What you are proposing is an impossibility due to Bioware policy and game theory. This is the problem that plagues the games that are "built for every one." These games attempt to be "jacks of all trades," but end up as "masters of none." The very principles that Bioware built this game on are the same principles that make your proposal impossible. The example you described where the Horde locked down an Alliance city for 2 straight days would not be tolerated by Bioware policy. They know a situation like that would generate massive levels of unrest and unhappiness and cancellation threats on behalf of the losing faction, even on PVP servers. Bioware took a stance long ago against hard core PVP that allows one faction to leverage heavily against another, hence why there is no real ganking in this game and you get same faction PVP warzones. Bioware stated in multiple sources that "ganking" and "griefing" will not be tolerated ANYWHERE in this game and is considered a violation of TOS. That stance was generated in an attempt to "appeal to every one," every type of player. A company with that type of approach to PVP will never have a PVP server that allows players to openly grief others by forcing them into PVP they have little chance of winning. Unfortunately without that ability the results you request are impossible. What you're asking for is for Bioware to change the core philosophy that they designed the entire game around...... good luck with that. You're better off ditching these dorks and finding a game that is designed from the ground up featuring a game play model that you are looking for. EA/Bioware just want a cash cow that appeals to the largest market possible, they aren't concerned with producing greatness in any specific aspect of the game, only that the game is broad sweeping in its market appeal.

This discussion is a waste of time. Every one who is arguing one side of the argument is completely ignoring another. - The guys who want heavy gear progression in PVP are ignoring the fact that it divides the player base and diminishes legitimate skill and strategy in favor of stat stacking and rewarding those who have the most time to spend online regardless of their actual skill level. - The guys who are strictly anti gear progression in PVP are ignoring the blatantly obvious reason why gear progression in PVP exists in the first place. It's to create a barrier between those who PVE and those who PVP. That barrier is necessary and i'll tell you why, simply put: Removal of that barrier would create the EXACT same situation you're complaining about now where your talent and strategic offerings get diminished in favor of stat stacking PVE players who rolled into a PVP situation stacked to the hilt with gear acquired by killing monsters. Removal of PVP gear progression in a game which contains PVE gear progression would exacerbate the problem you're already complaining about and make it 10x worse! - Then you get the odd person who wants to make comparisons to WoW PVP who is blatantly ignoring the fact that WoW's PVP comparisons should only sparingly be used in specifically targeted discussions and not as a general system comparison as WoW is one of the ABSOLUTE WORST PvP games ever to hit the market. People don't PVP in WoW for the awesomeness of the system, they do it for e-sport or because they simply don't have anything better to do. Every time a new game comes out, WoW PVP'ers flock to it like locusts hoping for something better and only migrate back after the new game fails and they realize they need to maintain their arena rating. The fact is that this is a themepark style PVE game which offers PVE gear progression. These games RARELY have decent PVP for all of the reasons you guys are listing here. PVP gear sucks but it's a necessary evil put in place to prevent PVE'ers with a distinct lack of experience and strategy from dominating in PVP. I don't know about you guys but i'd rather get dominated by a PVP'er who outgears me than a PVE'er who outgears me. If you think the cries about gear progression are bad now, wait until you break that wall down. Sure you could remove all stats from PVP entirely, but then where is the progression in this game? MMO's need progression of some type, it's fundamental to the core philosophy of the game. There isn't any bases in this game to take over, there aren't any cities to build and defend, there isn't any territorial control, no resource domination. The question of "what are players working toward" will go completely unanswered in this game if you removed all stats from PVP. Once you remove progression, people will quickly run out of reasons to maintain a subscription to a game you have to pay a monthly fee to play when they can get the same experience in a slew of games with no monthly cost. You guys need to keep your suggestions pointed and relevant and appropriate for the game itself. TLDR: Next time you want a PVP game to play, stop looking to the AAA rated big shot corporate developer who is trying to create "a game for every one." The best PVP games tend to lack PVE gear progression and have very little PVE content to begin with. Look for the more specialized game next time because the big shot corporate developer is always going to build a game like this due to e-peen jealousy of WoW's subscription numbers.

