I know it's not a "winning" strategy, but once we fall significantly behind I take a moment to watch my teammates. If I'm the only one playing the objectives, then I switch to deathmatch mode myself. When all is lost, jumping into the fray is a lot more fun than guarding the last friendly objective all by myself. In those cases I'd rater be entertained than right.

14k is about right for a Commando in Recruit gear. There's nothing wrong with that. The situation does sound frustrating. If the game treated me like I was AFK, even though I was actually playing the game (and getting crushed by a far better team), I would be irritated too.

It sounds like you're confusing your personal preference with absolute truth. For a lot of players, in a lot of games, PvP works well with healers. There's no fundamental problem, it's just what they like (OK. It's what we like. I enjoy PvPing with/as a healer too). I don't think that it's the only way to do PvP, but it is one that works well in many games. But, as your post reveals, it isn't the only way to do PvP. It sounds like you're excited for a chance to try PvP without healers. I am too. But that doesn't mean that one approach is inherently tight and the other is wrong. They're just different ways to design a game.

If you're eligible to join a Warzone, then please queue. Queue early! Queue often! PvP's a ghost town on many servers and we need every player we can get. Bolstering may not be perfect, but it is pretty good. And a low-level player can still be a great asset to his or her team. I'm the only regular PvP player left in my guild (my regular partner left three days ago), but back when we had a large PvP group, we loved the way that bolstering allowed us to team up with nearly anyone. We didn't have to carefully measure our leveling so that we didn't get too far ahead of our friends. We could just team up and join the queue. It was a great way to play the game with your friends. And finally, starting at level 10 is also a great way to learn how to PvP with a new character. It lets you focus on a small set of abilities and, if you play regularly as you level, it lets you integrate new abilities at a nice, even pace.

I've been playing a tank-specced (and tank-equipped) Shadow for the last 6 weeks. Our server population has dropped to the point where we see the same 20 or so players in every match. At most I see one or two opponents of any given class, and that's not enough to make judgments about a class as a whole. I can say that there are a few specific characters that are very difficult for me. When I see them on the other team, I know that I'm in trouble. Keep in mind, I PvP like a tank. I'm trying to defend objectives, lock down specific opponents and keep my teammates alive. I measure success by how well I harassed opponents, not by how many of them I killed. My biggest challenge is a burst-specced Powertech. When the random number generator is on his side, he can take me from 19k to 0 in 10-15 seconds. But if I can weather that first round of attacks, I can hold him off for quite a while. A couple times, I've even managed to force him to run away. I don't think I've ever killed him. Right up there with him is a dot-specced Marauder. I last longer against him, 20-25 seconds instead of 10-15, but it's very consistent. Unlike the Powertech, where I can hold out when the RNG goes my way, my fate is usually sealed against this Marauder. My most successful strategy involves calling for help, holding his attention until he has applied most of his DoTs and then stealthing and force speeding away. Then I circle back and reengage him once more when he tries to capture the objective I'm defending. Ideally one of my teammates arrives before the marauder can kill me. Those are the two big challenges. I also occasionally see a Gunslinger and an Inquisitor who can burn me down very quickly if they catch me in the open. And there's an Assassin who beats me every time, although it takes her almost a minute (when I'm defending an objective, this usually counts as a "win". So I think I'm giving her as much trouble as she gives me.) Otherwise I feel pretty confident that I can keep another solo player from capturing an objective long enough for help to arrive. That's good enough for me.

When the queue pops and the teams are even, I have a blast. But that's only happening about once a night.

That's an interesting point and I hadn't thought about it that way. Gonna need to think a bit more about it before I decide whether or not I agree, but thanks for bringing it up.

This sounds like a good stop-gap solution for a bad situation. Shutting warzones down early was acceptable when it was easy to jump back into a new one. But when they're only popping up once every hour (or less), it is horrible.

