Let’s assume a hypothetical guild. For the sake of this question, this guild is fielding three Arena teams, each composed of guild members. Due to their PvE and recruiting success, these three teams are the among the top ranked in their battlegroup.

One thing to consider in evaluating the following scenarios is that Arena teams are persistant as are their scores. Unlike trading wins in WSG to farm reputation faster, when an Arena team loses, their rating is actually affected as are their total points.

Another thing to consider is precedent: GM/HWL honor grinding teams. They established caps, they shut certain people out and, when someone reached Rank 13, they dropped out of the race to allow other people an easier time to get to the goal. Do the ethics of a server wide team transfer to a guild level?


Question #1: Is it possible that these top-ranked Arena teams fighting each other will cause animosity within the guild? Is it likely? What could be done to prevent it?

On the one hand, competitive Arena teams will likely play a maximum of 10 games with any single individual on that team playing fewer than that in a given week. On the other hand, cliques with directly opposed goals have been known to tear apart guilds before squabbling over the stupidest of things.


Scenario #1: Fast-forward to season 2. Team A of this guild has gotten their Armored Netherdrakes and bought all the epic gear available through the Arena system. They’re still interested in PvPing but don’t see the need to top the charts again, so in a nod to their guildmates they agree to lose whenever they run up against another guild team. Is this ethical? Does this open up the guild to accusations of cheating or win trading?


Scenario #2: In an effort to head off Arena competition from creating animosity within the guild, the guildmaster decides that whenever teams fight each other, they’ll take turns losing, thereby spreading the wins and losses among the guild evenly. Is this ethical?


Scenario #3: In an effort to head off Arena competition, yet maximize the points for various guild teams, the guildmaster decides that whenever guild teams fight each other, Team A will win during the first season, Team B will win during the second season, and Team C will win during the third season. Is this ethical?

You only have to play 10 games a week.. if your guild is really worred about their teams playing each other just set it up so the teams don't play their games at the same time so it's impossible for them to play each other.

This is a bizarre set of questions. What does your guild have to be upset about if they lose to their guildmates? People who cause drama over being beaten by a _better_ team aren't the kind of people you want in your guild in the first place. Personally, I think fighting my own guildmates will be hilarious. In answer to question two -- of course not, beating the previous champions is one of the hurdles you have to jump to become the new leaders. The third question is lame as hell and I know I'd never want to be a part of a guild with such ridiculous rules.

In-guild competition is also likely to encourage people to increase their performance, due to it being more personal. If your members are of a certain mindset, it could even be a plus.

In no way should the guildmaster intervene though. Let the teams figure out for themselves who needs the win more. Throwing matches is completely ethical in my mind, since one team takes a hit relative to the other team's gain.

Quite apart from that, the interest in this thing is going to be absolutely huge. If there's say 50 odd WSGs going at the moment at primetime, that's going to be equivalent to 100 Arenas at least. Even if you're on at the same time as your other team, you're by no means guaranteed to face them in your 10 games a week.

Edit:- Yeah, and what Crossbones said - if I run into another team from my guild, even we're all generally being pretty serious & competitive, I suspect it'll be a pretty amusing game.

On a tangent, PvP/PvE specs will be an interesting issue.

With the old honor system, the people going for rank in the guild could be moderately PvE-friendly with their spec, since maximum PvP performance was unnecessary. Also, you probably only had a few of those in a 40-man raid.

With the arena system, this changes. Tense competition will create a need for min/maxed pvp specs. With smaller raid sizes, if your core of raiders also does the arena, you're likely to end up with half your raid force using PvP specs. This can be very detrimental to progress. Are we going to see high level PvP and endgame raiding somewhat exclude eachother, because of this? Will we see guilds that ignore PvP outperform those that also have strong arena teams going, at least at the bleeding edge?

I don't know if the guild is worried but as the GM I get paid to worry about the guild.

One of the things that most people haven't thought through is the difficulty of finding fights at the Arena-5 level. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Fielding a persistant group of 5-10 individuals that will last months at a stretch will be difficult at best.
2. The system is designed as an anti-grind. Time invested = reward received only up to 10th game per team per week. Past the 10th game, the correlation disappears so it is my assertion that people will stop.


