WOC - Matchmaking Issues

At this point it's obvious that EA had a mandate to make significant changes to the matchmaking this year.   Unfortunately they've been less than forthcoming as to why the changes were made.  We don't know what they're trying to achieve or what the benefit to the users is supposed to be.   And on top of that, it feels like whatever changes they made were half-baked at best.  From the outside looking in, it has all the hallmarks of a feature that was about 25% done but was pushed into production anyway and now they're trying to fix things as they go.   Unfortunately, I get the impression that the missing matching by club size and region options aren't bugs to be fixed, but are by design. 

They've also apparently removed any kind of matchmaking based on skill level.   My club regularly gets matched up with teams both way above us and way below us in terms of RP.  And not after a long search either.  It happens within seconds.   I'm sure part of this is to deal with a small player base, but continually sending lower skilled players into a meat grinder will cause them to walk away from the game which just triggers a downward spiral in player counts.  I'm sure most players would be willing to wait a bit longer to find a fair match-up, but EA seems to feel differently.

As far as the AI goes, you need to have at least one human defence man in WOC or you need to be committed to having at least one forward high enough that they can quickly backcheck to defend the rush.  The AI in club games has always been terrible defending the rush and there's no reason to expect that to change in the future.   Personally, I'd love to see them be more than just pylons, but that's all they've ever been.