It may not be huge but it can add up. Usually I just vote for someone that is below R60 that did a lot but did not get many medals (usually someone either focusing on objectives or focused on healing). I'd rather them get rid of the MVP system and add increased rewards for working towards the objectives of WZs and increased rewards for pure healers.

I enjoy PuGs in a game where the leveling curve is slow enough that even the slowest gamer can learn how to effectively learn their class AND where people have time to develop a community. My first character in Dark Age of Camelot (started playing in Nov 2001) took 41 days played to hit 50. It sucked. I would never want leveling to take that long again. But it seems we all just fly through levels in games now. But at the end of it, I knew dozens if not hundreds of people. I have played MMOs with some of the same people after that "experience" for the past 10 years because of the time it took. And it was the days before VoIP was popularized. Nowadays I associate PuG with ungrouped Warzones where people are not playing using the tools available to their class, are not working towards the objectives of the match, and would rather bicker than work together. As frustrating (and boring) as tree groups could be in Albion, at least we knew what we were doing by that point and everyone could (for the most part) get along and have a good time.

In case nobody has pointed it out yet. Video game retailers are not in the business of breaking even. EB, Amazon, Best Buy, etc have to make profit. In other words, EA does not make $60 per game (at least not physical copies). Is MSRP 10% above wholesale? 40%? Who knows, but just keep that in mind. Also 50% retention for 1 year is actually not half bad in the current MMO market. I doubt that Bioware will be able to maintain that. There are so many big titles coming out this year. The first month was very rough on the player base. And there is the fact that plenty of people simply go back to WoW if a game does not live up players' (usually unreasonable) expectations. If the actual cost of the game was $300million (I am only talking about the game, not the cost of EA purchasing Bioware and/or Mythic), then chances are they will lose quite a bit of money on the product. I had heard actual estimates of production in the range of $80 million which is probable thanks to 2 million box sales. Unfortunately, that just gives big budget studios (EA and Activision) more reason to rush products out. If they can turn a profit on this game, then they will probably keep pushing deadlines rather than waiting for finished products (and by Activision, I don't mean Blizzard. I realize that they still seem to ahve the power to delay unfinished products). And don't forget that it is F2P (or at least uses a different payment method) in many Asian countries which leads to inactive accounts being counted in that 10-12 million figure. WoW has an insane population despite its age. But I doubt it is anywhere near 10 million active accounts worldwide.

1) The resolve bar not working. I hate when their bar is not full and yet they ignore my CC or when my bar is full and I get CC'd. I'm not much of a fan of the entire concept at all. But if they tweaked it, the resolve bar MAY BE bearable. 2) Ilum is capped at 100 people, not 50 per side but 100 people. If Imps get 70 and we have 30, we cannot get reinforcements. Our choice is to hope they push into our base and let our guys with pull pull them in for free kills... or fly back to the PvE area and zone into another instance. 3) RNG loot on PvP gear. Thank you for the 8 relics, Bioware. But could I have stopped at 2 relics? I'd rather have the extra 12 cent badges so I can give my companions a nice present. Or at least give me repeats on items that my companions can equip. Not that it matters since they (companions) are useless at 50. And I am going to cheat and add a 4th. 4) I usually love crafting in games. At release I got to 400 synthweaving and learned a handful of purple level 49 recipes. Because anything that is not Biochem is worthless in PvP, I was forced to drop it. Not only does that make the craft (and the money put into it) worthless, but it is making the mats that I had stockpiled worthless. You have effectively made all but 1 or 2 crafts completely useless which means that only a few gathering crafts are worth the time and money. In addition to nerfing the crafts that are performing too well, why not work on improving the others to be at least SOMEWHAT viable at 50?

The prerelease hype focused more around Empire. The classes may be mirrored but there are minor issues (differences) and the overwhelming majority favor Empire. Empire class quests and areas are generally considered to be better and more enjoyable. And many games have noticed a trend towards players preferring the "bad guys" lately. The developers should've looked at that trend and done things ahead of time to help. They also could've done things to make it harder to create characters if one side gets too much of a population advantage (split the server cap in half. So if the cap is 2000, you can only have 1000 reps and 1000 imps. That way if there are 3000 imps and 1000 reps logging in, reps would have little or no queue while imps would have a long one. Sucks but it would have encouraged people to reroll). Basically I agree that there is little they can do now. They can offer reps free levels, increased legacy xp (assuming it is worth it when it comes out), faster valor, increased chance for champ/bm gear but those still probably would not convince a geared 50 (let alone an entire guild) to reroll. The best bet is a free side switch and a small incentive to use it (maybe first xxx number of players gets a little extra valor or xp or 1 or 2 days added to their subscription). What they could do to help is simply improve the game so that people keep playing. In time, people may reroll naturally because they want to play alts. And do things to just make rep appear better. Work on the stories, the fleet station, small issues with our abilities and animations, etc. Make sure that the game will have some longevity so that working on population balance is worth the effort. And for future games (ones that do not have IPs that basically require 2 sides), stop using 2 sides. 3 realms is the best way to deal with population issues. Even if 1 side is more populated, chances are that it will not overpopulate the other 2. Look at the days of Hibgard on many DAoC servers. I realize that this was not an option here. But several games have come out lately that featured open world combat and only offered 2 sides.