The key advantage for a guild fielding multiple teams is the fact that they can fight each other. And while their ELO scores won't go anywhere since they'll be fighting each other, they will at least achieve the necessary minimum 10 games. As you can see from this post on World of Raids, an Arena-5 scoring a rating of 1500 (which is what all teams start out as) receives as many Arena points as an Arena-3 with an Elo of approximately 1800 and an Arena-2 with an Elo of 2000.

More than that, I'm going to iterate that advantage one more time. By designating a fixed time each week for your guild teams to fight, I'm going to broadcast to all other servers in my battlegroup "Hey, there's guaranteed to be a critical mass of Arena-5s queued on Sundays between 2pm and 8pm. Bring your team and we'll have some Arena fun."

So, in a worst case scenario, having guild teams fight each other will allow them to achieve the minumum number of Arena-5 fights necessary to score points for that bracket. In the best case scenario, you draw the Arena-5s together at the same time each week s.o you'll be able to have actual competition which will be mostly non-guild in the long run.

So, to answer your question Kinv, to prevent guild teams from fighting each other would take away several very significant opportunities.

As a preamble, I hesistate to answer your question because it requires me to talk about specifics in my guild. This is a concern not because I'm shy about sharing specifics, but I've been previously banned for plugging my guild too much. That being said, I had this thread pre-approved and I've have no doubt I'll be warned if what I say is perceived as less than pertinent to responses.

To your response: Drama isn't the only negative result to avoid. Low morale is another. And, very few people are going to come out and say "Yep, they're the better team! They're great and we just suck!"

As to question #2 (I assume you're responding to Scenario #1), you're obligating the previous winning team with maintaining their status as the top Arena team on their server. As an inherent part of the situation, I noted that they decided that they decided they themselves don't see the need to stay at the top.

The virtue of scenarios #2 and #3 come from a guild-as-a-whole perspective. If you assume that a) the guild's unity is greater than the success of any individual Arena team and that b) the Arena teams actively competing against each other creates animosity between guild members (see Question #1), then Scenarios #2 and #3 become plausible in so far that it eliminates that competition.

Also, I think people would take more kindly to your threads if they cut straight to the chase, and didn't have quite such conceited titles.

How about posting in another thread about the Arena, or TBC, "Hmm what do you think will happen if one guild has 2 or 3 top Arena teams who might have to play each other?". Because if you break it down to a simple question like that you suddenly realise there's not a lot of content in the mini-essay you've written.

Sorry but that's what I think every time I read one of your threads.

This is my conclusion as well. As opposed to trading wins in WSG, Arena teams are persistant and wins and losses are accurately captured in each teams enduring Elo score.

I see PvE guilds putting their Tank, key DPSers and main healers into an Arena team, then instructing all other guild teams to lose to them if they ever get into a fight with them. I think the guild teams will see this as acceptable because when they come out of their individual Arena teams into their PvE group, a) they'll be able to progress further and faster because key individuals - as many as 10 if each person plays four games and a few people play five - are well-geared and b) the guild as a whole will have fewer people to compete for loot with since those key individuals will already have Arena gear in certain slots.


I think letting the teams figure it out for themselves is a bad way to do it. Unless you have a very agreeable guild - agreeable to the point where they'll accept loot council agreeable - people may get into unwinnable arguments. Unwinnable because they're arguing what's favorable to the team instead of what's favorable to the guild.

At least with the GM, the GM is the authority of the guild and, hopefully, is trusted to act in the best interest of the guild.

It's certainly up for debate. And it's a new idea that warrants some thought on my part.

To give an opinion on the questions you asked. Avoiding same guild teams playing each other seems easy. Just have Team 2 wait until Team 1 has a game up before they queue.

On the ethics questions. What you seem to be asking is Is it ok to fix arena games to give my guild an advantage. Fixing a competition of any sort to provide an advantage to your guild or certain members of it is flat out unethical. While the stakes are much different there is no difference in the ethical issues between fixing an arena match and fixing a college football game. Thus all 3 Scenario are unethical.

