This suggestion is a touch naive. Except for two servers, the others don't and will likely never have the thriving pvp community necessary for your matchmaking solution to work regularly as the pool being drawn from just isn't large enough. Cross server is the only way that could ever work, and BW has repeatedly inferred that their cruddy, cobbled engine can't support it. So in the end, by suggesting "matchmaking for even teams first, hopeless premade v pug mismatch if that fails," what you're really suggesting is a retention of the status quo on most servers because the latter will occur more often than the former. If solo puggers had their own dedicated queue, the casuals that dominate the populations of MMO pvp would have a safe place to play where they can just catass around and have mindless fun (which is the direction gaming is going in the modern world anyway). Instead this vast majority of players get alienated and leave, and we (the hardcore pvpers) lose the money they would have brought to the game. Queue times dry up, everyone loses. The only ones losing if they separate the queues are premades, who are a very small minority in mmo pvp. I'm comfortable with that. So are industry leaders like Blizzard, who realize that alienating the bulk of your pvp base to satisfy the desires of the few hurts your bottom line. What's the solution? Not really sure there is one that will work. I'm all for solo-only queue toggle, because it would minimize the problem. Even if premades try to 'beat the system' by queuing up at the same time, they'll still end up divided between teams in same-faction matches so that's already an improvement. But the potential for cheating the system remains. The only real lasting solution is cross server matchmaking, which is really what everyone should be clamoring for from the mountaintops. BW says they don't care to do it or simply can't handle it, but that's really where the answer is.

As others have said... this is lackluster if it's meant to appeal to pvpers in general (who are fairly split on whether we even wanted arenas in this game). Arenas were a much-regretted disaster in WoW in terms of class balance, and given some of the glaring discrepancies in this game in that respect (why bring a merc over a sniper, for example) and BW's track record for balancing / bugs / exploit issues, this is likely to be a massive train wreck. Imagine stealth teams, sniper teams, healer teams with a tank... it will be about the gimmick of the month, not a fun test of small scale player skill. Blizzard touted their arenas with that same tagline, but everyone here knows what it turned into: a compfest. You knew right out of the gate if you were going to lose in 9/10 matches based on what comp you were fighting. This will be just like that, arguably worse given the state of tank/healer synergy in TOR right now and some glaring class balance issues (for example snipers being hands down the best ranged dps in all situations with the best survivability and defenses also). For people who were hoping for some fresh 8v8 maps, world pvp incentive, etc, this is a huge let down. I'm all for trying something new, but would it have killed them to add pvp content for everyone in their "pvp update?"

For me the announcement is more of a buzzkill simply because the teased, overhyped pvp update sounds like it's only going to be the 4x4 arenas, which (contrary to what a lot of folks are throwing around on here) is not a universally desired pvp addition. In point of fact, the pvp community in TOR is split heavily on that. Such an addition will do zippo to increase my pvp content, as I won't likely be partaking in it. So in that sense, it's very much a PvE patch. A true PvP update would have had something for everyone, not a new PvP minigame which many PvPers were begging and praying for BW not to introduce into this game for a lot of valid and well documented reasons (class balance issues becoming even more of a headache in PvP, comp vs skill, Blizzard's public statements about how arenas were the worst idea they ever had and they never could get it right, etc)

In your post prior to this one you went out of your way to state you are the kind of "buttface" who entertains himself by ruining the fun of another human being attempting to play a game. Then you take offense that people generally believe that PvP servers cater to a less mature class of human being? Aggression is fine and can be a useful tool in life. Aggression against those who can't possibly defend themselves (in a game or RL) is something else. That's called bullying. Gankers who claim to gank to "attract real pvp" are usually full of it because the facts don't support it. There are much easier ways to find a level-appropriate fight if that's what you were really after. If you sincerely wanted competitive open world pvp you'd be attacking same-level players in daily areas who might be able to put up an actual fight rather than ganking some poor slob in a lonely corner of a leveling map. And nine times out of ten, if that poor slob was lucky enough to find appropriate reinforcements on that map, the player ganking him would run when they got there.

