3016247:Considering it is often not a players choice whether the game goes to time or not, it doesnt really make much sense to me to award less points for winning a match that goes to time. A win is still a win, even if the opponent got really bad draws, they got a DQ, or the game was won by time etc. Awarding no points to the time game loser encourages collusion as it is in both players interests if one player gets the most points possible (one player directly benefits from more points, while the opponent indirectly benefits from better tiebreakers), and if the loser is awarded some quantity of points for a timed loss, then it encourages slowplaying in hopeless situations which drags the tournament length out longer.
I think the point is that a win on damage in extra turns is probably entirely unrelated to who would have won the third game had it been played to completion. In games where aggro plays control it's likely to go the aggro players way, and in matchups between similar decks it's pretty much a coin flip. A lot of the time WoW is a game of attritional card advantage - you can take 20 damage quite happily and know with 99% certainty that you're going to win because in taking that 20 damage you got ahead on cards and are going to crush them over time. Games one and two of WoW reward you for setting your deck up that way. In game three the extra turns mechanics of WoW flip the objectives of the game on their head and attritional card advantage becomes worthless next to 'playing badly' and dealing as much damage as possible as quickly as you can.
I think there should be some recognition in WoW that a 'loss' on time probably has a large dollop of unfairness attached to it (which Magic avoids by giving draws rather than saying one player got 100% of the rewards and the other player got nothing). I agree with Jeff's insight that a point for losing in time would certainly encourage a player to stall out if he knows he's losing - but that's only the same as in Magic where players can try to stall out for a draw and effective judging tends to ensure that doesn't happen.
I think there's two issues...
1) Recognising the unfairness of a 1-0 system that is decided in a significant portion of games by playing an entirely different game with entirely different win conditions that either massively favour one player because of the matchup, or is essentially random.
2) Ensuring players don't slow-play in order to gain the benefits of the fact that the third game will have entirely different win conditions that massively favour them.
Average game length needs to be brought down - making the stallers more obvious, and the reducing the portion of games decided in extra turns. This is something that R&D can make happen, and judges can police.
BTW... what's wrong with drawn matches?
You have gained 250 reputation with World of Warcraft. You have lost 350 reputation with Girlfriend.
You are now Neutral with Girlfriend.