I honestly dont see how bioware could have avoided this. I think unique first names are important, and since we couldn't change them before the forced merges, we couldn't do anything about it. Anything else bioware did could have the people who "won" this round being angry on the forums just like the people who "lost" this round. I'm sorry for those that lost a name, I lost a name myself (of a character I played the day before the merges), but there isnt anything to be done now other than complain, unsub, or move on.

But people WERE complaining about all the cc in PvP. Thats why the moniker Stun Wars became so popular. Reducing the range on a stun makes it able to affect fewer people. This is Bioware's attempt to reduce the CC in Pvp. Will it work? I am not sure, I would love to hear from people on the PTS about balance and what not. Is it game breaking for PvE, hardly. It will make some fights slightly more difficult, but its always possible to stay with 10 meters of a mob and not get hit by melee. and if its ranged 30 meters or 10 meters doesnt make a difference

But this isnt a four course restaraunt. Its a two course restaurant. Just because a restaurant has many options, doesnt mean that you should pick four main courses. And i think the game WAS designed for players to do everything and maintain balance. I played two different toons to 50, one pve and one pvp.

ZOMG somebody who as actually played these changes! tell us moar!!!!

I usually throw out gg as good game, no matter what happened during the match. You win some you lose some, and raging about the losses, no matter how lopsided they are, doesnt help.

you arent being "punished" for wanting to do both. You are doing twice the content and so you are getting twice the xp.

But thats your choice to do both. Many players only do one or the other. I have pvp toons and Pve toons because I dont want to overlevel. Also, the 3rd or 4th time you are doing planetary quests can get pretty boring.

Basically this Twinking made wow pvp no fun for me. Being able to turn off xp gain would lead to people sitting at 49 and getting the best armor/mods/weapons/etc and then having an advantage over other people. Im sorry that people are getting overleveled from doing warzones, but if you are playing warzones, doing your daily, class quests, and most planetary quests, you're doing approximately twice the content per level that the xp requirements for levels are expecting.

Does anyone have any experience on the PTS to talk about these changes and how much they affect gameplay?

PvP, you might have a case, but as a PvE sorc, I see no issue with these changes. If you were mobbed enough that you had to use overload, you were likely going to die anyways. If you cant walk to 9.9 meters of a badguy to stun them, thats a L2P issue. Whatever case might be made for PvP, I think these changes will have a minimal affect on PvE

No. Brackets encourage thinking and would increase queue times. Also bolster does make your ambush three roughly equivalent to bolster seven

granted, standard good vs evil does get boring after a while, especially when the good guys always win. And there can be morally ambiguous characters in the star wars universe. However they can't be Jedi/sith because moral ambiguity renders them powerless. You cant be enraged and serene simultaneously, they cancel each other out. Also, LS with are definitely not grey. I spare my prisoners and give my opponents a chance to surrendar before I kick their ***. Im light side, not gray.

The problem with that is that the better/higher ranked players would have waaaaay longer queue times (since there are fewer of them) so they might be inclined to suck more to get more pops which would essentially render the matchmaking meaningless, imo

I think that there should be some debuff for quitting that prevents requeing for a warzone for 10-15 minutes (although somebody said something about not being able to queue until the warzone you just left finishes, which i think is interesting). It doesn't hurt your stats, so you can continue to go questing (for lowbies) or running dailies (for 50s) without penalty, but it makes staying in a warzone much more beneficial than quitting and hoping for a new one. Personally, I have quit a few warzones because real life or a guild ops run comes up, but I dont quit if I'm losing or stuck with baddies. As a solo queuer you run the risks of going against a premade, being stuck with people in full recruit, and/or losing an early door/node. you win some you lose some.

or they might have things called metrics...