Yeah simply put, we can't be huge smurfing arseholes to you on Gears like we were Halo. It's not even possible even if we had the PvP skill level required (which we don't). I think Danielle would excel at Gears for some reason actually. See if you can pick up a used copy of Gears 1 or 2 BoB, they're probably going for like £5-10 now, and would be a bargain at that price.

Also yeah the ticker thing is an event to help people grind to max level before Gears 3 comes out. 2500% EXP.