explorer rankings.

Above and beyond that, each arena that has Battlechess (including the Avenger) adds another 128 rooms to the explorer rankings, because it creates the 8x8 board, and each room also has a secondary room when battle is initiated.

While I can kind of understand the base arena itself counting for explorer rankings, all of the extra rooms created for battlechess seem exceedingly silly to count. You 'explore' them by continually initiating Battlechess and playing over and over until you have fought in every square.

Is there any particular reason that they are included in the total?

Heh, I've broken into Serenwilde's arena and explored it's Battlechess but I still have Magnagora, Celest and Avenger to go. It's a pain, but manageable to explore them all, I'd still prefer if they didn't count though!

EDIT: Oh you don't have to fight in every square, but the piece you play as has to move through every square since you can move around the board. Makes it less tiresome but its still very unwieldy

Battlechess isn't even about chess, it's about how many demigods you can get on your team, just like wargames

With only 2 mins to kill you if you're defending demigods are very beatable by non-demis. Chess thinking helps set the fights up how you want.

I will look into making them not count towards exploration ratings.

:)

How will that work? Will people lose ranks they had gained exploring them previously, or do these just become a never attainable again grandfathered in source of rank (this is frustrating for anyone else trying to advance in the future)?

If done, the rooms will be removed from everyone's exploration rating.

In other words, everyone's number rank will stay in the same spot, but your title rank could potentially go up if you were on the edge due to those rooms?

Actually, some ranks might switch a little. Or, frankly, a lot. If you've explored all the battlechess-arenas (there are three, right?) you'd suddenly lose 384 explored rooms. If the one below you haven't explored any of them, they might, all of a sudden, have explored more than you have, percentage-wise.

While we're on the topic, I've always wondered if shop stock rooms count towards explorers?

Hmm. I can only go by what's said in other games on that, but there they don't count. I'd assume they don't here either.

Stockrooms do not count.