I am actively looking forward to matching me and my friends skills against everyone including our fellow guild mates. I forsee no drama over this only good natured bragging by the winners :D

Igni, from what I understand your goal with your guild is to dominate the Arena metagame on your battlegroup, and support that dominance through guild policy, PvE raiding, and any other methods you can. As you were quick to point out on the WoW forums, even the structured Arena system is heavily influenced by the fact that we are playing a persistent, Diku-style MMO, and so you want to maximize your gains from the other facets of WoW to help you win in the Arenas. That said, I think you have more to gain from letting the system run its natural course -- having your guild teams compete with each other normally if they do get matched up -- than if you try to game it by laying down rules as the guild master. If you try to manipulate the system by dictating throwing matches, it might not be exactly unethical -- but you do rely solely on your judgment as guild leader. I wouldn't rely on my judgment for something like that. From my perspective, the natural pressure exerted by ranked intra-guild matches outweighs the potential detriments.

There are, however, some potential problems with ranked intra-guild Arena matches, and the initial solution lies with recruitment, in a sense. The best type of player is the one who can play against another team, even in a ranked match, and do the following:

1) Harbor no ill will for losing and not gloat over winning. That is, no drama involved, no matter what a match outcome might be.
2) Be able to acknowledge their team's strengths and weaknesses, even as relates to a "friendly" team.
3) Be able to improve their actualy play skills and be willing to fix the weaknesses that they or their teammates identify.

If you don't have those kind of people, my solution (coming at this from a perspective as raid leader) is to just replace them, probably via recruitment. The problem with this is, like you said, that Arena teams are a persistent entity, very unlike a battleground raid group or a PvE raid group. You'd ideally like an Arena team to stay together for an entire season or more, depending on group chemistry and the avaiable time commitments of the members. (Even though 10 matches a week isn't much, a dedicated gladiator in Igni's kind of guild is going to be spending a lot more time practicing, raiding for gear upgrades, and so forth.) Assuming for the moment that all the players in G&M are pretty evenly skilled, then I think the first thing to do is work on team composition and balance in advance, such that you have three teams that are as close to an even keel of skill and class balance as possible.

If I was to play an AB match with a Virakar team against another Virakar team, I'd have no problem acknowleding their victory with grace if they were to win, and I suspect the same would be true of most of our guild's active PvPers. The real problem you might be looking at is if you end up with a true A team and B team, where the "A" team consistently thrashes the "B" team. That would indeed be bad for morale, and the only way to avoid it (without gaming the system, which I think would be detrimental to the guild as a whole) is to make sure your teams are as evenly balanced as possible, even against one another. This is hard to do though, without the level 70 spells and talent builds, not to mention the itemization of level 70 gear. Also annoying is the inability to do "exhibition" matches in the Arena where you can select which team to play. The only solution for balancing teams' skill levels is to play them against one another, and your options right now are limited to Dire Maul and the Gurubashi Arena. Good luck, I guess.

This might require more research on my part, but could you explain a little bit more about the difference between PvP specs and PvE specs? Is it as simple as all Priests going Shadow, all Druids going Feral? Or is there more subtlety than that?

The reason why I ask is that good Arena-5 teams will likely include a healer, even two. I've even seen arguments that one of the best Arena-2 combinations are two Discipline/Holy Priests. To the more general idea was a blog post Wednesday on Kill Ten Rats:

So there's at least some chance that the two purposes might not be as opposed as you put them.

I disagree with this, because it creates an unfair advantage. Take four teams that are at the top of an ELO system well into the season: A, B, C, and D.

A and B are in the same guild. B will forfeit to A whenever they play. B will play well against everyone else. A will play well against everyone.
C and D are independent groups with no affiliations. Because of the way pairings works, ABCD will be playing each other a lot.

Let's assume all four teams are close to equal, and will tend towards a 50% win/loss ratio against each other. How are C and D supposed to compete with the fact that one third of A's matches are going to be guaranteed points?

Let's say there's a round-robin where everyone ends up with ten games against each of the other three opponents. Split 5/5 in all cases, but A goes 10-0 against B due to their agreement.

A's record: 20-10
C's record: 15-15
D's record: 15-15
B's record: 10-20

A wins, not by virtue of skill, since they're all equal, but by collusion.

Separately, even aside from the guild context, I bet this is going to be a source of some major drama in some circles.

Let's say that the arena season is winding down, and Team A and Team B are neck-and-neck for the top spot, and everyone else is too far behind to contend. Let's say Team A has a bad reputation, and has players that are hated, causing teams that are highly ranked but out of contention for the top prizes to decide to throw all their matches against Team B, in order to push him ahead of A.