I haven't tried PvP tonight, but under the new system at least one third of my matches from the last week would have closed early. They weren't exactly rewarding experiences, but at least I got something out of them and I got to actually play a little bit of PvP. The new system may actually end up being more frustrating than the old one. Back when our server was a little more populated, and warzones occurred more often, this would have been a great change. But in our new ghost-town PvP community it doesn't feel like a good solution. It's amazing to me how much my priorities have changed as our pool of players has gotten smaller. Things like uneven starts and class balance used to feel so important. Now I'm just excited when I get a warzone with full teams on both sides. I'm practically ecstatic when the teams come from the opposing factions.

I like them both. When I play with my level 50 characters, everything is familiar. I know my character, I know my teammates and I know my opponents. But I don't know any of them perfectly, so there's a lot of incremental learning as I work to make this warzone a little bit better than the last one. When I play level 50, nearly everything is new. I don't recognize most of the other players and I'm still figuring out my character. Although I know all of the objectives and strategies that we use in the level 50 bracket, I usually don't know the best way to implement them with my new character. There's a lot more uncertainty and confusion, but there are also some great "eureka!" moments when I figure out how to use a new power or combo for the first time. In the past, I loved that I could jump in and play either of these brackets at any time. But now that our server is depleted, we're often forced to play one or the other. I'm glad I enjoy both of them. Otherwise I'd find our new ghost-town PvP community to be even more frustrating than I already do.

When SWTOR's PvP works, my friends and I have a blast. In order to "work" (at least for me), several things have to happen at the same time: The warzone queue pops. Both teams have 8 players for the entire match. The match is free of major bugs or exploits. No one disconnects. Everyone gets along. Unfortunately these things don't always happen in each match. When one of them is missing, the match does kinda suck. But that just means that the individual match was bad, not that PvP doesn't work at all.

My friends are doing a great job of earning my $15 subscription fee. As long as they keep logging in and we keep enjoying each other's company, I'll keep paying to play SWTOR. Most of us come to SWTOR for the great shared experience. For us, in this game, that means running PvP together. The problem is that we're not getting many opportunities for PvP. Aside from one or two die-hards, most of my friends check in, queue up for a warzone and chat for a half an hour. Then, if the queue doesn't pop, they log out again. After a couple nights like last night, where we had 1 good 8v8 war zone and two uneven ones (6v8 and 8v4) in the course of 3 hours, they disappear for a week. We keep in touch via our guild's website, but we don't really need SWTOR for that. It won't be long until we end up on another game, one where we can do more than chat and wait for nearly abandoned PvP scenarios that rarely arrive and almost never satisfy.

Same problem on my server. There aren't enough 50s online to fill one warzone. How are they going to create a meaningful rated system? Even at our population's height, it was iffy. Now it's just impossible.

Sounds very much like my PvP experience tonight: Logged in and teamed up with my usual PvP partner right away. The queue popped right away and we were shocked...SHOCKED...to see an Imperial team on the other side. It was like catching a unicorn. We "won" a 0-0 tie, which isn't the most satisfying result, but it was a genuine Republic vs Empire match, my first of the week. The second match popped right away too and we got the same Imperial opponent. This time it was more like getting trampled to death by a unicorn (5-0 loss), but we were still happy to see some red lightsabers and purple lightning on the other side. The third match never happened. When we left the Pit, the population on the Republic Fleet had dropped from 50 to 15, and I think our Imperial Foes logged off. We stayed in the queue for 90 minutes and kept checking /who for signs of life in the warzones. But we didn't see another match. I admit, a month ago I was a little bit concerned about silly things like survivability and burst damage. That seems almost quaint now. At this point, I'm just hoping for more than 2 games a night.

It's hard to say if this is Reid's fault, but the SWTOR community has not been particularly healthy. Both of the important relationships, player/player and player/developer, feel strained. Actually "hostile" might be a better word. This layoff may just be a case of the company wanting to try a different approach to community management. But until we see what happens next, we can't really be sure of anything.