Hello everyone,
I am here to bring up a subject that has been on my mind and probably in the mind of others for a while or even a long time.
MMR dropping.
I find this one of the most dangerous and menacing activities happening in pvp at the moment. The reason why is because it has a huge negative impact on the arena scene. And I have to be specific in order for everyone to understand:
1.- MMR dropping creates a huge problem when it comes to win or lose rating.
2.-MMR dropping is the main cause of why new players get discouraged to play arenas, rather than the human racial and BiS players generic excuse.
3.-MMR dropping makes the players who play legit lose interest in PvP and move to other areas of the game and eventually the queue and the activity in arenas gets severely damaged.
4.-MMR dropping abuse gives the false impression that Warmane is being selective with the punishments, I'm not saying it's the case, I'm just saying that it's weird that even though 80% of the teams in the top 50 page drop MMR, nobody is getting punished so far.
Now that a few points that came to my mind have been exposed I'll proceed with practical explanations in order to make it easier to understand:
-We have HolyPower69 (Ret pal) and Gankster666 (Combat rogue):
Both are exclusive PvE players, although they like to q BG from time to time to usually test the new gear they have obtained on the last raid. But today they have decided that they want to give a try to the arenas everybody talks about; The pinnacle of PvP. They make a team and queue.
They're both in the pre-arena room, getting buffs and joking around on discord, the gates open, their hearts start to beat faster but suddenly, they are awarded victors of the encounter. Both paladins in the opposing team seem to have left the arena before it begun or not even entered at all. They are awarded with 0 points, and the opposing team loses 0 points.
They keep queueing and the same thing happens 6 times in a row until ultimately they of course remember the name of the paladins.
After that they manage to beat some teams and climb up to 1400 rating while this keeps happening from time to time, they don't quite understand but they simply don't care, they don't lose rating so they just keep going.
The day after, they q again and they're faced against a Warrior and a Hpala. Both extremely geared and experienced and have no problem beating the **** of our little fellow heroes, so they lose, but not only do they lose, they lose 18 points. The rogue who has good memory remembers that this paladin's name is the same as the paladin from the team that never joined the arena. They keep the q and keep losing a few times in a row. Back at 1200 rating they fight against the mighty warrior and paladin and somehow they manage to win. After the match despite showing pretty much the same team rating, they win ZERO. 0 points awarded after beating the nemesis of their little adventure.
After experiencing this every week, our two friends eventually decide that arenas is not their thing and they leave the arena dream if not forever, atleast for a long time.
After this small but realistic tale, I would like to beg the Warmane staff to start taking a more serious and merciless attitude against teams that break the rules every season, that don't play fairly, that ruin the PvP scene and that their only purpose is to feed off casual players for their own ego gain. Winning under unfair circumstances, using exploits and deluding themselves into thinking that they are good. No dear PvP (gods), you are not good, you are scum. You are a bunch of tryhard losers that can't take a defeat, you are a bunch of scoundrels that have to resort to exploits and in some cases even scripts to protect your fragile egos from being destroyed. I don't recognize any scripter or MMR dropper as a gladiator and neither should Warmane.
My suggestion after all of this biblical post is to beg the warmane staff to take action at the end of each season, analyze 1 by 1 the teams match history, a feature that everybody has at hand and that it should be used for this purpose, taking serious action against MMR droppers. Maybe putting a GM specifically to look into atleast the most prominent teams and apply justice so that everybody can have fun experiencing anger, joy, tears and frustration with the security that those emotions are a result of skill nor a result of exploits and scripts.
Thank you
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Member
The Issue nobody talks about
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Member
I'd be the first volunteer to check each mach and each pair of players. I've tried getting my IRL fried to queue up with me up to 1600 to get the chest piece but he was pissed after 3 games people quit, and 4th run we got stomped.
MMR dropping should be as bit of a punishment as "raid ninja looting" even thought I never saw MMR dropping as a ban reason.
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Forum Veteran
best thing you can likely do is report them. mmr dropping is against the rules, but i doubt they have the time to go through every arena team and see if it looks like they're dropping their mmr.
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Member
Yeah I'm going to start reporting them manually from now on, but I think it would be something good because it's seriously, extreme. You just have to take a quick look at pretty much all teams on the top50 to find out 80% of them dropped mmr.
In example here are the numbers of a random warrior:
Spoiler:Show
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Member
I completely agree with everything that has been said by OP, MMR dropping is against the server rules and should be treated as such.
It's anything but a rare occurrence to find MMR droppers on Icecrown and it goes as such; you either queue and have to leave the arena seconds later since the team has already left before the match even started, or you face an experienced team with twice your gear and lose 18 points after getting **** stomped, the latter obviously being the most infuriating and discouraging part of the whole thing.
Also,
I wish it were as simple as that, but if I had to report these things every time I saw them happen, I would have to be keeping a page open at all times and alt-tabbing around 30 times in the span of maybe 3-4 hours and in the end I wouldn’t be playing the game anymore.
Reading the game rules here it clearly states:
“The following are rules set forth by Warmane Staff for the Services Warmane provides, any attempt to break them will result in appropriate action against your in-game accounts.
MMR Dropping: Losing in arena on purpose to lower own MMR below normal value.”
Following this I will ask, are there any actions (if any) being taken against the ones breaching those rules?
Is there any one from the staff members currently assigned into actually skimming through at least the top teams and checking to see if there are any suspicious activities?
To me, the simplest way to effectively spot the ones that have been MMR dropping is a quick look on the armory’s match history and it’s all right there. It doesn’t seem like a particularly demanding task to me, yet I feel like as simple as it is, it would be enough to discourage the players that actively drop MMR on a daily basis and make them actually afraid of the potential repercussions that awaits them if they do it again, because right now they’re not.
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Moderator
As noted above, this is already against the rules, though I don't know the exact punishment. However, I do know of at least one recent ban and repeat offenders do get longer bans. I recommend reporting any MMR droppers that you come across.
