As a dedicated player, we’ve been enjoying Warcraft 3 Reforged’s competitive multiplayer, but one persistent issue is ruining games: we can’t tell if a player crashed or left intentionally. This leads to frustration, abandoned matches, and unfair penalties for crash victims. Recent threads like “Temp ban instant leavers” (Jan 2026) and “Penalty Timeout for Leavers in Versus” (2023) show this is a widespread problem with no resolution yet.
Detection System to Improve Match Quality:
The Problem:
Abrupt disconnects (crashes/network issues) are treated the same as clicking “Quit.”
No penalties for intentional leavers, leading to instant abandons of the team.
Crashers need help , automatic resolution(ai autorepair system)
Example:
Proposed Solution: A Simple Server-Side Detection System with Progressive Delays Implement a server-authoritative system to detect and handle disconnects differently:
Detect Disconnect Type (Instant & Reliable):
Intentional Leave: Player clicks “Quit” → Sends a clean “quit signal” packet. Server immediately flags as LEAVE, applies penalty, and notifies others: “Player X left the game intentionally.”
Crash/Disconnect: Abrupt connection drop (no quit signal). Server flags as POSSIBLE CRASH and starts reconnect timer.
Progressive Reconnect Delays for Crashes (to Confirm & Improve Game Quality):
Stage
Delay
Action
1st Check
30 seconds
Show: “Player X disconnected (reconnecting…)” Game continues normally.
2nd Check
+1 minute (total 1:30)
If no reconnect: “Player X failed to reconnect. Slot forfeit in 30s.” Team can vote to pause briefly if needed.
3rd Check
+2 minutes (total 3:30)
Auto-forfeit slot. Lighter penalty (e.g., MMR warning only for first offense).
Repeated in Session
Double delays (e.g., 1min → 2min → 4min)
Harsher MMR loss + queue ban (5-30 min progressive).
Penalties:
Intentional Leave: queue ban (5 min first, up to 1 hour & + for repeats).
Repeat Crashes : Double timers
Track per account/session to prevent abuse.
Player Visibility:
In-game chat/notification: Clear status updates.
Post-game report: “X left intentionally” vs. “X crashed (no penalty).”
Benefits:
Higher Game Quality: Fewer ruined matches; teams know what to expect.
Fairness: Crashers aren’t punished; leavers are deterred.
Easy to Implement: Server-side only—no client changes needed. Uses existing packet detection (like many MOBAs/RTS do).
Data-Driven: Log stats to refine delays (e.g., 90% of crashes reconnect in <2 min).
Why This Works (Proven by LoL):
Stats: Track reconnect rate to tune (LoL: >90% success).
When I play a custom single player game, I run into a window where I lose my host. There’s nothing I can do but click on the lost player and be forced back to the scoring screen. I don’t understand. It’s a single player game. Why did you lose the connection? And lost host should be in the LAN or other network environment will appear, I think you encounter the same as me?
I agree that distinguishing crashes from intentional leaves is useful, but thats hard to do.
I think the system should focus more on punishing team killers or toxic behavior rather than players who choose to quit for any reason, whether mom called for lunch, a quick WC break, or just being fed up with repeated bad pairings.
For example, if I’m repeatedly matched with a disruptive player (or someone who’s always AFK and then when game finishes “he/she/it” automatically re-queues, that’s been happening in SC2 4v4 since >1year),
Sometimes the best approach is to leave the game, and queue again!
Fairness comes from stopping people who actively ruin games, not from punishing those who opt out of a bad situation.
Dear OP. Please don’t prompt AI to write your posts for you. Use your own words, it looks more natural and makes discussing and addressing your comments easier.
It’s fine to use it as a starting point, but if you don’t at least tweak it to look more realistic… its going to come across in a bad way. Also, as I’ll cover down below, generative AI does make mistakes and it made a glaringly bad one which I’ll discuss below.
THis is a distinction without a difference. You can not return to the game after a crash, so it doesn’t matter whether it was on purpose or not. You’re gone and the other players in the game have to deal with it. There shouldn’t be any difference in penalty for not being in a game, whether you left on purpose or not.
In a further reflection of the AI use in this post- the “proposed solution” assumes the possibility of being able to reconnect to games after a crash, which does not currently exist. Thus the rest of the post falls apart because that’s not actually possible with the current design of the game.
And please don’t try to defend this (you know who you are)- The AI made incorrect assumptions about the game’s capabilities and the result is a post that makes no sense.
In all honesty, I stopped reading this after point #1 because I could tell it was AI generated.
