Apparently, The Best Way To Rank Up In Diablo Immortal’s Shadow War Rankings Is To Simply Not Play

Some games are built around AFK-style play, there’s a reason that idle clickers exist, but that shouldn’t be the case with games like Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal. Still, players are reporting that some of the game’s clans are AFKing their way to the top of the leaderboard in ranked content. Most recently, a player shared screenshots of the leaderboard for the Shadow War. That’s the PvP tournament built around the Shadows faction. It offers clans a chance at special items and the opportunity to become an Immortal, but first, they have to become one of the top 30 players in the Shadow War. This will grant them the opportunity to fight the server’s Immortal in a 30v1 fight. Once the immortal is defeated, they fight each other in a battle royale to earn the Eternal Crown. The leader of the Clan with the winning player becomes the new Immortal and their clan the core of the Immortals faction in the next season.

Obviously, there’s a lot happening in Diablo Immortal’s ranked content, but the most interesting thing is that it seems that (at least) until hitting the last tier, the Clans who are going to do the best are the ones who don’t do anything at all. As shown in the images mentioned earlier, two of the clan that made their way to the top 10 didn’t play at all. In fact, none of the three clans in their bracket had to do much of anything. Only two even had a competitor, and one had no opponent, so when the “loser” of the first round was pitted against the non-opponent, they just slid right on into third place.

It’s an interesting problem, as teams in other brackets that are actually playing aren’t qualifying at all. According to an article on PCGamesN, there’s quite a bit of speculation among players as to what’s going on – as there should be. The common thought seems to be that somehow the algorithm is catering to tied matches. Some also seem to agree that the amount of time it takes for a team to lose is weighed, with the shorter matches being processed ahead of the ones that take longer. Whether the players are correct or not, it’s safe to say that this is something that needs to be fixed now rather than later.

Note: Activision Blizzard is still under investigation by the state of California for serious harassment charges. CEO Bobby Kotick is alleged to have known about such actions within his company – and performed some himself – and shielded the perpetrators from consequences.