Surely as the "loser farm teams" continue to lose ten matches every week they will slip down the rankings, and the high ranked teams won't get matched up against them? Wouldn't that mean you'd have to play lots of games on your loser farm team in order to stay competitive and have a chance at matchups with the "winning team", especially as by definition your loser team is deliberately throwing ten matches a week?

Wouldn't it be just as much trouble to get your loser team enough ranking to play against your winner team as it would to just do well on your winning team without cheating in the first place?

Also how do you ensure you meet only your loser team?

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I thought the matching system was gear based? My thoughts exactly, how do you match up against a farm team? Must be playing at odd hours to even have a chance at this.

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"A real win is a sense of accomplishment" Agree with you 100% And if Blizz is crackng down on this I'm all for it.

"do you think this is just a creative use of game mechanics? " Nothing creative about this. Takes NO skill to lose on purpose. Players that do these things should be banned

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Solution? Diminishing returns on wins -- you get more points for defeating teams that you have never played than you do for defeating teams you have played many times before. Sound familiar? It's the solution to honor farming in Arathi Basin and other BGs, although BG diminishing returns are limited to single games, and not a season.

There might not be enough different teams to make this feasible -- the diminishing returns might be inevitable for some and not others, simply because teams with a particular schedule might keep fighting the same other teams, over and over.

It might not be enough to solve the problem, either. For some, guaranteed small gains outweigh the risk of larger gains. But at least Blizz could keep these farmers from having ALL the phat PvP epicks.

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Screw the cheaters!

Makes me get tickled in my pants to think that the cheaters will get screwed out of their farmed stuff when they thought they would at least get away with it this season.

The arenas are supposed to be based on skill, not farming. If they want farmed stuff, go raid with a big guild that has Kara or ZM on farmed status.

This kind of stuff is cheating, PERIOD. If they want to cheat, let them play a console game (left, right, left, right, up, down, start, select).

In the world of MMO's, cheating should equal Perma Ban!

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Very reminiscent of the sumo wrestling chapter in Freakonomics. Here's a Wikipedia summary:

"One striking example of the authors' creative use of economic theory involves demonstrating the existence of cheating among Sumo wrestlers. In a Sumo tournament, all wrestlers compete in 15 matches and stay in the top league if they win at least 8 of them. The Sumo community is very close-knit, and all of the wrestlers at the top levels tend to know each other well. The authors looked at the final match, and considered the case of a wrestler with seven wins, seven losses, and one fight to go, fighting against an 8-6 wrestler. Statistically, the 7-7 wrestler should have a slightly below even chance, since the 8-6 wrestler is slightly better. However, the 7-7 wrestler actually wins around 80% of the time. Levitt uses this statistic and other data gleaned from Sumo wrestling matches and the effect allegations of corruption have on match results, to conclude that those who already have 8 wins collude with those who are 7-7 and let them win, since they have already secured their place in the league."

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Wait, let me get this straight. You mean to say that if given a means and ample chance, people would work together to steal something when there are seemingly no repercussions and no substantive real-world value to hound their morality about it?

Bizarro world.

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Cheaters should be banned. No matter if you are the constant losers or the constant winners, all should be banned.

And yes, you are showing your age. :0p

WARNING: History lesson to follow. Those who hate learning need not click this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Little_Goody_Two-Shoes

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This has been around since season one. I've never played on any arena team and I've known about this going on since then.

It amazes me how little blizzard knows about what is going on in their game. If they were to pay one person to browse the web 40 hours a week, they would know about these exploits as they happen, not months later.

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Not only is it bad enough that arena gear is given away for absolutely no effort at all, there are people cheating to get it.

Brilliant.

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Isn't this a simple fix? Can't you just like make beating the same team/people multiple times have diminishing results? It would be kind of like mobs, where you get less experience when you are a few levels higher than them.

Or you could just limit the amount of times you can play a certain team/players during a season.

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Ummmm...duh?

Cross-server arena battles would solve this. Would be tough to figure rankings but it would stop these kind of controlled pairings.

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in my realm there is a dou of druid/lock that they make 10k gold each per week because of people hire them just to play 10 games (300g each for lock and druid = 600g) and i know more than a dozen 2v2 teams hire them, they also make teams and make its ratings to 2.3 and sell it for 1.5kgold, and sell armored netherdrake spot for 3.5kgold, easilly done just by playing atleast 20games on their team regardless if you loose they just hover back on the highest rating they can get.

now i know they will be included in the 0.5 top team pool

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I find this practice reprehensible. I have no issue with good players "team hopping" to help out lesser-geared or lesser-skilled players, but those lesser-geared players should PLAY and actually EARN their wins and their rating alongside the better player(s), not BUY it. Even without the exchange of monies, the idea of having 3 players play a quota of games only to have a high-ranked team take over and push on to 2400+ rating is dishonest and cheats skilled, honest, hard-working players out of their deserved rewards. I watched a warlock PvP video recently of a "Gladiator" who almost lost to a fellow warlock in leveling greens/blues. It was purely pitiful and almost certainly a result of this sort of despicable, underhanded cheating. (Note to These People: Don't buy your title and then make a PvP video showing your ignorance.)

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"As usual with cheats and exploits, I just don't see the fun of Win Trading. A real win is a sense of accomplishment."

Huh? Just like most things in WoW, Arenas for just yet another grind. Not surprising that people find creative ways to reduce the annoyance of that grind.

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