Arena Season 3 has just arrived, and players everywhere are enjoying the end-of-season rewards for Season 2. Whether it's a title of Gladiator, Duelist, Rival, or Challenger, or even the Merciless Nether Drake awarded to the upper .5% percentile of the Arena population, this season seems to be have come to another successful close. Or has it? WoW Insider reported buying the Drake and other interesting sales and trades but it seems that if there's a system, players will find a way to... uh... be creative. A couple of posts over at the PvP forums are hotly debating the latest and greatest technique to achieving the No. 1 Ranking in Arenas -- win trading.
Also called smurfing, in a nutshell, players form (with the help of friends and alts) numerous Arena teams in the same bracket and feed wins to one team. These teams queue at extremely odd hours to ensure that match-ups with the other teams they formed are certain. The teams play the required minimum of ten matches a week in order to qualify for points, although a recent marathon session seemed to have ensued in a last-minute rush for Season 2's Rankings. A quick look at the Vengeance Battlegroup's Arena Ladder will show seven out of the Top 10 teams coming from Mug'thol -- and reportedly not by the sheer awesomeness of the players from the said realm.
That said, it takes a fair bit of effort to raise a team's Arena Rating to higher levels. Starting with equal ratings, a team that loses 10 games straight will drop somewhere around 100 Rating points while raising their opponent's (assuming they only fight one team) by the same number. As the discrepancy between the teams' Ratings grows, the matching system will first look for suitable matches but, finding none, will eventually pit low-ranked teams against high-ranked ones. The returns are relative: a lower-ranked team losing to a high-ranked team will lose little by way of points while the reverse is true. It becomes necessary, then, to keep the Ratings of the pool of teams close together in order for points to be "farmed". This means making more teams to feed the teams that feed the top team. Did that make sense? This has resulted in teams of alts, or "placeholders" as one confessed win trader called them, with Arena Ratings in the vicinity of over 2500. That nets over 1400 Arena Points to spend on Gladiator goodness every week! For "placeholders", no less.While some players have been crying foul over the clever use of the Arena matching system, the players from Mug'thol have been crying foul over the players from Hakkar, who apparently started the whole thing. In particular, one Biomojo, who was ranked 1st in all three brackets at one point, is credited with formulating the technique of creating a pool from which to advance his team's ratings. The players from Mug'thol claim that since the win trading done by the teams from Hakkar is upsetting the "real" Rankings and cheating those who rightfully deserve the top spot, they're doing it, too. If you can't beat 'em, as the saying goes, join 'em. It's an ingenious method of advancing Rankings; so ingenious, in fact, that a GM called it 100% awesome.
The players from Mug'thol make no effort to disguise their efforts and with screenshots of a GM condoning their 100% awesome technique, who can blame them? Then again, as Robin has pointed out, Blizzard isn't being totally passive on the matter. Sarcasm for the win? Does this affect your view of Arenas? How do you feel about the first 3000 Arena Rating being a result of rigged games? Who do you think Papa Smurf would choose to be on his 5v5 team? I'm betting on Smurfette.
Subscribe
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
11-28-2007 @ 1:08PM
Barod said...
Wasn't this the same thing posted yesterday? There's even a link to related articles at the bottom of this one. I must be missing something.
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 1:08PM
JPN said...
I can't believe they couldn't see this coming, but they really need to figure out how to stop it. I mean, if that's how they want to arenas to be viewed, that's cool. But it makes me not want to participate at all.
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 1:16PM
Boris_One said...
That's just sad... What happened to having fun and feeling the adrenaline rush and then the sheer pleasure of the win (dissapointment of loss :P)
Isn't gaming about having fun..? This seems to me to be about queing for a looooong time at late/early hours to get good gear and a title perhaps. And if not playing real games i assume the gear is gonna be used to parade around if/org to stroke the owners e-peens...
Sad, just sad
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 1:19PM
Vestras said...
I gave up on arena midway through season 2. it's the classic problem: You need better gear to advance, but you need to advance to get the better gear. logically, the only people with the better gear are the ones who need it the least.
Arena's a lot more fun when the players are equall matched. I still think a "naked" arena would be awesome. No gear, just statless gray items of your type and a limited choice of weapons. Raw skill on skill, then let's see how things go!
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 1:30PM
Kryll said...
Unfortunately, this would not work well. Some classes are extremely reliant on gear, like warriors. Naked matches would be a sure loss.
11-28-2007 @ 2:17PM
niko said...
The format you speak of is pretty much the premise behind Guild Wars. Other than picking a "build" of skills, armor and weapons are practically all the same.
11-28-2007 @ 1:33PM
robodex said...
I'm actually from Hakkar and saw a lot of the forum drama unfold.
First of all, from what I'm to understand Biomojo got to 1st in 5v5 legitly, winning about 75-80 games. It was only the last 10 games or so that he win traded with his alt's teams, and it resulted in him getting suspended and his team getting deleted. The system is NOT being condoned by Blizzard--although biomojo specifically asked if it was OK and a GM said yes, recently I believe Drysc said it wasn't OK (which is why Bio was suspended.) Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3159615943&sid=1&pageNo=1
Biomojo IS a very good PvPer but unfortunately took it a bit too far.