Some other things that Mythic did well in that game: We all had OUR realms. It gave you a sense of ownership. It lead to a sense of pride and wanting to defend YOUR lands. Do we really care about those objectives on Ilum or did we really even care about the RvR lakes in WAR? Those were a shared area. Now if Imps were raiding Coruscant maybe things would be different. And the third realm was an automatic population balance. One side may get larger than the others, but rarely was 1 side larger than the 2 others combined. It is amazing how well PvP worked in a game released in 2001 and then seeing how far from it the same company has come in the past 10 or 11 years. I realize that they are trying to attract a different crowd. But I think that you can sell the concept of RvR to even the "WoW players".

People are 50 by the time they get there and/or do their class quest on there. They are focusing on getting PvP gear or doing their HM dungeons. There just isn't much reason to head to that planet.

I wish that (as a starting place) MVP votes were equivalent to 1 medal. Many people already vote for low medal earning healers. That would help a little. Next, they just need to start adding medals for things that help with the actual warzone. If you got a medal for healing a guy that scored in Huttball (for example), that would help. Last, they just need to equalize the number of healing and dps medals. There are no "lives saved" medals and that would be hard to figure out. So why not just give them more opportunities to earn medals? DPS gets medals at 75k, 300k, 2500 in hit and 5k in 1 hit in addition to killing blow, solo kill, 10 kills and 25 kills consistently. That is 8 medals. an equivalent healer will probably earn 4 (maybe 5 if they sneak in a killing blow). So maybe give them 3 or 4 more for healing. Maybe 75k, 150k, 250k, 350k. That adds 2 medals right there. Maybe another for 500k (hard but possible like the 5k damage hit for some classes) and then something else. That would add 4 medals, one being pretty hard to get. Or simply give them credit for kills (and kill medals) when they heal a guy that kills an enemy. On Ilum the solution seems to be that if you heal someone that took damage from players, you will get credit for killing players that they get credit for. That way you earn the same amount of valor as DPS'ers while healing. No having to "tag" enemy players. No earning "extra" valor by healing (look at how much that was abused in WAR). My guild needs another healer or two for L50 PvP. But with how hard it is to earn valor and commendations as a healer, I am forced to DPS until R60. At that point, all I need is my daily quests for my BM bag so I would gladly respec. How about instead, they just make it so healers are rewarded the same as everyone else?

We have too much utility despite our spec. Make some of our utility spells require speccing fairly deep into our trees. Move 20% improved shield to deep in the heal tree (since reduction in damage taken to yourself and party members fits that style more than the DPS style). Do not nerf op/scoundrel so hard. Revamp the tree for grav round spammers so that they can put up comparable numbers but are required to use more skills. The biggest thing we bring is tons of utility, the ability to be great hybrid healer/dps'ers, and consistent damage that never ends (you can spec TK throw so that you gain force while casting it and you rarely die because of your heals and utility). Revamping some of our utility spells and (effectively) nerfing force armor by 20% (at least for DPS spec sorc/sage) would deal with most of those issues. Suddenly we are dying more or needing to spec further into trees to get all of CC (or just not having access to all of it) so we cannot DPS as often. Our burst is already not too bad. With the 30% crit damage to FiB, I rarely crack 3k crits with that spell (if I use an adrenal and relic first) and that spell crits harder than any other spell I have If they follow through with the op nerf as it is, I basically expect to see a similar timeline as the the original poster. Basically, Bioware will just keep nerfing and then nerf the next guy and the next guy. Instead of getting stuck in that cycle, find ways to tone down things that are too strong (without making them worthless) and help classes that have weaknesses (sustained, out of stealth DPS of op/scoundrel for example). I'm sure there are plenty of good ideas for how to deal with some of the imbalances in game now. It may seem easier to just start chopping 20% here and there from abilities. But 6 months from now, they will still be doing it because some other class is standing out now that their primary threat has been nerfed.

The DPS is not that big of a deal. You are putting out numbers like that because you are playing against badly geared players and/or you are surviving longer because you are a hybrid. I do agree that we seem to be too good at being hybrids despite being specced deep in DPS trees. I am surprised that the increased force armor talents are in one of the dps tree rather than in the 3rd tier (or later) of the heal tree. I am surprised that the reduced cast time to my big heal (which can crit for 5k if I use some cooldowns and/or get an expertise buff in a WZ despite being DPS specced) is in T1 of the tree. It seems strange that we have so many snares baseline. We have so much utility, good survivability, and consistent damage. But if you want to see REAL damage look at some of the other classes. You put out those numbers because you rarely die because of your utility. But the burst is fairly low (TK throw crits for 800-1200 depending on the target if I have expertise buff, with ~640 expertise, a willpower stim, a surge adrenal, and either surge or power buff from my relic.... compared to grav round/tracer missle). I do think that our class is fine as is (other than needing to rearrange a couple of things like the 20% imrpoved force armor and maybe the cast speed on the big heal) for now. But as soon as they nerf ops, I am afraid that we will do even better on damage and heal charts and then we probably will need to be toned down. This is the problem with nerfing classes by so much (20% reduction while reducing the armor pen at the same time is pretty huge). They will constantly be nerfing the next strongest class instead of dealing with issues slowly (maybe say reduction in armor pen OR the damage of the first hit but at the same time increasing their sustained damage a little). I just have a feeling that after the patch with the op nerf, that sorc/sage and tracer missle/grav round will be next and then we will find a new ability or class that stands out and it will never end.

This is the problem with gear-based progression. In DAoC as you RvR'd more you would gain realm abilities that would make you more powerful. At level 50 and realm rank 1 you would wear the same gear as a realm rank 11 guy. That meant that we did not need a PvP stat to "balance" the PvPers and the raiders (not that people really played DAoC specifically to raid). Also the gear came from a combination of crafting, questing (the champ quest weapon at least), and PvE. They eventually implemented the ability to spend bounty points (which were earned in open field PvP) to earn PvE gear. You could unlock master levels and artifacts by PvPing. So people could earn the same gear in PvE or in PvP. Neither style had a real advantage (other than good luck earning BPs with bad gear unless you were fighting in zerg vs zerg fights). I realize that a realm rank 10/11+ group had a huge advantage over lower ranked groups with that system. But I also remember being able to compete when my group would reroll and all be rank 4-6 against high end groups. Good luck beating a guy in full BM gear if you just have level 48 greens and a couple of pieces of centurion armor in this game. Realm ability progression may not work in a game that is not geared towards RvR. But I am just throwing it out there to prove that games do not NEED to use gear-based progression to entice players into end game. And saying that in that system we do not need expertise, resilience, or whatever.

But but... 8 relics is not enough :/ I wish that I could at least give these to my companions.

Dark Age of Camelot was released over 10 years ago. Many of the people that brought that game to life and made RvR so enjoyable were not the same guys working on WAR or this game. A handful of the older Mythic crew is working on a 3 realm RvR sci fi MMO. I have not heard much about it but I'm hoping that maybe part of what was missing from WAR and SWToR (and any other games that have tried to implement RvR systems) is that the old Mythic guys just knew what they were doing and nobody else gets it. The other possibility is that DAoC RvR was a complete accident and that nobody will ever recreate the experience. I REALLY hope that is not the case. I'm enjoying SWToR (usually) but I do agree that it feels like EA had a hand in making it feel more like WoW and probably pushed for that holiday release even though 1 more month (aka fixing a lot of the issues with ability delay) of development may have made a huge difference in player retention.

After they fixed it, I loved the DAoC CC system. It was stupid at release but the increased resists (spellcrafting and better gear being made available), AoE dropoff on CC duration, cures, long immunity timers, purge, etc made it so that I was CC'd far less often than I have been in any game since. It rewarded good players and organized groups. If you were smart and only purged melee stuns and roots (unless you were a demezzer and had to purge mez to demezz your group) you were rarely CC'd for more than a couple of seconds and then often had a minute immunity timer. Again, that game's CC was a PITA at release. But it got to be very good eventually. I am always surprised when everyone copies WoW's lots of smaller CC's with little to no immunity than DAoC's counterable CC system with long immunity timers.

The best part of WoW is that it punishes developers that release games too early. The worst part of WoW is that players leave before developers have time to fix release issues. I really wish that MMO studios would do larger, longer beta tests to be sure that the game is ready for release. I appreciate the work and money that goes into these projects. I'm just always surprised that they are not willing to put in a few more million for larger scale testing and waiting another month or two to make sure that they can get some longevity.

