Arena Ethics

This weekend there has been a surge of bans of people who point traded to boost personal rating. Everyone that had earned their weapons and shoulders should be rejoicing. But upon hearing many complaints from people claiming they've been punished unfairly the question arises: where do we draw the line on what's ethical, and how do we really find what is cheating?

Back in the day when a lot of competition was in form of dueling outside of Ironforge or Orgrimmar, people would make rules up. Running away would be called cheap, running out of LoS would be called cheap, rogues using all cooldowns would be called cheap.

"Skilled rogues don't use cooldowns -- what if we need them for the next fight?" -World of Roguecraft

With arena, the players making these accusations are stuck in the 1300s bracket. People are always out to beat the system. How many of us have spend every single second of the grueling 400+hour BG grind over the seasons intensely participating in PvP? While it may look like that I am sitting by lumber mill pressing the space bar every few minutes I am in fact vigilantly on the lookout for enemies, and if I did let that rogue cap the flag right by me it is in fact because I was too busy putting Visine in my eyes so I may participate in the battleground better.


Suppose there was a program that would disconnect your opponents in arena, giving you a free win. That would be cheating.

Suppose someone wrote a program that allowed you to type in game: /console cheatarena5v5 2700 to turn your 5v5 team to 2700 rating. That would be cheating, but not specifically at someone's expense but the teams you kicked off the first page etc.

Suppose you leveled 5 teams to 2300 rating and fed your main team points from that team at 3 am. That would be cheating.

Suppose you had an alt team with alt characters at the same rating, and you fed points to your main’s team. Would that be cheating, right?

Suppose you paid gold to an amazing 2600 rated player to leave his team and join your team and play with you until 2200 rating. Would that be cheating?

Suppose you paid gold to people on your server to lose games to you. Would that be cheating? Could it be tracked?

Suppose you arranged queues against people on your server and they lost many games straight to you. Would Blizzard be able to tell the difference?

Suppose you had a situation on the last day: One team at 2700 rating, Two teams at 2600 rating. Now team 2600A decided they did not like team 2700 and queued and lost 200 points to team 2600B. They still get gladiator, but what about who gets Vengeful. Is this fair? Is it cheating? Who are we going to write after our 200 days /played character has been wrongfully banned?

How much of a difference is between doing this on live servers and on the TTR where the consequence is real world money?


In other news the new [Medallion of the Alliance] and [Medallion of the Horde] are out. Let's get to honor grinding!