It's been said already, but just to reiterate: It's pretty simple: create a different carrot to play to win for than better gear, f.ex.: Prestige Alternate/cooler looking gear for higher rated players (several levels of this) Other vanity items and fun stuff .. and last but not least: make the game as fun as possible to play, so no carrot is needed in the first place. You know, like most FPS/RTS/other games where one player doesn't hold any gear advantage over another.

This has been answered perfectly by countless players by now. RWZ need larger player pools, ie. cross-server matches. It would also benefit from being playable by groups smaller than 8, to further enhance the player pool. In general, the difference bwteen rated and normals isn't that "rated is more serious", it's simply a matchmaking system that takes ELO into account, resulting in better matchups according to skill, resulting in closer matches and more fun for all. Better looking rated gear or epeen rating scores is simply a byproduct, not the goal. I believe Bioware knows this, but couldn't get it ready in time. If we never get there, then I am ready to *facepalm*.

This

I don't really understand those rankings, considering one of our PTs is top DPS literally 98%+ of the time in RWZ (100% in normal). They lose to Mara's 1v1, but simply put up better numbers overall every single time.

This. It's just people who prefer being the best geared. I'd shrug it off and get to 50, which, contrary to nonsensical whining about imbalances (see above) is where the real PvP begins.

This thread has been answered already. It is clear that the ranked pool isn't big enough. The strongest teams also get bored of facerolling weaker ones. We need cross-server RWZ. /thread

I don't know what to say, other than I find GW2's pvp .... bad, while SWTOR's simply rocks. The ice skating sensation is especially off-putting.

Actually, we bring 3. Sometimes we joke about bringing 8, but don't want to make ppl ragequit the game.

Huh wha? TD is standard for a PT Pyro 4/6/31 build.

I see a lot of whining, so I'd just like to contribute that our EU RP server has a fair number of decentranked teams, tho we wish we had more. Imo the planned things need doing: * Cross server ranked, to generate a large pool of players & teams, so ranking actually matters (affects pairings) * Solo ranked - altho solo players will get stomped when meeting a guild, hopefully gulid ratings will end up in the upper part of rankings, and solo ranked players will meet similar teams more often. In short, Ranked is great (a deeper, more challanging game), but the player pool needs to be larger for several reasons.

How, exactly, is one better off standing still?

I'm not sure what to say, other than I'm Valor 80 and have not experienced 1 or 2. Maybe being on a super computer and 50mb con helps *shrug* I'm not saying it's not happening to you :-/

This. Neeeeeeeed them! We're having massive difficulties getting enough games going on our server, let alone vs different decent teams.

So uhm.. when one finds a pistol one likes in the pic, how does one know what it's called and where to find it?

Apart from the fact that there really aren't that many top Ranked Guilds around on each server to play eachother, despite the recent server merges. It needs cross-server to become truly meaningful.

The whole point of PvP is to find out who is best/strongest. Having fun is a byproduct. Or, depending on your point of view, it's the opposite. Apart from that, you can't complain about Ranked PvPers optimizing their setup in order to win. If you don't want to play Ranked vs strong teams - then do not.

http://consumerist.com/2012/04/congratulations-ea-you-are-the-worst-company-in-america-for-2012.html probably didn't help the stock

The Ranked PvP thread link is incorrectly linking to Gunnery concerns, pls fix.

Healers are fine, but DPS r better =D

It's the old "Should there be gear disparity in PvP" debate. Imho GW2 is doing it right going without one. If the game isn't fun enough to play without a gear carrot, it isn't fun enough to play.

A month into release I was happy to report my guild had 35 members loving the game. It's now been two weeks since I saw any of them. I realise this post isn't helpful, I just want to add my 2 cents to the growing pile and say "Yes, this game is crashing and burning, and needs server merges 3 months ago." I also ended up regretting 6 month sub. Didn't see that coming at launch, at all.

1) Something needs to solve population problems: server size, tech or just plain being a better game so more ppl stay. Surely tech is advanced enough to do this! We already see cross-server LFGs in other games, and WoW's upcoming system for sharing low pop areas across servers in MoP will rock! Can you imagine what it would be like if all SWTOR planets were simply bustling with activity? They're certainly big enough, with enough content, to support 500+ players each. All we need is players and tech to put them there. 2) Ranked PvP. I have never been so dissapointed about a promised feature being cut. I realise it's no good having a broken feature added. But it should have been ready. 3) Qualities of life. MMOs are too old to suffer from old-school issues such as travel time. We want to log in, play and have fun. MMO worlds are no longer magical. They're just games. See GW2 for insta-travel. 4) Something new. There isn't any. I like all about SWTOR, but it's not new. 5) General PvP support: open-world PvP, need we say more? More WZs, more gamemodes, more variety. Huttball is awesome, big kudos for that. But let's see more!

Negative.

If you ask me, each planet has content and size enough to support many hundreds of players. They're really impressive, with tons of unique architecture and surroundings everywhere one looks. I used joke to my mates that more work was put into the trashcans in SWTOR than some of the re-used boss backdrops of another leading brand MMO. Only it wasn't a joke. Wouldn't it be cool if one could easily find groups for all the Heroic Areas in SWTOR, if the planets were bustling with activity. I sadly have to agree that major parts of SWTOR feel nothing like a Massively Multiplayer experience at all. It's such a shame tech doesn't support something like what that other MMO is now trying to solve: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2772-Cross-Realm-Zones-Coming-to-Beta

If my guild is anything to go by, the retention rate is, across the board, clearly below 10%. So, they need to sell about 5M copies to maintain 500k subs. People are playing less and less, and eventually the sub runs out. New influx of players combats this, but I doubt there are enough of those. Bioware needs to do everything right from now on to stay strong, including saving desolate servers and adding incentives to play (server merge/xfer, ranked pvp, cross server LFG).