“Dear BRK, curiosity over an idea that I had about two weeks ago ended with some of my guildies and a small amount of irritable Battlegroup-goers telling me, “BRK wouldn’t do that! You should be ashamed! Reported!” So I figured I should at the very least see what, if anything, you had to say on the matter. So here goes.

“After losing yet again in an AB that was for the most part unwinnable, I got fed up. After seeing all the wondrous red text that had nothing to do with winning the game and actually seemed to make the experience of playing worse, I lost it. I literally picked up my laptop and dropped it in righteous anger. After replacing errant keys and praying it still worked, I started to think. How in the world will I survive getting 70+marks when I have to sit through 20+min losses. That’s almost a full day’s worth of playing.. not including [queue] times. I mean, I can count the number of successful ABs I’ve been in on a couple fingers.

“So I figured I would get clever and play to lose.

“After spending about 2 hours in between PuGs convincing people and recruiting players we finally rolled into AB and proceeded with a /dance party in Trollbane Hall. It was glorious. No one was angry or complaining because everyone knew what they were getting into. Best of all the game took a little under 5minutes with only 3 deaths, a couple /sorry, and many dancing naked toons. A couple games like that and I was thoroughly pleased. It was going great when all of a sudden I got a flurry of whispers from lvl 1 toons telling me that I was being reported.

“Now I admit that I had kind of expected a response like this from some people, but from alliance players, which is why I fielded an entire team of like-minded individuals. These were Horde characters that rolled my server expressly to report me “for my actions”.

“The only reason I could fathom (none of the toons would tell me why they were so upset) is that these guys really wanted to stomp face. But if that were the case, why’d they /dance with us? And for the record, we always ended up with inter-faction teams of dancing toons.

“So Team FTL is on hiatus for the moment. I can’t get ahold of a GM to get definitive and it seems as though the “report” was an empty threat.

“So I put it to you BRK and anyone else who may read (I may post this elsewhere): “Allowing” superior players to win quicker… is bad? The only people I can see getting shafted are the “serious” pvpers who want to “pwnz0rs”. But I told the ones who hadn’t /ignore’d me, the quicker the games, the quicker I’m out of your hair and you can whup someone else. I fail to see how I’m the bad guy.

“I guess we could just run around placing Explosive Traps in places they’ll never get tripped, running cooldowns while waiting for gates, mount ride all over the place etcetc but the /dance parties were sooo much fun in that setting.

“Anyways, sorry for the ginormous lot of text but people (myself included) respect you and your wisdom. Rua”

Here’s the problem we have with the PvP Honor/Token System: it only requires one to show up.

You want a spiffy piece of PvP-honor gear? Show up to the quartermaster with honor and tokens. One gets honor for winning and losing. One gets tokens for winning and losing. Yes, one gets more for winning, but in terms of token-efficiency, sometimes it’s just easier to lose quickly.

What’s better: one “losing” token in 20 minutes where you fought like h3ll, or four “losing” tokens in 20 minutes where you danced the macarena in Trollbane Hall? In terms of token-efficiency, it’s pretty obvious what the answer is.

But in terms of morality, it’s a little different

Now before Megs descends and lays a smackdown on you, we’re going to say this quickly:

You may not AFK, you may not bot, you may not use game-experience-altering programming, and you may not intentionally lose, butcha dunna have to try to win. There is a subtle difference there, and you’ve got to learn and accept it.

Blizzard legislates morality, oh yes they do. The, “It’s my $15 I can do what I want,” rule does not trump Blizz’s code of conduct. You are bound by written rule and precedent about what actions Blizz permits and which they shun. And here’s the scoop on Team ForTheLoss:

Intentionally losing at PvP by refusing to engage the enemy is not appropriate. So sayeth Blizz, so let it be done.

Want some proof? Here ya go, from the WoW Forums themselves, blue-words from a GM.

Tjourney: “So it is safe for my friends and I to /dance and /train our way to victory/failure?”

GM Vrakthris: “I would advise against it, Tjourney, although non-participation mostly is applied to the Battlegrounds it may also serve to cover arena matches. If you wish to lose at the games you are playing you’ll have to do it the old fashion way and be worse than your opponents.”

So where does this leave the person who cannot win at PvP, whose battlegroup is so imbalanced that they lose 9/10 battlegrounds they enter and just want some stinkin’ tokens?

Fail With Class, foshizzle.

What is Failing With Class? It’s trying to win but not worrying about losing.

Here’s an example of the Failing With Class mantra that you should recite before your pug-PvP exploits:

“Today, I shall attempt 10 Warsong Gulch matches. I am going to PvP knowing I’m going to lose all 10, for Alliance doth both suck and blow here. I shall Fail With Class. I shall not lay down and cry, I shall not yell, I shall not dance, I shall not destroy my computer. I shall die frequently and quickly, and be OK with myself and my stupid, idiotic, worthless teammates, may Elune curse their toons back to level three.”

Don’t /dance in PvP, not because Blizz may actually lay down the Ban Hammer, but because, dude, you’re better than that.

Fail With Class. Get out there and die with your dignity intact.

And do it before Megs breaks you in two.