Guild Tracks

This past weekend Rebel Rising [rawr] won an unprecedented 9th Guild Wars GvG tournament.  However, many people are complaining that they broke the tournament rules with an intentional draw versus [zero] at the end of the Swiss rounds.  As you can see below, there were several guilds that could have gotten into the single elimination rounds had [rawr] or [zero] lost in the final Swiss round:

Last night I played with Awowa from [rawr] and asked a little about what happened.  Apparently a lot of guilds were having connection issues throughout the mAT. In a previous match versus [vibe], [rawr]’s Ranger disconnected early in the match and could not return.  Even so, [rawr] was still able to win the match playing most of the way 7 on 8.  Against [stp] though their Ranger failed to load altogether and [rawr] lost.  In the final Swiss round versus Survival Rate [zero], both teams managed to have everyone load in and they fought 10+ minutes to a virtual standstill - neither team was able to gain entrance to the others base.  Basically the match turned into both teams sitting opposite each other in the middle, keeping an eye on the other to counter any movements toward the entrance of their base.  Tommy, from [zero] joked that he was drawing a line in the sand that nobody can cross.  Other players started talking how the tiebreaker (whomever puts the most damage on the opposing Guild Lord before 28 minutes) was stupid; winning based on a diceroll was stupid, etc.  Eventually the teams decided sitting on two lines waiting for the tiebreaker was boring (often times teams would stalemate until just before 28 minutes and then make a mad dash to damage the opposing Guild Lord), so they decided to do a Conga Line instead:

My impression is that at least initially there was no specific intention to force a draw between the teams. Eight of the final 16 teams that moved on to the Single Elimination Rounds had a record of 4 and 2, so there is a possibility that both [rawr] and [zero] could have moved on even had one of them lost.  As it was, a draw ensured that both would be able to move on.  For [zero] it really didn’t matter though, as Ensign failed to load into their next match and they lost right away.  For [rawr] though, it enabled them to again make it all the way to the finals and win yet again.

The question at hand though is did [zero] and [rawr] collude in violation of the tournament rules, and if so what actions should ArenaNet take against them?  Many PvP players seem to think that indeed [rawr] violated the rules and based on the precedent set when ArenaNet punished Team Quitter [QQ] in the past, [rawr] should also be punished.  Most players though also think nothing will happen, as other violations by [rawr] in the past (an employee of ArenaNet was a member of the guild, as was someone living with an employee during the tournament - both of which should have made [rawr] ineligible to participate according to the rules), were pretty much ignored.

So while most people would agree that [rawr] has earned their success, many feel that ArenaNet tends to look the other way when it comes to violations of the tournament rules.  It will be interesting to see what, if anything comes from this latest tournament issue.  Already other guilds are copying this behavior, some in jest and some in protest of ArenaNet’s inaction: