1.7 Ilum, Open World PVP and Ranked Warzones

Firstly as a PVP'er I am stoked that 1.6 has a new Warzone, Elite War Hero Gear and also the decision to close the gear gap. (2 of my 3 chars are Full War Hero so not biased!).

I found this article from a little while back and haven't really seen much since regarding Ilum, Open World PVP and Ranked Warzones.

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/swtor-star-tour/

Ilum and Open World PVP:

At this point, what we’re wanting to do is an event that revitalizes it. It’ll have something to do with an alien race crash-landing into it, and we’re targeting a January timeframe, which is when update 1.1 happened this last January.

In addition to revitalizing the open-world PvP, we’re also looking at the obvious issues like faction imbalance and things of that nature, though I can’t get into the details of our approach right now.

On ranked warzones:

We’re making good strides on that. We’ve got a lot of exciting developments going on, but I’m not allowed to give details at this point. It’s something everyone at the studio is really amped about, and we hope to start dropping hints and teasers about that soon.

We want to do more than simply “turn on” ranked warzones for season one. We’re looking into other PvP modes, as well. I can’t give exact dates, but it’s likely that free-to-play will come online slightly before ranked warzones.

Does anyone know anything else and whether its happening in 1.7/ January as previously mentioned as a possibility?

Bioware is bleeding Devs and programmers and Gabe Amatangelo IS STILL HERE?!! Why did all the good Devs leave and Gabe, one of the minds behind the failure that was WAR, still here? Epicly disappointed sigh.

Yes, I've felt that crispy fury a few times.

Noted that GA mentions narrowing gear gap not just with Recruit Mk II, but with a level 50 bolster. How would that work? Couldn't simply scale stats by level when all are already 50. And wouldn't that rather undercut getting better gear, min/maxing, improving your character MMO-style generally? Hmm.

Also, he mentions "tournaments" (what kind?) in the same sentence as ranked warzones. So something they were/are considering.

Given this was back in September, I'd regard any potential timings with scepticism. Deadlines move over three months.

Also, +1 for can't wait for Ancient Hypergates.

BW is on-track, according to that post and what's been delivered. Well done BW!

I doubt that he had any fans among swtor community, lol

WAR failed for the same reason that SWTOR failed. Horrible game engine, unable to handle any mass (like 10 vs 10, lol) PvP at playable framerates.

The ideas were good, and the scenarios (WAR's warzones) were very fun.

Wouldn't blame Gabe for WAR's failure. I blame engineers.

Same applies to SWTOR.

dont blame the hero engine ...it is such a great engine. I mean they could have easily get the unreal 3 engine which works fine and stuff but they decided to pick a crappy engine instead with which they clearly had no experience.

The gear gap is not why there is a huge performance gap between noobs and veteran players. The performance gap is so large in this game because the PvP combat system is much more complex than in other MMOs. As a result new 50's start at the bottom of a lengthy learning curve. You can not eliminate that process unless you want to eliminate what makes ToR PvP combat interesting - it's complexity.

This game can't handle 10v10?

no it cant xerain god dammit