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A simple fix to this would be that the WZ doors don't open if the odds aren't even and the timer adds another minute to give more invites. Would you really be that mad if the timer added another minute on when it was counting down to get an even match? This has happened to me before, and it is maddening. It is one thing if someone leaves mid-match, but when you start a match out 8 v 4, that is just poor sportsmanship.

To pretend that you don't get a positive mental reaction from catching someone else's mistakes grammatically is to deny the basic human instinct of increasing ones self esteem through the comparison to those you view as inferior.

I love when people do this. "I am not 'X', but I am going to make a point supporting 'X'." If I was you, I would go back and review how many grammatical errors you made in your post touting how you have great grammar skills (hint, forgetting commas is a grammatical error as well as a run on sentence). Everyone has different talents and a different capacity for communication skills. I am not upset that there are those out there who have issues with spelling. It makes me feel better about myself as a person and my intelligence when I read a post that is riddled with spelling errors.

There are two types of scenarios for tanks in PvP. Tank + healer = win. Tank - healer = death. The combination of tank and healer can be the best way to even the odds against a pre-made that has better gear (provided they aren't super organized). They don't even the odds by the tank killing more people, they even the odds by occupying multiple enemies so that the ranged DPS players can free cast.

It is almost impossible to get two groups of 4 to get in the same WZ. We have pretty good luck with getting 5 in by having a group of 4 queue and then the 1 queue solo a few seconds after. I am yet to find the magic combination that loads up a WZ with guildies - two groups of 3, 4 and 2, 4 and 3, etc - they all seem to have the same low percentage of grouping.

Warriors of the Shadows - US West coast server. I find we win more than 50% of our matches (depending on who the Pugs are grouped with our pre-mades). We have an active PvP guild that is always looking for more PvP'ers, http://www.trggaming.net/forums/. We currently run a full group every night, and usually closer to 2 full groups with everyone on vent.

Only trend I have noticed is that if you join a WZ late, you might not show up on the ops screen. Make sure that everyone in your group is literally sitting around waiting for the queue to pop so that they enter immediately. Other than that, your healer should just let the people who aren't on their ops bar know that is the case. It would then be that player's responsibility to run to the healer when they need heals so that the healer can see them.

Surviveability > DPS. I always have people asking me how I have 19.5k hit points as a Shadow as if it is a mystery. It is simple, stack endurance on everything. I may not do as much damage, but I am always the one taking the most damage on the team (consistently I take 200k+ damage in a WZ). I would rather have myself occupying 3 enemies for an extended period of time who are attempting to kill me just because I just won't die, freeing up my teammates to accomplish the objectives. Trust me, the casters and ranged DPS love it when a melee tank is the focused target and they can stand back at pew pew at will. People underestimate the human psyche and the desire to kill someone who is just tough to kill. If you are 3 hitting someone, yeah you get a kill but aren't necessarily remembering it as much as that player you had to pop every trinket and cool down possible on just to take out. Most people like a challenge, and it is bragging rights to tell your teammates that you just solo killed the guy who 3 of them couldn't take down.

Dumbest post ever (ok, maybe not, but the idea is lame). There is always enough time for communication prior to a match. I am in a guild that has a lot of PvP'ers. We almost always are rolling at least one full pre-made group, and it is a blast. When we get in a WZ, most of the time it is only one of the pre-made groups. Only one time did we get a group of 4 and 3 into the same WZ while I was playing, and most of the times our two groups end up in different WZ's. I find that the time before you actually begin the WZ is the time that makes or breaks the WZ success. Stop just dancing and clapping while waiting for the doors to open and communicate with your teammates. Here are some suggestions to make your Pug more effective. Ask who is a healer before the match. The Ops leader can put marks on friendly and enemy players, so use it. Put a shield over your team's healers so everyone knows who to protect. When you find an enemy healer, put a target over them. You will be surprised how everyone will attack the person who is targeted. Coordinate PRIOR to starting the WZ, and you will need less communication in a WZ. Every WZ I bark orders (yes it might piss some people off, but when people listen we tend to win more than lose). I am always typing things like "we are going left with 4, don't follow us." In the end, if you like PvP'ing and are tired of losing because you are in a Pug - join a guild that PvP's with groups. The OP is basically saying "I am a selfish player who doesn't want to work with anyone else and am tired of losing because there are other people who have figured out that the way to win is through teamwork." IMHO.

