In this week's editorial I am going to discuss the arena combat and reward system and the way a select few are using it to become extremely wealthy in-game. First a little background though...

Since the inception of the arena combat system in the World of Warcraft many players have hungered for some of the amazing gear that can be earned through the arena rewards system. However to get the gear you need to battle it out in the arenas at least 10 times a week to earn an arena rating. The higher your rating the higher number of arena points you earn at the end of the week. If you are not geared you are not likely to win many games, and therefore your rating goes down, you get less points, and can not get the gear to move your rating up for a longer time.

It didn't take very long before players got frustrated and either someone offered up a team for sale, or a player offered to pay for a team from a high ranked player. Either way, the sale of arena teams started. Blizzard reacted by putting personal arena ratings in and required a personal rating of a certain level to purchase certain arena gear pieces. Again, it didn't take long for players to side step this either as you can now find teams willing to accept you as a member, get your rating up and then hand off the team for gold.

In the fast paced arena combat system is this legal, ethical, moral even? Should you be able to buy your way into the rankings and essentially get gear for gold?

The practice of selling arena team ratings is already old news, however it was stopped briefly when personal ratings were put into place with season 3. However, the sale of teams and ratings are now back with a vengeance.

All you need to do is join the trade channel in any major city and listed in for a while during prime time any night of the week and you will see many messages stating things like "2000 point arena team and personal rating for sale, 2000g and roughly 2 hours of time, pst to arrange".

The how is actually surprisingly easy. There are a few ways, however the most common seems to be as follows.

They generally have a fully geared 3v3 or 5v5 team (depending on which you are buying) that starts off being very highly rated. They then log on and throw many matches to drop their rating through the floor. The do this (when possible) to another of their (or their friends) teams to raise their rating. Once the rating is low enough to be in an easy bracket for their gear, they start a fresh team and put up a notice of a team for sale.

A player then pays them the gold and joins the arena team taking one of the spots. The other 2 or 4 players on the team are fully season 3 geared then dedicate an hour or 2 destroying everything you face in your arena fights. This quickly brings the team and your personal rating up, without you having to do almost anything in the arena.

At the end of the time with them, you have a 2000 point arena rating and a team charter. They all leave the team and you go on your merry way by inviting several friends to your team.

To counter several of the other methods, Blizzard has announced a few changes for patch 2.4.2 to address this. Are they enough though?

This question is fairly easy to answer. In the arenas, three things decide the outcome of a battle: team class makeup, skill and gear. While the exact amount each item contributes to your victory is widely debated, let's run with the assumption that it is roughly as follows: class 20%, skill 50% and gear 30%.

You can adjust the team class makeup by inviting only those that will actually help your team. You can also control your skill level, by practicing, learning and studying. The one thing you can't control or change initially is your gear level. You can have ideal team makeup, a great deal of skill, and still lose horribly over and over again to a much better geared team. This gets frustrating to most players and that is what lead to this practice.

A starting team gets a 1500 rating and usually drops to about a 1200-1300 rating while learning the arena system. During this time they only earn about 250-300 points a week. An average piece of equipment is 1800 points, or 6 weeks of playing. However a 2000 rating earns upwards of a 1000 points a week. This means that you can get a piece of gear in 2 weeks.

You need to realize that you will that you will not be able to maintain your 2000 rating once you get it. Your gear will not be up to par with the teams you will be facing now that the team sellers are no longer members. So, your rating will drop, however if you stick to only fighting the 10 minimum fights a week, it will only drop roughly 100 rating points per week. This means that the first week you will get roughly 1000 points, 900 the next, 750 the next, and so on. Unless you are very skill or have decently geared players with you, your rating will be back down to 1500ish within a month. However, in that time you will have earned roughly 3600 points or enough for 2 new pieces of gear. If you had stuck it out at your base level it would have taken roughly 3 months to earn those points.

While the above sections may make it look like I am all for the sale of arena teams, I'm not. I view it as no different than buying gold or a character. You are in essence paying someone else to play a game for you. You are using real world money to influence your in-game status. To me that's wrong.

I can definitely see the desire to do it though. With arena rating requirements to purchase the season 3 shoulders and weapons set at a high level it means that many players simply can not get them. However those players play in the arena all the time, and feel they need them to progress further. The same player has a pile of gold sitting around, so pays to join a team to get the rating to buy the items they want. No ones hurt, are they?

This is my biggest problem with it, there are people hurt by it. How many times have you logged in, gotten into an arena fight at a normal 1500-1700 bracket game, and been destroyed! Not just beaten, but destroyed. I know its happen to me, more than I care to admit. Now I know this could come across as sour grapes, because no one really likes losing, but it really isn't. Me and my arena team mates, have often commented that we don't mind losing close games, and we really don't. One of my favorite games were a series of games where my hunter and friends priest were matched up against a hunter and druid. The fights went forever. By forever I mean they lasted 9 - 14 minutes each! They were long tense, hard fought affairs. In the end, we won one, lost two to the other team, but every single game was close, and we loved it. Back to the point though, these teams that are leveling players for ratings, end up in all of our brackets at some point, and when they do, you are the one that is paying for that other persons leveling, by losing your hard, honestly earned rating.

Blizzard has started to address this issue with some of the proposed changes. However, I would love for Blizzard to do more about it, Teams break up, need to reform, and have to start fresh. There is also nothing illegal about running someone through an instance, so why would there be for an arena match. It just feels different and wrong though. So, while I believe that many players are being hurt by this practice, the only thing that I can see that may solve it in a realistic manner is some sort of cap on the number of teams you can create or join in a certain time frame.

Here's my thought, any player can create or join a grand total of 3 arena teams in a bracket before being hit by a cap. Once the cap is hit they can not join or create another team until a month has past, then it adds 1 back to their counter. If they stay on 1 team for 3 months, their counter would be completely reset. This would allow the legit players to experiment and find a team that works for them, without hurting them (I can see no valid reason for more than a switch a week). However it would stop the rating sellers after less than a month, severely limiting the amount of damage they could do. The first month they could sell 3 team ratings, but after that they would be limited to one a month.

Maybe not a perfect solution, but it would limit the practice until a more permanent one could be found.

The Messiah has had his say, what’s yours?  Are you for or against arena team ratings being up for sale? Do you feel cheated when you get destroyed by one of these teams? Do you sell ratings and believe it's your right to do so? I want to hear your comments and explanations.

Email me at: Byron Mudry - ([email protected]) or post in our forums thread!