A recently hot issue discussed at WarcraftIII.net Forums was about how fucked up Battle.net’s Automatic Match-making [AMM] system is after the release of the much-hyped 1.15 patch[this particular patch went through beta testing :O].

As a whole, Warcraft 3 moves closer and closer towards ultimate MMORTS balance. However there have been major complaints regarding the AMM system. Especially in Solo and Random Team [RT] Ladder Matches. I don’t have a good record myself but I consider myself a decent player, heh. Anyway, there have been reports about how lvl 2 players get matched up against lvl 15 players. At first I thought that was pretty impossible, until it happened to me.

Quite honestly, I suck at the Solo Ladder. Seriously, I lack that certain edge, or should I say the extra focus that wins me my games. I do however play a lot of RT matches and I’ve been having a swell time. Yesterday, however was a surprising match-up. Here’s how the team arrangement went;

Team 1
A lvl 13 player [Human]
Me - lvl 10 player [Random - Night Elf]
A lvl 15 player [Night Elf]

Team 2
A lvl 35 player [Random - Orc]
A lvl 10 player [Night Elf]
A lvl 32 player [Random - Undead]

Now tell me. By simple glance, the odds are obviously against us. The proof? At the start of the game, the lvl 15 fella went “Oh shit, this won’t be easy,” and after 5 seconds, he starts lagging. By then I had my face in my hands already. The moment that guy was dropped out, my other ally went “We’re fucked”. For some reason, I decided to hang on and play. So I told him, ‘Don’t leave, we can still win. Trust me.’ So he agreed and he told me he was going for the typical Rifles build. His first Hero happened to be the bloodmage. I can’t exactly understand his reason for it, but I just let him be. Both of us agreed to let the other guy’s army [since he left the game early] to be archers, and later do air. I decided to play hunts and tech to bears.

What amused me was, this pair of lvl 30+ players didn’t even scout. So i decided to scout them the moment I got an extra wisp. Well, well. The high lvl ones don’t look so strong actually. Their build was pretty predictable. The Orc had grunts, and was teching. I assume he was going for gruntapults with docs. The NE teched right to Giants, and I was sure as hell he has dryads. The Undead, well, a dissapointing fiends/statue build with novacoil heroes. Predictable, but such a combo is hard to beat head on.

The Orc blindly harassed my ally with only a few grunts his Farseer, which was, well…not so lvl 35. And he was a bad harasser at that. Good thing I went Keeper as primary hero so, I tangled the bloody FS for a quick surround/kill. I’ve hit tier 3, and they still didn’t bother to scout. I was paying close attention to skeletons, wolves, even wisps. None of them came. However, while I was busying myself with an army of archers and hippogryphs, the effect of Farsight Spell appeared. By now, they would have realized the air army so I signalled for an assault.

We moved out with my 6-7 bears and a few hunts, his bunch of rifles [and nothing else] along with the group of about 10 hippogryph riders. We were lucky enough to ctach one of them off guard. An ambush pretty much crippled the opposing NE’s army of 3 Giants and dryads [as expected] and we marched off to the UD base, which was a huge mistake. Upon arrival, we were greeted by the fiends and I absent mindedly let my riders get webbed down. The bears, however got pounded by nova and fiends’ focus fire. At the back, my ally’s rifles was being stomped by not only grunts, but also by docs and TAURENS!

Still, the fact that we put up a decent fight [we flattened the UD base, leaving him with only his heroes] in a 2v3, with a major handicap was pretty amusing. It wasn’t bad loss besides, the guy who got his giants raped said,

“You almost had us there.”
“Yeah, I panicked and lost track of my bears, thats all.”

GG fellas.