The reasons to move and strafe have been pointed out over and over again, so I won't reiterate the points already made. As far as never back peddling, I think that is limiting yourself. Sometimes back peddling is the most effective way to group your enemies together to land your AoE attack on more players. How, simple: you are attacking enemy A, while enemy B is charging you from the back and enemy C is charging you from the right side. Instead of running around in circles, you simply back up a little so that all three are now bunched together, fire off your AoE at enemy A (who you had targeted the whole time and in front of you the whole time) and hit all 3 instead of running in a circle, firing it off and possibly missing one of them. Yes, back peddling isn't a vital thing to use in a fight, but I love using it with my force speed to just back out of a fight while still keeping everyone in front of me. Unbinding it may work for some, but I find that I use it enough to keep it mapped. I have un-mapped my strafe keys as you can strafe by holding the right mouse button rather easily, and having 'q' & 'e' opened for more skills allows me for quicker casting and response.

Would a one day roll back of valor really be that bad? Yes I would be pissed that I was no longer valor 54 and had to work my way back up, but that first day on Ilum was the worst thing I have ever seen in a MMO. Whoever decided that giving equal open world PvP benefits to both factions when one faction has a 3/1 advantage at best, and more often 4-5/1 advantage was just not thinking clearly. I earned 1.5 ranks of valor from 51.5 to 53 in less than an hour as a Republic player participating in the zerg lagfest. All you had to do was join an ops group, stand close enough to the action and sit AFK to watch the valor roll in (I was actively killing and being killed, but saw plenty of people just milking it). That first day it was 155 Empire vs 35 Republic, and I was lucky enough to not be on when a server that was being spawn camped. In the end, if you have the title Battlemaster, but don't have the gear to back it up, you are just as easy to kill as someone with the title Skirmisher with the same gear.

I am a shadow tank, and have been since day one. I find no problem with the 'Guard' mitigation of damage at all. I am typically the last person to die, and when I pop a stim I have 19.5k health. As a tank in PvP, you MUST have a healer that you are working directly with. When I am paired up with a good healer, it is almost impossible for me to die without 3+ enemies focus firing me or the healer. If you are having problems with tanking, you probably need to change your play style a little. On the other hand, if I don't have a healer I die quicker than a naked ewok when focus fired by 2+.

Roll an Empire character. I play Republic on 'Warriors of the Shadows', and rarely see a queue last longer than 5 minutes, with most being within 1-2 minutes. Level- 50 Faction- Republic Average Que time today- 2-3 minutes Total # of Warzones played since 1.1- too many to count - 30+ Last time you played opposing faction- every single match. only 1 out of 100 are Repub vs Repub

I would assume that there is a keylog recorded when you manually select "leave warzone" that could tie to the valor loss / debuff punishment to avoid punish those who lose power or CTD through no fault of their own. As it currently stands, you almost have an incentive to quit a game that you don't think you will win, especially if you are a Republic player who gets almost instant queues.

I agree 100%. I thought a minor hit to valor, like 200, would be fine but wouldn't have a problem with 500-1000 valor loss. It should be easy enough to tie it only to you selecting "leave warzone" while in an active WZ to avoid punish those who CTD. If a quitter wants to exploit the system by hitting alt+F4 and rebooting their game to avoid losing valor, so be it. It takes a couple of minutes to reload the game anyways, so you would be punished either way.

First off, I want to state that the variety of the warzones is what makes queing all night long fun. A little variety and change of strategy game by game is great (unless you get stuck playing Huttball over and over, then it becomes boring). Huttball - 6 - It is slowly growing on me, but I feel that the design of the map spreads people out too much. The biggest downfall of this is that the classes with knockbacks, pulls and pushes have a very large advantage over the straight DPS ones. An original concept, and fun enough to keep around. Alderaan - 8 - This is my favorite WZ, as it involves a lot of team play and doesn't always reward straight zerging. While some complain about how boring holding a point is, I like the spread out map and quick speeders on the side make it very difficult for the enemies to cap that point. Voidstar - 7 - This is just a pure unadulterated kill fest. Yes it can get zergy at times, and involves less strategy than the others, but the battles you have in this WZ can be epic at times. The doors are far enough apart to make it impossible to have eyes on both at the same time as a defender, so some teamwork is needed (even if it is less than the other two). Overall I think that they did a great job with the WZ's. If I was to critique making them better, I would simply change the Voidstar load in on a speeder (I don't think anyone would complain if you just appeared in the spawn room like the other two). The other changes I would do to Voidstar would be to eliminate the second cut scene (it is a duplicate, and unnecessary), and to lengthen the time that the door stays open on the initial open (nothing more annoying than losing the first doors just because a few guys weren't paying attention and missed that 5 second window to leave the spawn room).