I would also quickly add that, like you, I can deal with losing to premades---as long as it's not all the time, and as long as they don't completely inhibit gameplay from happening. Getting squashed once in awhile builds character. Getting squashed several matches in a row to the point that your team can't even score a kill is simply not fun, and drives people to stop queueing or quit pvp altogether. That's what happened on my server before FTP hit, and it drained all the life out of the pvp scene there. I don't want to see that happen again, and by most accounts it already is.

From your perspective, I can completely understand that. Some of us enjoy a challenge more than others, and I agree that only through challenge do we improve. That's part of the same reason my wife and I never enjoyed joining premades, because it's very easy to get lazy and lose your edge. However, just because you don't mind playing against premades (especially in cases where a good premade is dominating a given queue/bracket for hours at a time) doesn't mean others don't mind. They have the right to choose how they want to play, the same as you. Not everyone PvPs to be the best they can, or aims to be one of the best on their server. Some just want to run around and blast **** and swing lightsabers and if they win, awesome. If they don't, that's cool too. And they have a right to ask for that kind of playing field. Having an option to only queue against other solo players would not hurt or change your gameplay. You could still happily solo queue against premades in the current system to your heart's content. All people are asking for is the option to PvP the way they want to---against people who've chosen the same option. I've already said further up this change really wouldn't help me; I play with my wife, so we'd be in the same queue with the premades regardless. But that's fair. Don't we all want the pvp community in this game to be healthy and thriving? Forcing people to treat PvP as a job or to demand that they play at the highest possible level or **** only hurts everyone. More players = bigger development budget, more content, faster queues, more varied competition. You can't demand people play the game the same way you do, any more than they can demand it of you. You may be willing to butt your head up against pugstomp premades to figure out ways to beat them, in those rare cases where a good pug team capable of it falls together, but most don't want to----it's frustrating, unnecessarily difficult, and simply not what most of these players came to TOR looking for. If they don't get what they're looking for, they'll leave. That hurts us all.

If you aren't here arguing in support of pugs being forced to face premades, then why ARE you here? Also, why so much hostility? Honest question, I'm not looking for passive aggressiveness.

Making sweeping generalizations about a player/person you've never encountered on the battlefield weakens every argument you make. You know nothing about me, other than that I don't enjoy premades playing against pugs, whether I'm on the premade or the pug. You don't know my level of ability, my level of sportsmanship, how often I win or lose, or how much I contribute. Debate based on the facts in evidence. Assume that everyone who disagrees with you must just be a bad player and you prove that you're both closed minded about the subject and taking it far too personally. I could make grand assumptions that you only enjoy premades because you're a cackling bully who needs to be carried by an unfair advantage to win matches, and that you only make premades because you enjoy farming pugs with a stacked deck. I do NOT, however, make that assumption. I know nothing about you, beyond that you enjoy premades and that you seem very hostile toward anyone who disagrees with your viewpoint. Debate calmly, intelligently, and look through the lens of both viewpoints. You'll win a lot more respect and you may even learn something about the human race in the process. When I pug, I win far, far more often than I lose. I consider myself a good player, but I'm not elite. I don't blame the game for being broken, others for cheating, or come in last place on medals and blame my teammates for my poor performance. But one good player---even one excellent player---on a team of 7 average to below average puggers who are not coordinating will not overcome a team that has 4 good players grouped up and only 4 who are average to below average. Yes, luck in grouping will always be a factor. But simple math tells us that the odds of balanced teams goes way up when ALL of the good players are being distributed at random among the average to below average players rather than concentrated on one team.

At this point, with apologies, I'm going to write you off as a late night troll having some fun at my expense. This argument is so... wrong headed in so many respects, even premade players don't try to use it without a wink and a smirk these days. Intelligently grouping with players of higher skill, a decent balance of classes (almost always including a healer) and any level of coordination will intrinsically yield an advantage over allowing yourself to be grouped completely at random with people you know nothing about. You also directly countered your own argument in your previous posts by stating that you need a premade to beat a premade, but are now saying it's just 8v8 with no difference. So, well played.

Did you... read what I posted, at all? If so, please do so again. You clearly missed the point entirely. I don't subscribe to "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." I've done premades before; I don't enjoy them. My desire is for a fun, reasonably balanced match, not to pugstomp a bunch of uncoordinated puggers who never had a chance. Losing has never been the complaint. A losing match can be a lot of fun, when it's at least a fair fight.

