Sounds like a great update for PVPers, and it's good to know that PVE and PVP get to take it in turns, as someone who engages in both on different characters and different servers. This update looks like a lot of fun, can't wait to pull groups of four friends who know each other together to try and dominate an arena! Quick question: will current level brackets and bolster apply to these people? And as for the new warzone teased at the end, that's also very exciting!

A new update without a single mention of Cartel Coins or the Cartel Market. I'm so proud of you, Bioware.

Will the two new operations and the Oricon daily area also be put on the PTR this Friday?

Hey Jerba,

Nope. This Friday we are only focusing on Warzone-Arenas.

i am going to ask this question again since i seem to have posted it when you went to lunch.

I have a very important question about class and balance changes. If you do make changes for classes based on arena play how do you plan to implement these? Are they going to be changes that affect the whole game? Or are you going to balance within the arena itself with some type of buff/debuff system.

The reason i ask this is in wow balance changes made specifically for arena severely affected other parts of the game like raids or regular battlegrounds. Some classes were nerfed into the ground and became unusable in raids.

I am hoping you will balance this within the arena system itself so it doesn't affect the rest of the game. I see this as one of the major faults in the wow arena system.

If classes get balanced as they currently do, with the changes affecting the whole of the game we are going to go through the same balance nightmare that was WoW.

The matchmaking system assigns a role based on which tree has the most skill points spent in it.

What about specs that are 22/22/2?

We are sad to see it go but the truth is that because of many factors not enough people played them and we didn’t support them well enough, so they are going away for now. Getting eight friends together and hoping another eight people are doing the same at the exact same time AND your two teams were equally matched was a nightmare for the players.[/Quote]

 

So instead of finding a way to make your engine and servers support cross server queueing you are instead just getting rid of a fundamental part of the PvP scene? That is so disappointing and makes me worry that you just don't have enough care to fix your problems.

 

I'm hoping that this in the future thing means you ARE working on cross server queueing so that rank warzone 8v8 can be possible again.

It will default to DPS.

Ok, thank you for the response.

As a strictly PVP player, this is some of the worst news I've heard in a long time. I was really excited for arenas, but NOT AS A REPLACEMENT FOR 8v8! I just spent a large sum of money moving my characters to Prophecy of the Five in order to play 8v8 ranked warzones only to hear the next week that those are being flushed down the drain. I understand that a lot of people are not participating in ranked 8v8 warzones, but why remove the option of doing them at all? I just don't understand.

 

In addition, F2P people playing warzones now? Now people are going to have to carry a bunch of people through warzones who have no idea what they are doing whatsoever.

 

I'm assuming for fairness PVE players are going to have any flashpoints and operations that aren't new removed from the game and they will have to queue for operations with F2P people as well even if they have 8 or 16 man groups willing to go.

 

This is a giant slap in the face to the PVP community. Limiting our already limited options is not the way to go.

I dropped $100 real dollars to get into 8v8 warzones. Didnt complain about it because I wanted to move to server that had healthy ranked competetion.

You havent removed any Operations from the game, and ranked is the equivelant of operations for pvp guilds.

I'm super excited about arenas, I leveled a new toon just to be 'ready' for what group comps will be needed and Love the game, but seriously your taking away something that was good (you have nightmare ops for elite players, similar to 8v8 ranked).

I could have saved $100 dollars because I can do ranked on a PvE server with your 'fixing' ranked. I'm just dissapointed because that kinda of info before I threw around real money, nearly a years worth of subscription, would have been nice to know.

I love the game, but I just got 'ganked'.

The other thing I was wondering about was how players dropping was going to be handled.

Since objective 8v8 warzones and deathmatch 4v4 arenas are apparently going to be in the same queue without options to pick one or the other, you will have players who will drop when they get one they don't care for. With the current system, there's no real penalty for dropping. With arenas, one player dropping could have a devastating effect on their team.

