PvP Community's Plans for Server Transfers

You are right - it isn't the responsibility of the elite PVP guilds to teach anyone, however then they should not complain about how poorly this server PVPs, which they often do. One might think they would want more competition, rather than comm-farming. I always thought that these guilds were seating themselves above all others, not in a bad way, but as PVP leaders. Part of being a leader is leading - willing to teach, and further more, WANTING to teach. You are absolutely right, you owe this server nothing, but what does it say about a PVP guild that doesn't RP very much hanging out on an RP server? Maybe it says nothing at all, then again, maybe it does.

So if the top PVP guilds aren't interested in applicants who want to PVP, then how do you find recruits? Or don't you? Aren't people applying to guilds supposed to apply to guilds that best suit them? If someone truly loves PVP and wants to be the very best they can't, shouldn't they apply with one of these top PVP guilds? You say "recruiting for the sake of education is not something your guilds do", but then why do you recruit, and when, and what is it exactly you look for? Do you not look at all? If you do recruit, are you only interested in the very elite of players, who require no education what-so-ever, because you yourself stated in your reply, "No one ever taught me or an of my guildmates how to play this game", implying that you had no clue what you were doing when you first stepped into a warzone. So you were in a WZ with 7 other people and just decided that you were going to form a guild to get better? Please don't read this as negative, because it isn't. These are questions that a nobody like me wonders about these top PVP guilds and how to get into them, or better yet form them so that we stand a chance against the best of the best, rather than serve ourselves up as a three-course comm-farming meal.

No, it certainly isn't. However, PvP on TEH has had a very noticeable and undeniable trend. This is a RP server. By definition, NOT a PvP server and does NOT generally attract PvP-oriented players. Like-minded individuals band together. There have been numerous PvP guilds during the past 1.5 years come and go. People quit the game, have drama and guilds disband, etc. It happens.

What has also happened is that a lot of the top PvPers have banded together into one giant multi-guild conglomerate that spans both factions. Instead of there being multiple guilds with a couple great players in each of them, the community has diminished to the point where the higher tier players have all wound up in the same place and then they're chest beating on the forums about how great they are and wondering where all the competition went. Well...duh? Look at the teammate standing next to you.

That is the state of PvP on TEH right now. There's no real ranked play, it's all staged kickball or win trading. There's no real Imp vs. Pub grudge matches because it's all the same damn people just switching toons. The 55 bracket is mostly premades vs. PUGs, and God help you if you PUG in most cases. The best PvP continues to be in the pre-55 bracket, but even there you see premade domination coming from those very same players who are leveling alts.

So what's the fix here? Is there one? No, not really. I don't blame the conglomerate. Winning is addictive, and it sucks playing in PUGs all the time where half the players don't understand basic PvP concepts. It's not even about friendship, so don't even give me that crap. I'm sure there's some genuine bro love, but it's also easy to pretend to like each other when you're winning. It will eventually break apart, because that many fragile egos in one place is just a pot waiting to boil over, and drama destroys guilds faster than anything else.

This is a very good point. "Friendship" in a game is easy when you're winning and don't really have much difficulty doing so. However, when someone else comes along and starts beating you, those friendships start degrading pretty quickly. I love watching streams of ranked matches on PoT5 and Bastion that have teammates yelling at each other over voice and ragequit at the first sign of defeat. I'll say, I have a lot more respect for Zen and Hex, and whichever other guilds continue to queue despite several losses. It's a lot harder to hold a team together through defeat than victory. Not saying that Hex/Zen always loses just going off of what I hear about the ranked environment through the forums.

You can't blame like-minded people for wanting to play together. Top-tier PVPers share an interest in a certain slice of the game. It's no wonder they all end up in premades/guilds together, especially given the very small number of dedicated PVPers on our server.

Don't blame the players/guilds. Blame the game.

An 8 man team is a hard thing to organize. Once you finally get your team, and get geared, it takes a lot of practice to come together as a cohesive whole. Often, it just takes one player leaving the game (for whatever reason) to break a team. Having a deep bench can give a team an enormous advantage, especially given how sensitive team composition has been in ranked games. Naturally, guilds collaborating on a fully fleshed out team with a deep bench makes good strategic sense.

If BW had designed more support for PVP, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. I would love nothing more than to stay on TEH. I like the people here. I enjoy the rivalries and competition. All PVP should be "ranked". All PVP should contribute to your individual ELO as a player. There should be leaderboards, both weekly and monthly. There should be cross-server queues, 4 man ranked queuing options, a Huttball league etc. There should be incentive to perform well in every game you play. Dailies don't cut it. A ranking system that is "always turned on" would be a nice carrot (or stick!) that could help players want to play their hardest.

Unfortunately, BW has failed to capitalize on one of the very best aspects of their game. On the servers where the PVP community is smaller, PVP has suffered the most. I see very little other options than to transfer to a PVP server.

I've said it before many times, and I know I'm not alone: I would pay 15 bucks a month just for Huttball, and HB league support. They have a goldmine under their noses, but they just can't capitalize.

There's also a lot of talk about ranked play from folks who have very few games under their belt, or have not done ranked at all. This server has a very short memory. Not to be an ***, but please: if you haven't played ranked games on our server, you can easily avoid putting your foot in your mouth by not talking about that which you do not understand.

To address this part of your post...

Most PvP guilds recruit by watching other players and then approaching them in private later. Usually they get invited to a group a few times so that their playstyle can be more closely observed. If they make the grade, then they'll usually be asked about the possibility of joining the guild.

The other way PvP guilds recruit is when a person with big enough balls sends their members a tell and is someone they have seen before. Then they also are put through a process of grouping with guild members before being invited.

Most 8man pvp guilds also are at least partially democratic and all new recruits are voted on by either all members or at least the senior members/officers of the guild - this is done because ALL 8man pvp guilds want to gel personality and playstyle wise.

This recruiting style has been the way 'elite' pvp guilds recruit in every single game I've played, starting with the best pvp game ever - dark age of camelot. I've never seen a successful pvp guild that has an open application policy.

Not buying it.

There are a lot of guilds here who PvP regularly who are not "top tier" players, they do it for the sake of playing together...because that's what most guilds do. Then there are players who guild hop for the sole sake of being among the perceived "best", which has led us to the situation that exists now. Again, the broham campfire singalong stuff only goes so far, as long as ticks in the W column keep adding up. The game mechanics have nothing to do with it.

Here's a question: after some of you leave for greener pastures and "better competition" on another server...how many of you will rage quit and/or return to TEH? When will the infighting begin and how long will the broham last when the losses start piling up against better competition and the men among you are separated from the boys when they leave for other guilds on the new PvP server? I'm guessing at least some of you will be back.

Because you see, that's the true nature of things. Players who share the win-at-all-costs mindset will always follow the path of least resistance.

So, hmm. I read some very heavy ressentiment into the last several posts. Maybe it's not intended, but it's definitely there. And I think it's misplaced.

Don't get me wrong, I've never had much love for many of the PvP guilds. I think, by and large, they do an extremely poor job of public communication and a lot of them luxuriate in the kind of angry jealousy that's so common on the forums. In my book, that's in poor taste. I like the PvPers who speak and act with respect for the community and hope for a better atmosphere on the Ebon Hawk, but those people are acting above and beyond the call of duty. They're acting like responsible pseudo-politicians in a game most people are playing to relax, unwind, and express a little too much id.

That said, I do think it is unfair to either a) demand/expect that any guild undertaking the highest levels of any content be responsible for generating its own competition, b) demand/expect that any guild undertaking the highest levels of any content invest significant amounts of time developing individual competence, or c) demand/expect that high-quality PvPers not befriend one another. By-and-large, the design of ranked PvP in general is unbelievably poorly thought out and given a relatively small population will lead toward a congealed layer of talent at the top of the pool. The apparently significant skill divide between the top-tier players who've mastered (or have even limited competence with) coordinated group tactics and the mediocre to excellent solo players is reinforced by Bioware's system. There's no way around that and it's pointless to blame any particular group.

I'm an inveterate solo queuer. I'm fascinated by the depth of tactics that are available to groups -- just listening to an experienced ranked team communicate is a very interesting experience -- but I don't have the drive to be an excellent PvPer and most PvP guilds scare the **** out of me. I've had losing streaks against the same 2-3 premades stacking into the upper 40s. It gets stupid and it often feels pointless. I feel your pain, solo queuers and novice players, I feel your pain. But that doesn't mean that it's appropriate to accuse the PvP guilds of "comm-farming".

No one enjoys a one sided fight, perhaps especially not the PvP guilds. Losing endlessly to the same people sucks only slightly more than watching the same group of PUGs stack on a node for seven minutes while you twiddle your fingers. That's not why these folks queue.

The best PvPers on the server are definitely a closed group. It's a fairly small network and it's a thick one. There are people (and even guilds) in that group who've taken it upon themselves to build up the talent of novice players. I'd point to <Azure Blades> and <Silent Council> in particular, on that front. Those two groups have--and I'd say this was true long before server transfers--consistently been open to new and learning players. Are the best of the best in those guilds? No. The top tier talent bleeds out of those guilds. But if you're searching for mentoring, there are absolutely guilds that are, at least tangentially, committed to that goal.

To be perfectly frank, however, what separates the PvP guilds from the masses is not raw, individual skill. There are excellent, sometimes unbelievably skilled players in no-name guilds or who run unguilded on principle. The kind of coordination the PvP guilds can muster, however -- predicated on communication and leadership -- means that they're playing a meta-game that the majority of players on the server likely don't realize exists.

I think, and maybe there are a select few exceptions to this like in Mort's case, PvP guilds offer very, very little in terms of remedial education about the basics of WZs or classes or whatever. And most people joining the best of the best are already in the in-group of top-tier PvPers: they've made an impression by consistently performing well in WZs. PvP guilds/groups can take that raw talent/ability/skill and add coordinated group effort/skill/strategy on top. That's what they offer, and it's not really something that can simply be taught.

Resenting them for being able to do that is silly.

That said, the current status of Ebon Hawk PvP is attributable to the attitudes and actions of the incestuous pool of PvPers at the top. That statement doesn't come with a condemnation. At the end of the day, there are very few serious rivalries, competition is scarce if not entirely extinct, ranked matches are rare (although there have been some good ones lately). I don't think anyone -- even the most partisan defender of the PvP guilds -- can seriously argue that the nature of the relationships between the best PvPers on the server doesn't impede the growth of the PvP community. Maybe someone wants to give it a shot, but regardless: PvP here sucks for almost everyone.

Ultimately, I do think that both groups -- the best PvPers and the people who might get better if not for such overwhelmingly dominant/****-talking/demeaning competition -- will be better off on different servers. And that sucks, because I really, really like a lot of the hardcore PvPers and I will be sad to see them leave. Really, though, I think the differences between the two groups, exacerbated by the months and months of jealousy and pettiness directed towards the hardcore PvPers, aggravated by reactionary trolling and very poor communication skills (and some very nice collage work), has made reconciliation more or less a pipe dream. Not everyone involved is or ever will be committed to the same vision of Ebon Hawk PvP, and many of those departing will be much happier fighting a larger array of more talented opponents.

Maybe Paid Transfers will be a bit of a reset for TEH. I just hope that those who stay will be the sorts of people who go beyond the call to make Ebon Hawk PvP awesome.

tldr; - this one time Iota called me a retard for capping a node so I held a grudge for like a year and a half. somehow you came off as even more petty than me, though, so I wrote a *********** treatise.

You're one negative hombre.

For Mr. Frodo and the shire!

Perhaps my post came off as resentment, but I assure you it isn't. My questions were inquistive in nature. As for demanding, I would never demand anything from anyone, however I can have expectations, they just don't need to come true. We all have expectations of BioWare, but let's revisit where that got us.

I agree that the PVP system is horribly dysfunctional, but I would have hoped those who are able to rise above the flaws and anarchy to extend the olive branches to others who wish to join them. To hope for something like this shouldn't be viewed as a demand. And even if these guilds never open their recruitment doors again, I still respect what they do, however on a server that is RP based, I'm just surprised that they actually enjoy what little competition is out there for them on this server. This leads me to wonder if they enjoy the easy victories? Are they hesitant of what types of competition exist on a true PVP based server? Would they rather continue their nearly flawless victories against the community of a RP server for the sake of getting comms?

I know it is unlikely that I'll ever be as good as the players in these guilds, but I know that if I were to ever rise to that level, I would want the glory of real competition, not picking apart RP pub groups for easy comms and glorlyless victories.