One issue I am getting annoyed with is the large amount of quitters in warzones. I notice it most in the Alderaan Civil War, probably because a few minutes into that you know the end result (either one side is dominating, or it is a good fight). There is nothing that chaps my hide more than someone who is spamming orders on the Ops channel only to drop group the second that the enemy caps two turrets to our one. It tends to happen less in Voidstar, simply because there are two rounds. Huttball has the same problem, but since the game ends when you score 6 goals, it is far less common if you are getting romped on simply because of how quick the game finishes. Here is my suggestion: if you leave a warzone, you are docked valor points (nothing crazy, just like minus 100-200 valor). Just a big enough amount to dissuade you from doing it, but not too much so that if you are just getting face planted every time you leave the spawn room and can't take it any more, you can leave and try another zone with a minor penalty. I know that the biggest issue would be those who crash to no fault of their own, and I wouldn't want to punish someone just because they were bugged out or their computer crashed. Not being a computer programmer, I am not sure if there is a way to differentiate from someone who voluntarily quits versus someone kicked (I would assume there is since you select 'leave warzone' to quit'). The other possible solution would be to put you on a timer for entering a warzone if you voluntarily quit (once again, not outlandish, just 5 minutes would be enough to make someone actually think about it). If you knew that by quitting this warzone you wouldn't be able to queue for 5 minutes, you might stick it out and take the loss like a man/woman. Just my opinion. I was wondering what everyone else thinks about this problem?

I am guessing that anyone who thinks the Ilum fix was awesome is an Empire player. 155 vs 35 is not fun, fair, or balanced when the benefits consistently go to the overpopulated side. I am not a troller who is going to whine and say he is now quitting, as I still really enjoy this game. I play Republic and love only having to wait 5 minutes max for a queue in a warzone. Ilum went from being too easy to get champion bags for BOTH factions due to cooperation, to being easier for one side to earn bags and now valor based solely on population imbalance. I will still go to Ilum with my guildies from time to time, but as a Republic player, they just decided to ram the pop imbalances down our throats. I do think that they made the right decision adding valor to kills and removing companions, but they fixed one problem by creating another. How hard would it be to give valor based on server populations? Step aside for a second and think about this: you get the same reward for killing someone when you have a 5 vs :o1 advantage as the person who kills someone fighting 1 vs 5. Is the accomplishment of killing someone in those two scenarios equal?

Let me get this straight: you are complaining that you can't stack absorbtion on a toon that wears heavy armor and is a ranged fighter that is already tougher to kill than any other class in the game (as far as amount of damage they can take, not skills)? Seriously.

I agree with getting rid of speeders on the fleet. It isn't that big, and it is annoying as hell when there is that one douchebaaag that has the full sized Corellia speeder covering up all of the PvP boards and vendors. I should not have to scroll my view to be looking directly down on my toon to be able to click on a NPC vendor just because someone out there is compensating for a small *****. You aren't that special, as you are just a jerk.

All I hear is a bunch of whining. If you want easy mode, select Empire. If you want hard mode, select Republic. Everyone who is saying that all Imp stories are better are just simply asserting their opinion. I think that there is plenty of good story on both sides, and if you don't like the story, start making some different decisions on the wheel. My level 50 Shadow has done some pretty evil ******* to get dark side ppints, and the decisions you make affect the storyline (even if it is only minor). As far as the WZ win/loss, I think that bracketing the 50's will make a big difference. I notice that every time that I get my butt kicked in a WZ it is because of leveling issues (we have 3+ under level 30 when they don't). I rolled Republic, because that is what my guild did. I am fine with the Republic for now, but I reserve the right to change my mind when they change the Ilum daily quests from destroy random objects to open world PvP. I like a challenge, and the underdog is who I always root for. In the end, it is all what you make of it. This is a game, and the point is to have fun. If you are not having fun on your faction, that is not Bioware's fault - you are the master of your own destiny.