It's also surprising that it is so difficult to even report cheaters. Why can't we have an in game solution just as with spam? The current option to gather evidence and email it to some semi secret address, what's up with that? Makes it seem like Bioware don't really want to hear about it. I think probably the best is to capture it in action, and spread it on youtube etc, that should eventually shame them enough to actually do something.

It might be the same. I was thinking about transferring from The Progenitor, because there you can barely scrape together a team of 8 random reps for a full warzone nowdays, and even if we do the imp side is littered with premades. Rep side win maybe 20% of the matches, and that's an optimistic number! And don't even think about playing warzones before 16 or so in the afternoon, you won't get a pop. Maybe you can get one just before quest reset time because some try to finish last day's daily, but that's about it. Is it as bad here?

This summer, about 30-ish people on Republic Fleet at prime time... Often need to push a button now and then in order not to get logged off for afk while waiting for warzone to pop. Sometimes slightly better, but hardly ever more than 1 warzone active at a time. If things don't pick up soon I guess I'll have to transfer just to be able to play

I don't know if for SWTOR it is a technically feasible solution, but an alternative to server mergers could be to "pool" some or all queues to instanced multiplayer content such as Warzones. This would eliminate queue waiting and the larger pool of people playing should also make things more interesting, meanwhile the "open world" server community wouldn't be affected. Perhaps also GTN would need to be merged, but I don't use it that much personally so I can't say.

I have to say I think there is way too much negativity in this thread. I do agree that adding new tiers too often is a very crappy thing to pvpers and/or people with several alts, because just as you start to catch up, the goal is moved. I do agree that bolster level is tricky to get right, but it can't be too high because you get all these unintended effects and a lot of min/maxing math games (because lower level items sometimes have a preferable mix of stats and after bolster could be better than high level items). IMO for most of us the old system with pvp specific gear was better, but it is what it is now. Does it wreck new players? I really don't think it's all that bad. Yes you are going to be quite squishy for a while, but as long as the goal isn't moved too soon, it's just a matter of time before things get noticably better. You just have to bite the bullet and be aware of your weakness and use whatever strengths you have that aren't so gear dependent in supporting the team. Certainly, there are other games with much, much larger issues with pvp bolstering and gear gap!

Ok I got back into Swtor lke a month ago, been coming back on and off for years. I disagree with super high bolster, mostly for the reason someone else mentioned that it is a big problem with min/maxing lesser gear for best result, but also because games like gw2 isn't really fun. Gear progression is part of the fun, as long as the gap isn't too large. Pvp/warzonxes has it's balance problems, but it's not too bad, certainly less than in the mmo I most recently got fed up with! My best advice, make small changes. Big changes may totally wreck the game. Removing pvp specific gear was close, but I find that compared to this other game, swtor isn't too bad!

I want to add my voice to the list as well. Not only is healing out of control (or so it seems), but I strongly question the wisdom in not doing subtle changes but instead pretty much turning everything upside down so that overall balance is very strange. And why the bolster they way it is? Wouldnt it have been much more straightforward to simply adjust the benefits of expertise? I guess I should reserve my judgement until I have a full partisan set or so, but coming from WH/EWH stuff to this is terrible. It is MUCH tougher than it ever was before 2.0 in recruit gear.