Here is the post advertising one of the teams service.
WoW Forums -> 1000 Arena Points for Sale

A group of casual players team-hopping and contributing rating points to several teams has exactly the same behavior as a group of elite players doing the same. These casual players are just worse at arenas, so the net effect they have by moving around is somewhat less. Since their ratings are closer to 1500, they get punished somewhat less as well. Two friends with a 3v3 won't have much of a problem; one active player can be rotated out every week without issue. Maybe the deserter cap for 3v3s should be three instead of two - but that still allows some point-selling by way of two good players permanently parking a third player on a buyer 3v3 team.

I think the griefing potential is insignificant. You should trust the people you arena with, right? And if they leave, it's not the end of the world. You just need to play a bit to get up to your previous level. The game count for the week gets reset, so you would only have to play ten games to get some amount of points.

The WC3 ladder and the arena ladder are the same, essentially. They use different ELO values, but when applied to the masses, playing games on a daily basis, the same thing happens. Making a new pair in WC3 resulted in the same thing, a reset in the ELO value for that team, which inevitably ended up in smurfing. And there was no incentive for WC3 players to do it. As a matter of fact, the only reason why they did it was also the most relevant: That is, when top-rated teams reach the top, the queues either become ridiculously long as the game tries to match them up with a comparitively ranked team, or they end up facing a lower ranked team anyway, which results in the same kind of "smurfing."

This is why Blizzard didn't do much about it. Because frankly, encountering smurfing teams while travelling up the ladder wasn't even that bad of an experience. Sure, you lose rating but you just make it up fighting the teams that you can win against. Also, there is no intelligent way that Blizzard can use to arbitrate the ladder system. There is just no automated mechanic that can cover all the bases. Therefore, instead of breaking the system further, they will just leave it pretty much as it is, because many people still play arena, nobody really has any gripes about it, and it is to the enjoyment of most of the playerbase.

In WC3, they countered smurfing by having win streaks push up the team's ELO rating much faster than a series of wins/losses. This worked fine, because the smurfing teams quickly rose back to the top without playing endless games in the same inferior bracket. This is probably how the arena system in WoW works as well.

This isn't Warcraft 3. It's a game that is far more popular than Warcraft 3 ever was, has enormously more developmental resources and is updated far more often. Applying what happened in a WC3 ladder to what is happening in WoW is just as utterly pointless as comparing the arena system to Vietnam.

Second, smurfers are by far the minority. Blizzard caters to the majority. As smurfing teams begin to cause hassles for the average player, Blizzard will start to implement measures against this. The more teams smurfing, the faster a fix will find its way into the live servers.

And yes, smurf teams do cause problems and wreck havoc on ladders. They tie up points into those smurfed teams that should not be tied up there. This skews the win/loss points given out and makes it much harder to advance within a bracket. If 10% of the top 100 ranks points are tied up in smurf teams guess what? It's 10% harder to advance within the top 100. Further, it makes it so that the top teams have a 10% easier job of keeping their lead. Smurf teams promote stagnation at the higher ranks through making advancing difficult. If you honestly think this isn't a bad thing, well, something's not connecting properly.

What is your main's name, please? In your defending of smurfing you're obviously dismissing all concerns with a cursory 'Blizzard doesn't care, just drop it'. I'm guessing that you actively participate in the practice - at least have the guts to give us your name. I know your main isn't a level 60 shadow priest.

EDIT: This guy joined today with the express purpose of defending this practice while hiding behind his alt. Is that kosher with EJ's posting practices? I'm guessing not. Posts reported.

Considering this was a huge problem in the WC3 online bracket play, to which I'm told they changed, I can only assume (particularly with the comments from Tigole) that they plan on changing this kind of rating reset and team swapping behavior. There should clearly be consequences from dropping a team.

There's always other brackets. Also - how fun is it to be on the other end of a 2k+ person goofing off in the beginning of the week?

Untrue. When they start climbing back up, they will be facing 1400ish teams - those woln't give your designated player any points at all because you compare his *personal* rating to the other teams.

This is a discussion, you needn't know all my characters across all the servers I have played on. We're discussing specifically the idea that teams are smurfing for profit. I'm not using the WC3-WoW comparison to illustrate how WoW should model itself off an older premise, I am using the comparison to show that an ELO based system has this flaw inherent in it. There are no easy fixes around this, if any at all.