Go for my dailies and weeklies. If I get a full group and it is not too zergy, then I try and go between WZ pops. Other than that, I'd rather run circles around the fleet station. The low framerates, getting zerged by BMs, and rarely getting kills unless we have a zerg (aka, we manage to get at least 40 people into the instance before it caps) is just not fun. I don't blame imps for going. Heck, getting 200 valor per kill at times is very nice. Especially since BM bags get rid of some of the annoying RNG (no getting repeating items).

On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being a good night of DAoC 8v8 and 1 being city raids in WAR (back when there were no BGs, defenders were locked out, and it was just a massive raid against mobs) I'd probably say it depends... With a group, I'd say WZs are about a 6 for me. They are fun but need work. The resolve bar gets buggy so often, there are disparities between mirrors, luck based gear means that some people will win or lose based purely on how lucky their group has been with the RNG, and tons of Imps got BM during the Ilum patch and have been opening BM bags all week. Still fun overall and about on par with WoW BGs and SLIGHTLY below WAR BGs for me. Ilum I'd say is about a 3. It is not quite as bad as the "end game" in WAR at release. But it reminds me of the old Emain mile gate fights in Dark Age of Camelot... only not as fun. Capping the population at 100 but not making it 50 per side leads to huge imbalances at times. We are not really fighting for any real control or objectives, just things to give us more valor. And it just isn't the same as the frontiers of DAoC. I'd rather play Alterac Valley than zerg surf on Ilum. It is just a necessary evil for dailies and valor. I guess I should stop holding out hope for an RvR system that compares to Dark Age but it just seems like something that was so popular would be something other developers would want to copy. Especially since what was left of Mythic was merged into Bioware. Maybe the old Mythic devs that are working on Dominus will pull it off. Or maybe Bioware will give us something that plays like frontiers at some point.

I pick 10 en. Dead players do no damage. That extra 100 HP may let you get off an extra cast or two per WZ.

Cross server does kill a sense of community. I agree with anyone that says that. But an empty server has no community anyway. Avoid cross server if you can. But it is better than nothing if you cannot.

This. If they make PvP gear as good as raid gear (without needing a PvP stat) then raiders will be angry that you can bring BM armor to raids. If they remove expertise and leave the stats as is, then raid gear will be better and PvPers will be angry that they have to raid to compete. PvP stats are there to let PvP fans play the game the way they want without interfering with raiders... at least in a game with gear driven progression. If a developer wanted to go with more of a Dark Age of Camelot style (you progress by earning abilities as you play the end game rather than by earning new gear), we probably would not need these PvP stats. But it seems like everyone wants to do gear based progression nowadays.

To be fair to people that quit, Bioware did release the game in that condition. If anything, EA should apologize for not allowing Bioware another month to fix that problem. Looking forward to seeing if my abilities actually fire when I want during large fights. 10-15 fps will still be annoying (despite low quality textures) but at least it is manageable.

There are issues between consulars and inqs but this is not one of them. Their damage is energy and is reduced by armor as well.

I think what he is really asking for is fewer steps, not instant. Those orbital stations with extra loading screens are only really there to: have quest NPCs have flashpoints Both of them could be done on the planet surface instead of on an orbital station. That would eliminate time and tedious steps without making it instant. We can quick travel to the fleet station on an 18 hour or cooldown (or spend 1k credits and make it a 1 hour cooldown). But we cannot quick travel to our ships which are docked at the orbital station? Why not? It seems like our ship should be a quick travel option. That may be borderline "instant" travel but all it is really doing is eliminating useless loading screens. Those 2 changes would probably be enough for me, really. I'd love a summon but do not think it is NEEDED. I just get tired of orbital stations and wish we could quick travel to our ship.

I always liked the frontiers in Dark Age. At release, leveling out there felt dangerous and exciting. Even years later, they encouraged people to be in the frontiers by offering increased xp, a dungeon that unlocked based on keep control, etc. And if you wanted nothing to do with it (not sure why you'd play that game otherwise, since the PvE was either grinding or zerging or both), you could always stay behind the safety of your border keeps. I'm not sure why PvP zones are not created like the frontiers of DAoC (not going to debate between new vs old frontiers... I'd take either at this point!). But I do agree that it seems like we need more reason to just happen to be in PvP areas. And that we need PvP areas to have more content (space to roam and explore, things to fight over, things to do, etc) in those areas.

Sorc damage is reduced by armor too. Thankfully, their damage is not elemental. That would be a problem if that was the case.