I fully concur with the OP (and many others),
It was a very cool-headed and well thought out post, and I just want to add my voice to the chorus.
I am by no means a "1337 pwn u n00b" PvPer; however PvP is just about all I engage in since hitting 50, and I would at the very least consider myself very competent. I play in PUGs more often than not due to the time of day I am usually on. The Empire is rather dominant in PvP on our server, so I have gotten use to losing constantly, and getting ROFLstomped once in awhile too. Prior to 1.2 I would usually be somewhere in the 4-8 medal range on a loss, and 1-4 on a ROFLstomp, get my 70 commendations, save them up, and then spend them on PvP gear to make myself better, help close the gap, and aid my fellow PUGers.
I was somewhat disappointed with my first two WZs yesterday, as we lost. On one, with the 8 medal (thanks to some of the new objective medals) "max benefit" I received 42 commendations. Wow, that was quite the shock. I immediately considered how PvP gear is now ALL about the WZ comms, and how my win/loss % looks like, and realized that it is going to take considerably longer to gear myself up to be competitive. Ok, once ranked WZs hit and a majority of the fully geared people move over there, maybe this won't be QUITE as much of an issue.
I then won a match or two, and found my rewards to be about where they were, no complaints here. Then, to my dismay, I ran into one of the better premades with my full PUG, and they did mean things to us. For somewhere around 8-10 minutes, I managed to have no fun at all as anything we tried to do in order to get into the game period (civil war, we were triple capped) was met by brutal ruthless slaughter. I think maybe one person on our team met the medal threshold, so a lot of you know where this is going. Yes, not only did our side have no fun in the WZ, but our efforts were met with ZERO rewards. Isn't that a kick in the teeth while you're down?
I have already seen several posts about QQ'ing and what not, well doesn't it feel good to always PvP on a winning premade? As more than one person has pointed out, this is a GAME, and it exists for people to have fun. The THREE WZs I had yesterday with ZERO rewards, were a little bit less than fun. I am all for ruthless and competitive ranked WZs, but the non-ranked WZs should not be treated that way. They are another way (other than RP and Raiding) for level 50s (and non-50s for that matter) to enjoy the game and engage in a unique portion of content that is challenging in a different way by sending you up against a human opponent. They should be fun for all parties involved. They should never result in ZERO reward for losing players, especially those who try and are soundly beaten. If this means removing the zero reward threshold, and a few crafty beavers AFK a WZ and sneak past the new vote-kick mechanic: well I would personally take that over trying and getting ZERO reward.
Thank you for your time.
