How we detect premades
PremadeIQ flags pre-arranged groups (premades) in Epic Battlegrounds — and it is built to do that fairly. Here is exactly how it works, and why an ordinary player will not get mislabeled.
We remember every match
The addon quietly records each Epic BG scoreboard — who played, which side, damage and healing, and whether they entered as a mercenary. The Uploader sends it to the server. Over time this builds a history of who keeps showing up together.
Two things we work out from that history
Who is whose alt. Characters on the same Battle.net account share account-wide achievements earned at the very same moment. We use that match to fold a player's alts into one person — so a leader and all of their alt characters count as one.
Who is a mercenary. A player fighting for the faction opposite their home faction opted into mercenary mode — a deliberate choice they make at an NPC, never something the game does automatically. This matters: premades often opt in together to slip onto the enemy side and stack it.
Leaders are marked by hand
A known premade leader is marked manually — just one character. From there the system automatically follows every alt on that account.
On a match page — three levels of confidence
From certain to likely:
★ Leader
A marked premade leader, or any of their alts.
⛓ Confirmed member
A player confirmed to be in the leader's premade, in any of three ways. By history — they keep landing on the leader's team, measured by share of their own games (not raw count, so a regular who just plays a lot stays clear). By mercing in with the leader — they entered as a mercenary alongside the leader this match (a deliberate, coordinated act; more on that below). Or by doing it again and again — three or more separate matches entering a mercenary stack beside that same leader.
≈ Likely premade (mercenary stack)
When mercenaries pile onto one side well past the usual one or two but none of them is a leader we already track, the stack is flagged as a likely premade — clearly coordinated, just not yet tied to a known leader.
The strongest tell: a mercenary next to the leader
Mercenary mode is switched on by hand at an NPC — a deliberate choice, never something the game does to you. So when a known premade leader takes mercenary, and others take mercenary onto the same side in the same match, that is direct, joint coordination, not coincidence.
We weight this signal above any amount of co-play history — and it is hard to argue with: you chose to queue in with them.
Why we do not accuse people lightly
This is the part that matters most.
- We measure share, not count. A high-volume player crosses paths with everyone simply by playing a lot. Counting raw co-appearances would smear that player as "in every premade." Measuring the share of their games keeps them clear — and lights up the real members. The one exception is shared mercenary entries, which we do count outright: two people cannot land in the enemy faction together by accident. We require three of them, and only for players we have seen in at least ten matches.
- A mercenary stack is read by its size. A battleground normally carries just one or two stray mercenaries out of forty — people who opted in alone. So when several pile onto one side, that is not chance: it is a group that deliberately took mercenary together to enter the enemy side. We flag a stack only once it is clearly past that normal background — never the routine one or two.
- Three levels = honest confidence. ★ we know. ⛓ proven by history. ≈ likely by structure — likely, not an accusation.
And a heads-up in the game
The addon also checks the enemy roster against the known-premade list as a battleground starts, and warns you — by sound and in chat — before the fight begins.
Give to get — why you upload to see it
PremadeIQ runs on shared data: the premade history is only as good as the matches the community feeds in. So access is reciprocal — you contribute your own battlegrounds, and in return you get everyone else's.
- The in-game alert updates the moment you upload. Keep playing and uploading and your warnings stay current; stop, and after a week of inactivity the live data stops flowing — until your next upload, which restores it instantly.
- The full dashboard (the complete leaderboard, per-player history, live roster analysis) is for active contributors. Signed-in visitors still see a teaser so they can judge whether it's worth joining.
- Supporters on Patreon keep full access regardless — that's the perk.
No subscriptions and no paywall for the core: share what you see, and you see what everyone shares.
In short: we remember every match, work out who is an alt and who is a mercenary, mark the leaders, and then — in descending order of confidence — light up their accounts, their regular teammates, and their mercenary stacks. But only where the evidence actually holds up.