Arena rating decay system for Onyxia/Blackrock TBC
Straight to the point:
To maintain a healthy higher end ladder add a rating decay for the highest ratings, starting at 2000 or 2200 for example:
Every week you lose x amount of rating if you did not play at least 10 games total or 30% of your team while above x rating
This is to prevent camping high ladder spots and to encourage activity especially after the first weeks of the season passed and people collected their gear pieces. This system is in place in other competitive ladder games, for example League of Legends, however their ladder pool is significantly more populated.
Looking at Blizzard's latest Classic re-releases of TBC and Wotlk without a rating decay or MMR inflation system in place during Season 8 some players were able to secure a rank 1 spot in February and were able to camp on it until the season ended in mid April. For late starters looking to ladder it could be extremely difficult to find matches if people are allowed to camp forever. Obviously Classic re-releases are an extreme case since title distribution works differently there but this is an idea of what could happen if some teams push insanely far ahead early during the hype train.
Some individuals may complain being forced to do 10 games a week at high rating is considered too difficult because of limited time available to them but let's be real, 10 games a week is not a lot to ask for.
This post is written for Onyxia and Blackrock in the first place however if you consider this idea useful you could apply it to your Wotlk realms too. I apologize in advance if this is a re-post and was suggested in the past, I have to admit I did not do any research before starting this new topic.