I'm not saying that Blizzard doesn't care. Even if Blizzard cared, they can't impose restrictions on teams that want to play arena, it's as simple as that. You can't exist on more than 1 team in the same bracket, this is why you won't see the same elite playerbase spamming up the top ranks with different teams. This is how it worked in WC3, but not how it works in WoW. Teams smurfing for profit have these respective teams quickly fall off the ladder, it isn't that they are taking up unncessary space in the top brackets because this can't be maintained. Once a smurf team gets their money and "powerlevels" a certain other team, it lies defunct and off the ladder. A dedicated team playing regularly to raise their score will not be affected by these "profit-only" based teams, since the smurfs play only as much as they can to boost the rating to a respectable level. And even when they reach the higher brackets, the game becomes just as difficult as it always was, they are now competing within their respective bracket. It gives them good practice, hones their skills and at the same time, they profit from it.

It really is no different from the old days when MC/BWL guilds sold raid spots for extra money. Blizzard didn't change the raiding system to prevent this, they tolerated it because as much as some people were irritated that people were getting free epics, it didn't dilute the overall fun of the game. The same is such with arena. With the X-server matchups, the majority of the experience playing is still the same, smurf teams or not.

I would bet you gold that they can and will. But you are hiding behind an alt.

Yes it does affect the top teams. Spray and Pray leveled many teams to the front page of the ladder, taking away points from many top teams in the process. So no, you cannot out-rate the smurfs. A #1 skilled gib team with enough time can get a new team to the front page of the ladder in a less competitive BG every week easily.

Fact is, this problem affects the top teams much more than the average teams. Selective memory is always a factor but mathematically a 1500 rated team will not constantly run into 2000+es on a smurf team. However, the top of the ladder is highly susceptible to a freeze where queueing is a guaranteed rating loss because all the other teams are smurfs that cost you 30 points for a loss and get you 2 for a win, while being as skilled as you are.

By going 50-0 on a smurf you lose the 2500 of your main team. Unlike in WC3 you can't have both in WoW. 2500 is more prestige than 50-0. Not to mention more arena points. Therefore when forced to choose most will stick with the high rating. Tillerman did not have to give up his main account when leveling Tillerpeon (the most famous example of smurfing I can think of).

When some rich kid got an Epic buy buying a raid spot it didn't cost me as a person in another raid 100DKP and push us back in progression. It does dilute the fun of Arena to play a 2400 rated team at 1900 rating and instead of losing 2 points, lose 22. Smurf teams don't start in a void they crawl over the entire bracket. The mannaroth thread I posted where they are selling the points boast that they could fill the top 20 spots with all their teams. How is that fun for anyone but those 5 guys?

No, you're using a logical fallacy to try and prove an invalid point. That sort of fallacy has never, will never and can never be true. Blizzard believes in fairness to the largest group, obviously, based on the direction they've taken the game. "You can't be fair to everyone so you can't do anything" isn't a valid decision. Sorry. Their motto seems to be "Fairness for the largest group of people possible". That's preventing smurfing.

Further, by creating a second account to hide behind to defend this shady practice you've basically thrown out any credibility that a well reasoned argument SHOULD have given you. Furthermore, the arguments made aren't even all that well reasoned - as mentioned you are hiding behind logical fallacies and analogies to an older game with an older and far different sort of ladder system.

This is slightly untrue for the reasons I've already mentioned. The more points are hoovered up into smurf teams, the less points there are in general circulation. This lowers possible point gain by the ratio of normal:smurf contained points. At an extreme case, imagine 10% of the total points in a bracket were contained within smurf teams (something that's altogether possible in S3 given that every team and their mother will want to do this).

You, the average player, whether 2400 rank or 1400 rank will earn 10% less points per win and lose 10% less points per loss. This promotes stagnation and stalls teams advancing. You will have to play 10% more games to advance/drop down in the long run than you otherwise would have.

If 10% of the points are tied up in smurf teams and you win a game where you receive 20 points. Guess what? You'd have gotten 22 without those smurf teams around. I'd say this certainly affects every player.