1. Is there going to be any change to the way warzone dropping is handled? Penalties?

2. How is backfilling into arenas going to be handled?

That is a possibility depending on other factors besides queue population as well, but not promises and definitely no timetable on such a change.

Alex, I urge you to stress to the team the need to do this. You have already alienated a large portion of pvp players by having us go long stretches without pvp updates. This is further compounded by the removal of Ranked 8v8. While I cannot speak to everyone, I myself was hoping that I would be able to solo queue and perhaps finally get into these with the 2.4 update. Needless to say, I am very disappointed. As I stated earlier in this thread, I do not want to be forced to play through streams of deathmatches just to get to the objective-based pvp I was able to play before. With the inclusion of 3 (soon 4) Deathmatch Arenas, the odds will be close to 50% that every time that queue pops, I will be thrown in one. That really sucks for those of us that have limited time to play and want to get their fix.

I urge you to create a seperate queue for arena, Objective, or random(both) wzs. Please.

I'll be having representatives from a lot of the major pvp guilds on my chat show this weekend, the thread below has more information and I'd really like to get more input from the community during the show.

It's this Saturday at 5pm gmt+1 and you can see previous shows on my YouTube channel.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=671350

There are many concerns about this change, I'm hoping the pvp community will get together and voice their concerns but at the same time acknowledge the concept behind the proposed changes.

Sign this petition to save Ranked 8v8, There is no reason 8v8 and 4v4 can't stand together.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=671266

I'll be having representatives from a lot of the major pvp guilds on my chat show this weekend, the thread below has more information and I'd really like to get more input from the community during the show.

It's this Saturday at 5pm gmt+1 and you can see previous shows on my YouTube channel.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=671350

There are many concerns about this change, I'm hoping the pvp community will get together and voice their concerns but at the same time acknowledge the concept behind the proposed changes.

Hey Sammenn and Scriffle,

 

Alex is not intentionally dodging your question nor are there looming higher ups telling him not to post. The truth is he answered your question in the blog itself:

 

"We are sad to see it go but the truth is that because of many factors not enough people played them and we didn’t support them well enough, so they are going away for now. Getting eight friends together and hoping another eight people are doing the same at the exact same time AND your two teams were equally matched was a nightmare for the players. It is possible that Ranked 8v8 Warzones will come back at a later time if we can solve some of the problems with them and if the population is there to support them."

 

We will now be focusing 4v4 Ranked Arenas, but as the blog says that doesn't mean Ranked 8v8 Warzones are off the table forever. But not until we can solve the issues around them.

With all due respect Courtney, that does not answer the question at all. The reason stated does not justify the means.

As an organiser of ranked games, for my guild, and between other guilds of late, and the organiser of a Ranked league on the Harbinger, I find this news completely harrowing. Sure sometimes the organising can be difficult, but you can't remove a feature just because you guys think its too hard. That's absolute ********. I have been organising it myself and its NOT THAT HARD. Ask anyone involved in a ranked team.

8v8 ranked warzones are a completely unique piece of warzone play. And the game play in them is spectacular. Playing non ranked warzones is a drag, because they are played sooo poorly. You might as well remove all the 8v8 warzone maps, they are pointless if the cant be played properly.

Im all for arena's don't get me wrong, but this is supposed to ADD to our pvp choices, not detract from them. This, among many other decisions goes amongst the worst bioware have made.

I am sorely losing respect and confidence in your ability to design games.

Honestly I just got home and found one and a half pages of dev tracker to read, so I'm not going to go through this whole post, but just off the first things I've read in the dev tracker, one thing is obvious... the team have dropped 8 vs. 8 ranked in favour of solo queuing and 4 man premades for ranked arenas. Citing the issue that its tough to get full 8 man groups together to face other 8 man groups... well here's a suggestion taken from your own solution to 4 man arenas. How about adding solo queue for ranked to 8 man warzones, since honestly, regular warzones pop every few seconds on The Red Eclipse (a PvE server) and I've never waited more than a few minutes for one.