The problem isn't that the Sorcs have too much stuff, it's that Bioware has done a horrible job of putting those abilities into perspective and adding appropriate rules and limitations surrounding their use. As people have said, the Sorcs current skillset makes them ridiculously OP in Huttball. There are a lot of things in this game that would be OP in Huttball were there not rules and limitations in place to prevent them. For example, it would be OP and unfair if an assassin or an operative could carry the ball while in stealth and infact during beta you used to be able to throw the ball to a stealthed teammate. Bioware implemented limitations in Huttball to prevent people from carrying or catching the ball while in stealth. If you stealth you automatically drop the ball to prevent people from taking advantage of a mechanic which would be completely OP. With this in mind, why hasn't Bioware taken a similar approach with pulls? Why is it that a player carrying the ball can be infinitely pulled by sorcs to the goal line? For that matter why is it that a marauder can just jump with the ball constantly? Isn't the design of Huttball supposed to prevent ball carriers from moving rapidly, isn't that the reason why a snare is put on the ball carrier as soon as he picks up the ball? With that in mind aren't these movement altering abilities counter intuitive to the intended design of the game? I'd propose that some limitations to carrying the ball in huttball need to be implemented to prevent the overuse and abuse of these types of abilities that grant unfair advantages to specific classes. The abilities themselves don't necessarily need to be changed or removed or anything like that because they don't seem to be OP in the other areas of the game. The one ability I do think needs to be looked at for Sorcs though is their shield. It's hard to argue that a Sorc wears light armor when they mitigate as much damage as they do. Not only is their shield the most powerful in the game reducing far more damage than mine does as a Merc but it's also on a 15 second cool down. In light of the 2 minute cool down put on my Merc shield I find this completely ridiculous. How is it that the sorcs get a shield that grants almost 100% damage mitigation when mine does like 30% but on top of that they can spec to cast that thing every 15 seconds? Thats simply ridiculous no matter how you try to defend it. Put that thing on a 2 minute cooldown or dramatically reduce the amount of mitigation it grants.

No one is ignoring anything. The premise of your post is to make an excuse for why TOR doesn't compete well with it's competition and has failed to live up to the hype in the eyes of a huge portion of their player base. No one cares that the game is "only 2 months old." The entire premise of releasing broken, buggy, or incomplete software to a retail market has been a patronizing load of garbage for the entirety of the 12+ years that MMO developers have been doing it. Today, FINALLY it has grown unacceptable to do so because as gamers we now have choice provided by a variety of games and competition in the genre. Today we no longer have to put up with it when companies try to sell us something that is fundamentally broken or doesn't deliver on all of it's selling points because we have the opportunity to simply pick up a product that does. THAT is capitalism at it's finest and that is why games today cannot afford to release early anymore. This isn't 2003 anymore dude, an MMO launch today needs to be competitive with the games that are already out on the market. That's just a fact of the culture change that has occurred over the last 10 years. Believe it or not that's infact a good thing as it raises the bar in terms of quality that we see produced. Stop fighting that progress by making excuses for companies who under deliver.

The game is fundamentally and critically flawed and because of these critical flaws it will never be a good PVP game. Unfortunately these are issues that cannot be fixed as they're the very backbone of the core game itself. The fate of this game as a potential PVP candidate was sealed and doomed to failure the moment we found out that the game world was not only instanced but heavily segregated. Hype up the Ilum idea all you want but I don't know a single real PVP'er out of the hundreds that I know who thinks it's okay to create a disconnected "PVP AREA" where you essentially tell the PVP'ers, "hey, go over here away from the population and PVP inside of this special little box we built for you and your kind." World PVP is supposed to exist...... IN THE GAME WORLD..... not in some instanced, overly glorified supersized warzone wannabe. The best any of you can hope for is good enough PVE content for this game to be competitive amongst the PVE crowd.

If you believe that i've got some ocean front property in Arizona i'd like to sell you. Every person who bought and played this game at launch is technically a "subscriber," because we were all forced to choose a subscription plan a month before we actually had to pay a subscription fee. That statement of 1.7 million subs was made right around the time the first subscription fees were coming due so it's likely they were reflective of of the games launch numbers and NOT the number of actual current subscribers.

Well as a solo'er I hope you realize and respect the difficult situation you've put yourself in. While I respect the desire of the solo'ers to be able to play the game successfully on their own, that type of approach to the game is counter intuitive to the design and intent of MMO's. Game devs have to walk a fine line between honoring the traditions of the genre and servicing playstyles that don't fit into the typical design of these games. I don't want to brush your concerns aside and tell you to get some friends, but past a certain point the argument is going to end up exactly there because you're trying to use a Toyota Camry to haul 1500lbs worth of bricks when you should be using a pickup truck.

