More on the [rawr]-[zero] Intentional Draw
Jan 30th, 2009 by Billiard
Well it seems that ArenaNet has determined that this was indeed a violation of the rules and plan on taking action. The question of which rules though is up in the air, since technically the mAT rules only cover through December 2008. I am very concerned by the fact that the decision was arrived at pretty quickly once the powers that be were informed, and that perhaps indeed there was not consensus about it. I fully agree that the intentional draw in the Swiss rounds is an issue, but I don’t personally see where it clearly violates the letter or even the spirit of any rule currently in effect. What’s more, in prior tournaments ArenaNet cast a blind eye on both technical violations as well as exploitation of bugs in the game by teams. Suddenly making what appears to be an arbitrary decision and then handing down punishment for it does not seem to bode well for how administration of tournaments will occur in the future. But rather it appears to me that ArenaNet is seeking to cover a mistake on their part - inclusion of a new tie-breaking mechanism without suitably updating their rules for it - by punishing players who executed a reasonable and common strategy in many, many other competitive areas - both video and otherwise. One of the purposes behind the design of the Automatic Tournaments was to remove such subjective judgments.
I am very interested in the final outcome of this issue as I think it likely will, and should, make news above and beyond the normal Guild Wars community. For a long time Guild Wars has been touted for its exceptional PvP design and play. An arbitrary decision made on the part of ArenaNet that severely punishes players and guilds for what many will see as reasonable behavior will indeed send a message as ArenaNet might desire - but the message could very likely be not the one ArenaNet intends or wants.
I think the appearance of an arbitrary decision would be based on AN’s treatment of intentional draws in Hero Battles. If IDs for Hero Battles remain unpunished (and thus have received AN’s tacit approval), then enforcing the tournament rules for GvG shows a double standard, and would seem to be arbitrary.
I think that focusing on the ID itself is not so much the issue as the impact of the draw upon the mAT. Both teams advanced. However, this had an impact on the other teams who had similar results. By not playing to a conclusion, both [rawr] and [zero] guaranteed their place in the single elimination round.
I agree that it’s frustrating for both teams to be in a position where they believe that they are unable to fight effectively. However, the tournament is not an appropriate place for such a protest since the result does matter to the other guilds competing and who might have been able to advance. This kind of scenario is the kind of thing that used to be reported by the PvP community on the alpha forums, where the dev team could address the situation in a timely fashion. Nowadays, the top PvP players have access to the balance forums, and I’d be quite surprised if no one in [rawr] were present on those forums. That forum would be the better place to raise the issue of what to do in similar circumstances.
My own opinion is that an ID in an mAT could be worked into the tournament rules in a fair manner. Additionally, I believe that the controversy over the [rawr] v [zero] match as distinct from the tacit acceptance of IDs in HBs is a holdover from when GvG tournaments meant real money. When real money is on the line, results manipulation is significantly more important than fancy trim on the cape. As it is, we’ll likely see both teams get a slap on the wrist and a change to the Tournament Rules.