Most here, including myself, have stated over and over that we don't form premades for many reasons, among them: 1.) We don't enjoy curbstomping uncoordinated pug teams any more than we enjoy being stomped. Unbalanced matches are not fun. If there were a queue where casual premades could face other casual premades, I'd do what you suggest in a heartbeat. Most premades wouldn't. 2.) Many solo puggers are casual pvpers and simply don't have the time to devote into making a decent team, pulling everyone into voice chat, practicing with them, etc. 3.) Many do not enjoy the culture and attitude that invariably pervades premade teams after a few matches. Bad sportsmanship, griefing, etc 4.) PvP =/= premades. No solo pugger should be forced to play against organized teams if he doesn't want to, any more than a casual premade should be forced into the ranked queue against their will.

I'll bite. Back before ftp on Ebon Hawk, my wife and I were considered among the best pvpers on the server. When we unsubbed around the time that queues started popping three or four times a day, some in our faction practically begged us to stick it out. We were frequently offered teams (my wife is an excellent healer) and even tried out a couple of the big pvp guilds at that time. We rarely if ever joined premades, and we invariably left the pvp guilds after a short while. Why? Empathy, desire for true sport, and human decency. My wife and I hated rolling in premades because we always roflstomped the competition and that leads to boring, boring matches. We don't enjoy curbstomping randoms into the dust. For others who ran premades, that was the juice. They loved laughing about it in ops chat, they loved spawn camping, they loved blaming the 8 randoms who just got crushed for their own defeat. We absolutely despise that culture and want nothing to do with it. There are other human beings behind those characters getting stomped match after match and gradually realizing that their chosen hobby is not going to be fun at all tonight... in fact, it's making their day worse. I don't want to be the culprit for that, even if they're complete strangers. Call me a carebear. We're all human beings behind the monitor. On top of that, we simply find pvp without competition to be dull. If I go to a gym down the street to spar, I'm not going to ask a 12 year old to climb into the ring with me. I'd want a dude my size and relative ability. The rest of your questions are sort of... off topic. People aren't saying that premades shouldn't be allowed to play; they should. It is an MMO after all. Most of us here just simply don't see any compelling reasons that a) pugs should be forced to play against you instead of having their own more casual queue, and b) why premades are so up in arms about the idea of allowing that option. I've still yet to read any sort of argument from a pro-premader that explains how their fun is going to be negatively impacted by allowing more casual, balance-seeking solo players to opt out of facing premades. If your fun is derived from a desire for competition, why do you feel you NEED to be able to face pugs to have fun? And yes, I do agree that none of this will ever change until BW sorts out cross server queues because there simply isn't a big enough pvp population right now. But the check-box for solo only would go a long way toward making that community bigger (modern MMOs are targeted far more toward solo, casual players than the huge guilds/groups of old), and isn't that what everyone here wants in the end?

I should also note that, for me, a solo-only queue would be bittersweet. I probably wouldn't be able to use it that often, as I usually team with my wife when we pvp. But I recognize that tons of solo pvpers want solo-only, and that solo-only queueing would be tons easier to implement than a system that allows solo AND teams of 2. Unlike most of the premaders arguing in other threads, I'm okay with that sacrifice as the majority of casual pvpers would be happier for it.

I completely agree. I much prefer the middle bracket where (as long as everyone wears nothing but pve gear with 0 expertise) the system puts people more or less on an even footing. I want to win because I outplayed my opponent, individually or as a team, not because I have a shotgun and my opponent has boxing gloves. My point wasn't related to gear, however. If soloers / small teams (2 people) only play other soloers and small teams, the ODDS of stumbling onto a more balanced match are much, much higher than when the above has a fair chance of being matched against large, coordinated teams. To this day, no pro-pugstomper or pro-premader has been able to explain why they feel we should be forced to play against them and how having our own queue will somehow negatively impact their play experience. Thus, the only conclusion one can come to is that they simply do not WANT to play against other premades, and their enjoyment is derived from a system that provides fun to half the players in a match at the expense of the other half.

Signed. Balanced matches mean everyone is having fun, win or lose. That should be the goal of a game played for relaxation and enjoyment.