11 to 49 is about skill when you're playing against lower levels who don't have all of their skills yet? I hate to burst your bubble, but the difference in power you have at 40+ playing against a guy who is 11-40 can be just as great as the difference in gear created by expertise. It's essentially the same thing. To whine about one and not the other is illogical.

No skill? LOL, these arguments by bad republics just grow increasingly laughable. If you think any of this has any relation to "skill," you are kidding yourselves. If the faction imbalance were flipped all of the skilled and unskilled republics would be doing the EXACT same thing. If you can't find a way around this to keep yourself a productive and successful player in this game then it is you who is lacking skill. I've been on the beaten side numerous times in imbalanced MMO's, many of which were legitimately more imbalanced than this one. Somehow while playing Destruction in Warhammer and Asmodian in Aion those of us who knew what we were doing were able to maintain a high level of production despite massive disadvantages that greatly surpassed those you find in this game. The same players who are complaining about "no skill players" camping their base in Ilum world PVP are the same players who then turn around and lose the majority of their warzones where numbers no longer matter. And if you arent losing those warzones it's because you're capable of utilizing group tactics and organization in a premade, so apply those same principles to Ilum and you'll find plenty of success. Stop fighting the zerg head on, move around.

LOL, and i'm the one who doesn't pay attention? So lets go back to math 101 or whatever kind of math they teach to my 8 year old. If the ZONE CAP is 200 and you organize up some guilds and bring 100 republics to Ilum, do you not effectively now possess an equal balance despite there not being a faction cap? Granted it won't likely last forever since there are ways around even the zone cap but there is no reason why if you aren't truly terrible players, you cannot take that time to have even enough PVP to get some work done on your dailies and have a helluva good time in the process.

Stop blaming the population imbalance for you repubs being bad. Ilum has population caps and then it flips to another instance. If you guys could organize and get off your *** and fill a zone up you wouldn't have to worry about it so much. Besides, there are a few repub groups out there actually smart enough to get stuff done regardless. You aren't going to fight the horde of players camping outside your base with a 8 man group, obviously, but that 8 man group is more than capable of roaming the zone and getting some easy kills. That 8 man group can show up at central and jack a bunch of glossy eyed imps about to fall asleep at their keyboards while they drive around in endless circles looking for boxes. These are the types of things I see the smarter and more talented republic groups doing. If you aren't getting in on any of this action and are just playing the push/pull farm game at the base then it's your own fault you're failing in this game.

In many years of gaming I don't think i've ever seen a larger group of babies than the republic in this game. Almost every MMO released inside of the last decade has had MAJOR imbalances that lended itself to 1 factoin being better than the other. In Warhammer you had bright wizards and massive amounts of CC available to the Order faction causing massive game imbalances. In Aion you had the Elyos with huge population imbalances and better high level world bosses providing more high level items to their faction than the Asmodians. Even in World of Warcraft people complained about racial abilities being better for the horde than the alliance eventually leading to Horde domination. All of these things pale in comparison to the Republic whiners in this game though. These other games had MAJOR gameplay imbalances and the republic in this game cry about......... ANIMATIONS? Are you serious? Directly mirrored abilities and you think that a split second of animation delay is causing you to lose? You're losing because you're bad not because your animation went off 0.25 seconds slower than the other guys. Population imbalance? You do realize this game has no open world PVP to speak of right? You do realize that even if the factions were totally balanced that open world PVP wouldn't exist anyway because the system they put in place in completely meaningless and hollow. The only reason to show up to Ilum is to complete your dailies, at which point everybody leaves because there is no purpose to the zone. You republics complain about some seriously stupid stuff. In all my years of listening to the complaints of the losing faction i've never seen one complain so loudly about stuff as petty as your complaints.

When are players ever going to learn? Deserter debuffs do nothing to prevent people from leaving battlegrounds. I've seen these things implemented in various games over the years and in every one of those games players tempted to leave losing battles continued to do so. Turns out many players would rather have a 15 minute debuff for deserting a battleground while they participate in something else they enjoy rather than get pummeled into the ground and farmed for 15 mins. IMAGINE THAT! DER!

Protection is the only damage absorb that tanks do that is specific to their class. Every class takes damage, it's not just "what a tank does." Tanks taking damage that isn't through protecting somebody with guard isn't a skill that should be rewarded.

Epic fail. Both of these are in the game. Bad player is bad.