Sorry for a thread about such a specific question but this could be a pretty big deal.

Last night my 3v3 joined a game and there was no one on the other side, and it showed a rating change of "0" but then we looked at our pvp tabs and it showed a win and we went up by about 15 points.

The question is whether the other team simply didn't join and got a loss because of it (a design change), or if it was a bug.

Anyone else encounter anything like this?

It's always worked like that, if everyone leaves the arena queue before the battlefield pops you wont take a point hit, but once the queue is ready you have to join same goes for LD people if the queue is ready before they've left it from being offline.

But there was a point hit.

Previously there were some teams that when they saw "Blades edge arena now available clicko to enter battle" they would not join because they didn't like that battleground, and it wouldn't count as a win or a loss for them since none of them joined.

Now not only does it hide which arena, I think it may actually count it as a loss if none of your team joins the battleground.

The arena you're going into is still displayed by the G15 keyboard plugin, btw.

We scored 2 losses the first night arenas were released cause we tried to skip queues in Blade's Edge, so were given at least then.

I believe this is not new - the points loss at least. We once had someone disconnect just when the queue popped and we didnt take it and got handed a loss and a point deduction.

I have seen both pre patch. Sometimes we got points sometimes we did not when nobody showed on the other side.

I always assumed that this event was a result of Blizzard's matching system glitching out.

Edit: bleh too slow, just a rehash.

I believe this is the case, occasionally it would give my team something like a -392029191 point change, when in actuality our points didn't move at all. This would only occur in a game that we would join that had no other members on it.

Lately however even if no other enemies join the points change appropriately.

Always been that way for me, as soon as the queue popped you couldn't leave the queue without taking a point hit, unless you got up against a bugged 5vs0 game.

I'll check later and see what they changed, not sure if they are just hiding the map on the UI level, or the API.


Theres a bug in the score frame code where it doesn't correctly change the points gained to "--", which is why you see that.

My understanding was that the team that didn't join would lose the points, but the team that did wouldn't actually gain any points. I've been on the team that joined several times where the other team didn't, and we never had a rating change from it. It also didn't count toward our games played.

That would make no sense. The system is supposed to be zero sum. It is not really as teams come and go but adding an infrastructure drain on points would violate the spirit of the ranking system.

That would make no sense, but I have seen that happen on numerous occasions. Since the patch I've seen a match where the opponents didn't join, and we got points and a win.

It seems the behavior pre-patch was erratic, but it is consistent now. Might need more examples over time, but that is what I observed at least.

Before patch I never got points for a match noone joined. If someone joined a match and then afked out it might be a different matter, but if noone joined I wouldn't get points for that.

e: just to confirm, you do lose points for not joining.

There are basically 3 things that can happen when you join a game.

1) Full teams on each side and you have at it. Woohoo!

2) Your team joins the game, there are 0 players on the other team and when the doors open you get points for beating them. In this case the other team's queue popped, but they decided not to join.

3) Your team joins the game, there are 0 players on the opposing team but you get 0 points for winning (or -312312312313 or whatever).

I have a pretty good suspicion that in case 3) the opposing team has requeued several times. High rated teams usually take longer to get into a game because the system won't immediately pit you against a low rated team just because there are no high rated ones queued. It will make you wait for a while before it will even make it eligible for you to play each other.

Typically, people will requeue if they have been in the queue for a long time and haven't got in a game yet (thinking that the queue is bugged or something). As a result, some high rated teams will get bored or worried that their queue is bugged and requeue over and over again.

What's really happening is that since there are no teams near their rating even queued up at the same time, they are forced to sit and wait while the matchmaking system scans teams of the appropriate level and expands the potential candidates every so often. But, when they requeue, the original 'copy' of their team is still in the queue, so they're basically making multiple copies of themselves in the queue. These copies are all ahead of them in the queue and can still get into games but they don't count as a real team since nobody gets invited (only the most recent copy does).

This is the only explanation I can come up with why when we queue up we get into empty games giving 0 rating over and over and over again then all of a sudden get put against a team of a similar rating. Because they've been sitting there a while waiting for a game and requeued several times out of boredom, without realising they're putting us into arenas against fake copies of themselves when if they just stayed in queue in the first place we would have been put against them the moment we queued.

This was the behaviour before 2.1. I haven't played arenas since the patch so I don't know if this requeuing thing is actually forcing losses on people.

p.s. Requeuing typically also occurs when a team member went offline for whatever reason, but the team is still in queue. Requeuing forces the timer to restart so you can somewhat avoid being put into games when you're not ready.

Oh yeah that one. Something screwy going on there since you don't get the arena buff 0% mana cost buff or anything. Its like you've been teleported into a locked arena in the main game world.

Also keep track of your rating, sometimes a 5v0 game appears to give you 0 rating, but your arena panel shows a gain in points.

There's a fourth one as well actually :P. If the server lags, or you lag on the loading screen, and you zone in after the arena gates have open, the oposition only have to kill your team mates that managed to enter the game before the gates open. Has happened a few times in our games :/

This is what I observed as well, from both sides (pre-patch). It actually makes perfect sense, not for a zero sum system, but it is the best way to prevent any possible abuse.

I have spoken to two GMs about this and their answer is that YOU do NOT get points for Walk overs. The team that does not join does get the reduction in points however.

I dont think the system can be a zero sum system when you can ditch a 1200 rating team and get a new one with 1500 rating and with that adding 300 rating to the system.

I've been in discussion with GMs for a few weeks over incorrect arena scores. Specifically, I had it happen that my team played a game, and won very easily, but when we checked the pvp arena score character sheet panel we noticed that the team has been awarded a loss, despite the players all having been recorded as having won.

Screenshot:
http://homepage.mac.com/codemonkey_uk/wow/arena_bug.png

Note: Team shows as 1 loss, 0 wins. Players show (correctly) as 1 win, 0 loss.

The day before the patch I was told this was a known issue, and was begin fixed with the patch:

http://homepage.mac.com/codemonkey_u...g-response.jpg

But it was not. After a long conversation with GM the next day, I was told that they didn't understand it, and couldn't fix it, but have escalated it / created a game bug report.

So keep an eye out for any discrepancies in your player vs team win/loss ratios, and report it if you notice a problem.