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 1:42PM
Zor said...
just a little bit twisted - still twisted
just a little bit perverse - still perverse
sucks %^& only once a week - still plays on the 'other' team
It was only the last 10 games or so that he win traded with his alt's teams - still is that loser
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 1:47PM
Kyr said...
If I had any incentive left to play arenas, it is now gone forever. I'd blame Blizz but I really can't. "This is why we can't have nice things", indeed... way to screw yourselves and the entire playerbase with it :-/
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 1:47PM
Zor said...
its a game people
if you cheat at this....why?
ask your selves this? ... why?
you can bullshit your friends and family
but ya cant bullshit yourselves
...nice admission of being a loser yall have to cheat
with no REAL payout O.o
its not a lottery
/point
/laugh
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 1:53PM
Lizardking63 said...
Blizzard just needs to realize that when they give highly unique and desirable rewards to only a chosen few, this will be the result. Unfortunately, there is a large number of people that play this game with no morality at all. They see the prize and aren't willing to do the work. I've seen all manner of cheating in BG's. People using speedhacks and wallclimbing hacks are fairly commonplace in the 29 bracket WSG matches and that is when there is nothing to win except a few medals and a little honor. What will people stoop to just to win an epic flying dragon? Almost anything!
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 2:31PM
Fizzle said...
Realistically speaking, how does "Win Trading" = cheating?
Perhaps I'm not understanding. These folks are playing by the rules Blizzard set down. They are a team winning in the arena against another team. From what I've read, they aren't speed/wall hacking, or botting, both of which are explicitly against the ToS. So, what's the difference here compared to the old BG days when you had teams of people playing one character non-stop to get rank 14 (which made it more or less unattainable by anyone else)?
I'm not condoning the activity, but I also don't understand why everyone is up in arms about it. I know people that do 10 dailies a day on 4 characters. Is that abusing the daily quest system and, therefore, meriting a ban? *shrug*
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 2:50PM
PeeWee said...
If trading wins is cheating IRL, why isn't it in the Arena?
After all, if a team agrees to lose a game of soccer, or hockey, or whatever, that would be considered cheating. Still, it's just "a team winning ... against another team".
11-28-2007 @ 3:11PM
darian said...
It's a matter of letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. By the letter of the law, Win Trading is simply an extension of the game system. By the spirit of the law, it defeats the purpose of the game system.
PvP in WoW rewards competition or is at least supposed to. Win Trading is not competition; it's not even PvP. Win Trading is Player versus the game system.
Just because the game allows something within the confines of its architecture doesn't make it "legal". See 5.C in the ToS.
11-28-2007 @ 7:51PM
Duncan said...
Your kidding right? How can you compare doing dailys to this? if you leveled 4 toons to 70 and are doing the dailies you earned the right to do them. you win trade your losing on purpose to gain. thats cheating plain and simple. where in the rules does it say it's ok to lose on purpose?? just because it can be done. doesn't make it right
11-28-2007 @ 2:41PM
Tim said...
Are you kidding me? Enough with the repeat posts!
1) Develop an editorial calendar and share it with all freelancers.
2) READ YOUR OWN SITE.
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 3:10PM
ralphwiggum said...
Hey, look at the post count for all of the writers after Massively launched. It's way down and it feels like the content quality has been taking a bit of a hit lately.
11-28-2007 @ 2:53PM
berry said...
People are human and want things easy, especially if they are only obtainable by a few to "show off" in a videogame to other addicted players who care about this things and give them the attention they crave in the first place.
If anyone is to blame is Blizzard because its their fault for having a system which can be exploited. They obviously don't earn enough money to employ and pay the right developers who get it right first time when designing a system like arena and the reward points.
In the meantime Blizzard is still getting paid millions every month, and no large percentage of their customer base will stop paying because they dont have any morals so this will continue.
Azeroth/Outland whatever doesnt exist, arena does not exist, its all just a videogame on servers, most videogames can and will be hacked and exploited, in RL people get exploited too and life isn't fair.
The only thing that really exist is the fun you can have with people and new friendships you can make even through this videogame, thats all the reality there is.
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 2:56PM
yayo said...
I'm going to be perfectly honest here and bash the author for this kind of slanderous journalism. Please correct me if I'm missing something but the link from the article above:
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/Eviim/gmthoughts3.jpg
does NOT state "Arena smurfs are '100% awesome!' according to Blizz" as the title of this article states. In fact, I can't infer a damn thing from that screenshot as it doesn't give evidence of anything, simply because the context is conveniently missing from that screenshot.
Please try to keep your articles accurate. I don't know why people would read them otherwise. If I wanted to read tripe, I'd go to the aisle in my local grocery store.
Reply
11-28-2007 @ 7:49PM
Chris Anthony said...
yayo, "slanderous" doesn't mean "basing conclusions on incomplete evidence". It means "lying about someone with the specific aim of damaging their reputation". And it's verbal; when the defamatory lie is written, it's libel. Either one is a dangerous term to sling around, since both are illegal in the United States.
If you really meant something other than that Zach was lying to damage someone's reputation, you'd be wise to offer a retraction and clarification.