Just let people choose if they want to queue for ranked or not, and add a role system like whats seems to be coming for arenas and is in place for FP's and Ops. So we wait a few more minutes for a ranked pop instead of a regular one while the systems tries to make to even sides... I think it would be a better solution than just throwing it off to the side for now (probably never to return) and possibly lose more subs that actually like ranked at the moment.

PS. Although I'm all for new PvP... not everyone is jumping for joy over arenas... some will claim it ruined PvP in other games that will remain unnamed...

Meh new hutball is always nice

 

 

Anyways tell us more about 2.4 raiding

**** no PvE plz thx

Honestly I just got home and found one and a half pages of dev tracker to read, so I'm not going to go through this whole post, but just off the first things I've read in the dev tracker, one thing is obvious... the team have dropped 8 vs. 8 ranked in favour of solo queuing and 4 man premades for ranked arenas. Citing the issue that its tough to get full 8 man groups together to face other 8 man groups... well here's a suggestion taken from your own solution to 4 man arenas. How about adding solo queue for ranked to 8 man warzones, since honestly, regular warzones pop every few seconds on The Red Eclipse (a PvE server) and I've never waited more than a few minutes for one.

 

Just let people choose if they want to queue for ranked or not, and add a role system like whats seems to be coming for arenas and is in place for FP's and Ops. So we wait a few more minutes for a ranked pop instead of a regular one while the systems tries to make to even sides... I think it would be a better solution than just throwing it off to the side for now (probably never to return) and possibly lose more subs that actually like ranked at the moment.

 

PS. Although I'm all for new PvP... not everyone is jumping for joy over arenas... some will claim it ruined PvP in other games that will remain unnamed...

Unfortunately this would not work. Ranked 8v8 is a completely different game, and to behonest, the ranked solo queue would not be different from the current non ranked games. Any pug team would be obliterated by an organised and experience 8v8 team and the same thing will happen in arena's.

Unfortunately this would not work. Ranked 8v8 is a completely different game, and to behonest, the ranked solo queue would not be different from the current non ranked games. Any pug team would be obliterated by an organised and experience 8v8 team and the same thing will happen in arena's.

Oh I know, but I assume that solo ranked queue in arenas will be against other solo queued people. I'm not sure if that means a solo duel in an arena setting, or stuck in non-premades 4 vs 4 arenas. If its the latter, I don't see why it couldn't work for all solo queued ranked players having an 8 vs 8 game (basically, no solo queued players against premades - they complain enough about it in regs as it is)

Oh I know, but I assume that solo ranked queue in arenas will be against other solo queued people. I'm not sure if that means a solo duel in an arena setting, or stuck in non-premades 4 vs 4 arenas. If its the latter, I don't see why it couldn't work for all solo queued ranked players having an 8 vs 8 game (basically, no solo queued players against premades - they complain enough about it in regs as it is)

From what I understand this will not be the case. Solo ranked queued teams will go against 4 man premade teams. So its essentially the same thing. Hope you like losing, there are some really skilled ranked teams out there.

From what I understand this will not be the case. Solo ranked queued teams will go against 4 man premade teams. So its essentially the same thing. Hope you like losing, there are some really skilled ranked teams out there.

The good teams will be higher up the ratings ladder than the typical solo que people. So it will work itself out almost immediately.

From what I understand this will not be the case. Solo ranked queued teams will go against 4 man premade teams. So its essentially the same thing. Hope you like losing, there are some really skilled ranked teams out there.

Oh I have no intention to role solo in arenas... I already have my 4 man premade more or less decided on

But honestly, if 8 man ranked is not very popular and only a minority play them (I guess this also depends on servers), since its so hard to get 8 man teams to queue against each other, will they be removing 16 man Ops and NiM content in 2.5?

PS: I enjoy all forms of this game, I play ranked and do HM Ops... I just find it funny how the more serious PvPers in this game always seem to get the short end of the stick