I don't know of any solution, though. If you ban match-fixing, then they'll just make it look close for the sake of appearances, but there's no way to really tell whether a team was throwing the match or just "off" that day.

There's obviously more subtlety to it. Stunlock builds, builds with talents to resist silences and interrupts, builds with skills that daze, mage frost builds that rely on shatter, etc. There are a lot of talents that simply don't really do anything in a raid setting. It's not as simple as feral vs. resto or whatever.

Due to the nature that the throwing team will be losing arena points if they were to drop rank I don't see this happening that often. When it does I don't think I would be concerned if a team full of bad rep people saw payback for their previous karma.

Now that I think of it, I might be asking whether it is cheating. It might be possible that no it isn't ethical but no it isn't cheating.

And what is ethical in this game is relative to the game's social, cultural and historical circumstances. So I would assert that doing so in a real-life football game is different than an Arena game.

Meh. Cheating is defined by Blizzard. If Blizzard says you can't, then it's cheating. If they don't, then it's against the spirit of the game but not cheating. I'm not sure how much discussion there is to be had on that particular point.

As a matter of social norms, I do not think you would be making very many friends at all if you did this. Remember how people who did arranged AVs against each other and took turns throwing the matches were treated, back in the day? If you do it, expect to see posts on the realm forums and WoW General calling for bans. Whether Blizzard does anything is anyone's guess, but it wouldn't go over well with other players.

I agree on both counts with Gurgs posts. First of all: all kind of manipulation (throwing games e.g.) will create advantages. Else there would be no reason to do such a thing an nobody would view it as manipulation. The question is since these ladder games are much more competitive than the old honor systems where manipulations such as throwing games, farming kills in Bgs (both sides meet in the middle and kill each other till the diminishing returns reduce the honor gain to 0), honor caps etc were common: how large is the impact of such acts and what kind of ethical yardstick do we apply. Furthermore: will Blizzard screen the top ladder contenders and punish them for repeatet offenses. I don't think that will happen, but I think it would be possible.

And yes, anybody who wants to be remotely competible in the arena, especially in the later seasons when pvp and arena gear is much more widespread, will chose talents for their impact on pvp. Raiding will be a secondary concern. How an individual balances the need between raiding and pvping will depend on his personal preferences. But given a setting where the level of personal skill is equal people will have to make choices and will suffer in their secondary field of occupation. Just as they do now only that the incentives for minmaxing in pvp are much greater than ever.

If you really plan on creating a 5 man arena team that competes for the top spots on a server with decent competition you will need to tune your spec in accordance with the classes availible to you. Some skills offer unique synergies with other classes but are pretty useless otherwise. For example: a paladin in a team with a lot of heal/dispell capability will not have the same incentives to spec deep protection as a pally in a team setup where he is more likely to be focusfired. Hybrids in a offensive setup will play rather defensively (or rather act more as a supporter) while in an defensive setup they might use more of their offensive abilites.

Edit as a reaction on the last posting:

At least on our server we had several attempts of players to arrange a honor cap oder to arrange HK games. The consequences were rather irrelevant. Furthermore it was broadly accepted that in premade groups some members would voluntarily make less honor in order to promote the interest of the higher ranking members. Nobody considered that as unfair though the competition was reduced in a pretty strong way (especially if there were only 1 or 2 honor farming groups). Where do we draw the line whether such an agreement beyond the limit of the own team is unfair? If it is extended to your guild, perhaps to your guild alliance...or even to the whole alliance/horde side on your server.

My opinion on match "fixing" is it would create ill will towards the rest of the server and it is not ethical since it is against the spirit of the game.

Now if it happened that two G & M Arena teams were against each other, the people involved should be mature enough to handle a loss and not gloat about it.

That's because the old honor system was retarded, and even the people who weren't at the very top stood to benefit. The people dictating the system were usually the super hardcore players who COULD have gotten 1mil CP every week if they wanted to. So you can agree to get #3 for the week and stop at 250k, or you can tell the cap-fixers to go to hell and go all-out, get 700k, and still get #3 for the week, and in so doing, ensure that when you yourself want to get Rank 14, you'll need to hit 1mil+ every week because everyone will be trying to stop you.

It's a bit different from the arena setting, to say the least.