But, to the point made in #1, just as it’s been throughout internet gaming history, there’s no way to know why someone disconnects. JirA, if something like this was put in place to punish intentional leavers, all they would start doing is disabling their internet to fake a disconnection. This has been a known fact among humans for a long time (hence why you shouldn’t be using AI to create your posts for you).
Just to clarify, my main point is that any system should prioritize punishing players who actively ruin games (team killers, toxic behavior) rather than those leaving for legitimate reasons.
This thread should stay focused on practical ways to improve crash vs. leave detection, not again on AI discussions. You can open a separate thread to discuss AI usage on forum.
No. AI was used in this thread and doing so can have an effect on readers, as seen here and in other threads. If that’s what someone uses, it’s going to often get talked about. In many cases it subtracts from the validity of the topic, especially when the OPs dont even realize that the AI was wrong, incomplete, ect, so it’s relevant.
And someday, maybe you will learn that every time you make posts like this, you create off topic tangent because you are inviting people to reply to it, like I am doing to you here and many others have done to you in the past. You are just as much a part of the problem that you’ve recently taken it upon yourself to police.
Actually, it shouldn’t because it’s irrelevant- The game does not care why you disconnected, only that you disconnected in the first place. And that is how it should be, because history has proved that any other way would be too easily abused.
Also, very much this. you create tangents by criticizng others for what you view as being off topic. It only distracts further from what a thread is about than it would have if you did nothing instead.
I’m not trying to police anyone. I’m trying to keep the thread on the actual topic: how crash vs. intentional leave could be handled better in practice.
Turning the discussion into repeated debates about AI usage ends up derailing the gameplay topic and discouraging people from contributing.
If someone used AI as a drafting tool, that shouldn’t become the focus of the thread itself.
So I’ll stick to the gameplay side: what realistic options exist (if any) to improve how disconnects, crashes, or disruptive behavior are handled in team games. Anyone who wants to discuss that is welcome to.
They didn’t use AI as a drafting tool. They just asked it to write a post for them and took what the AI chatbot wrote verbatim with NO editing. Not a starting point, not for feedback to improve their writing, just straight up ask bot and post the output.
That’s policing and you’ve been doing it consistently for a couple months in many, many threads. The mods have even edited some of it out when they found it. It’s not a good idea to keep doing it if the mods have gotten involved.
And now your giving your permission to post about the thread topic. What’s next?
So back to my point to you: now there’s this offtopic tanget that you are solely responsible for.
Dear Leviathan and CaptainJack,
I think instead of focusing on forum AI usage, it could be better to focus on escalating some clear bots in SC2 and Reforged.
I won’t mention names, just behaviour again:
they join games with Random race,
play entire game so never leave,
never talk, never write 1 letter,
do not move one peon/ peasant / drone / SCV - never ever. They just do what default do in game. For SC2 gather minerals for War2 stay in formation near base.
when game over - regardless of who wins they Re-Queue next game.
this happens 24/7 since 1 year now.
Me and my friends reported a lot of time, but seems useless.
Thank you 2 for supporting us making the entire community better!
Yeah, it’s call tomato farming, and it is not the topic of the tread. You are trolling by intentionally posting off topic, all while telling others when they post offtopic.
You couldn’t be more of a troll, Cat. The quote you provided is about leavers. Yet what you posted that I accused you of being off topic was about people who don’t leave, they just AFK. Why do you do this?
I understand you’re trying to steer the conversation, but I believe my point about AFK players is relevant.
The issues of leavers and AFK players are essentially tied together, and addressing one without the other doesn’t solve the broader problem. We’re discussing player behavior that disrupts games.
Whether they are “intentional Leave / Crash / AFK” all of these are directly related to the topic.
If this behavior is chronic with the same players, => that makes the issue much worse for entire community.
That’s why I asked your help to escalate!
Maybe the proposal of JIRA:
isn’t feasible in the current state of the game, maybe it’s too expensive to implement, or other priorities, but escalating the issue of 1-2 disruptive players in both SC2 and Warcraft 3 sure is possible.
Others stood up as well and mentioned these cases on SC2 forum and here on War3 forum.
I won’t put links or give names because of the “naming and shaming” rules, but everyone knows who they are. For example, if you play 10 consecutive games during “low traffic hours,” these players will quickly pop up as 24/7 AFK co-players.
Believe me, the entire community will be much happier if this is addressed."
I hope someone from Blizzard see this post.
No, they are not. You added afk’ers to the thread, meaning you’ve tried to hijack the thread to make it about what you want it to be about. Offtopic, hypocritical.