One would like to assume for the sake of humanity's soul that everyone's ideal goal in PvP would be the following: Win or lose, both teams are competitive and all players are enjoying themselves. All players on the field are (within reason) equally entertained by their chosen pastime. No one on either side of this argument can possibly state that the above is achieved when 4 man premades spend hours pugstomping more casual players or those, like myself, who simply don't enjoy the mentality so prevalent in a premade team or pvp guild. Players like myself don't mind losing. I've had more fun in losing matches than winning ones, very often. What's never fun is being ground into dust with no hope of a fair fight, or even scoring a kill. Skill is irrelevant. It's not the issue and it never has been. You can find awful players or excellent players on a PUG team or in a hardcore PVP guild. The relevant question is something Blizzard understands, and players like Sharee and others who've posted here understand: Isn't it a more desirable and healthy goal for everyone on the field to have fun, than for half of the players on the field to have fun at the expense of the other half? If you think you're entitled to enjoy yourself at someone else's expense, take a long look in a mirror and ask yourself why you feel that way. Remember that we're all human beings and we're all trying to enjoy the same game here, folks, regardless of how we choose to enjoy it. A healthy PvP community benefits everyone.

Very unfortunate change to SSM for those of us who run mostly Vengeance but use Soresu form to guard a pocket healer. Immortal was never really a great spec for PvP as you sacrificed way too much damage without gaining an awful lot in survivability (most of that comes from tanking pvp gear, if that's your thing). I've always run a mostly Vengeance spec for single target damage and some nice survival / cc-immunity skills (I find Rage way too gimmicky and unreliable, not to mention boring). That said, I always ran my spec in Soresu for increased defense and to guard my wife's healer. The combination was very effective for peeling, protection and single target kills when there weren't any dpsers around to do the job. Now... not so much. With the totally unneeded change to SSM, my workable damage is going to become much less workable, especially with the relic changes. WTH did they feel we need increased threat generation in PvP (or hell, even PvE) in place of damage, which was already struggling a bit even for the dps specs? Was anyone complaining about Jugg damage in Soresu form and I missed it? Hell, was anyone complaining about Jugg damage at all? Do they want tanks/guards to be used in pvp or not? I just don't get it. An immortal jugg running Soresu form in current pvp is little more than a nuisance/tauntbot in anything but Huttball. We need some kind of damage to keep persistent dpsers off our healers----not to mention allowing us to defend ourselves. Sheesh, first merc and now this. I'm not exactly regretting the imminent loss of my sub.

Your agenda is showing.

Hey man, I was right there with you up until a few weeks ago. Rallying behind a struggling MMO is admirable when the makers of that game put their blood, sweat and tears into it, listen to their community, and really believe in their product. I've done that. I've fought for games that croaked and probably didn't deserve to, or could have turned into something great given time/funds/audience. TOR isn't one of those games. EA is a money making monster and TOR is a meaningless speck to them. They've made that clear. BW Austin (remember, this is not the BW you loved who made DA and ME) has also made it clear they aren't listening to us, they don't play their own game, they aren't Star Wars fans, and they have no idea what's even going on with their product. Rallying behind that? I just can't get there. This game has one-ish truly healthy server, which is already demonstrating the first signs of decline. It will be the last stand for this game like Starsider was for SWG, and to those who really enjoy grinding the same 4 WZs or limited Ops over and over, I genuinely wish you continued fun for as long as LA lets them keep the IP. But all of the signs point to maintenance mode, and EA is not known for throwing money at an underperforming product.

In all fairness bud, you're setting yourself up for another disappointment. That game will be a bigger trainwreck than this one was. It's using a similar engine, all indications are that it's just another WoW clone trying to cash in on a popular IP, and it's not even being made by the folks who brought us the other ES games. It's entirely under development by Zenimax, the parent company, and Bethesday have gone so far as to state they basically have nothing to do with it.

Funny how some people can stand on the edge of a nuclear blast and tell everyone it's just really bright out. Wake up and smell the roses folks. Warhammer, part 2. I'm no happier about it than you are, but it's time to move on.

It has nothing to do with "I won't play because it isn't popular!" ... okay, maybe for some folks it does. For those of us with free will, it's about development budget. An MMO on life support (the low pops you cited as being acceptable) has absurdly slow bug fixes (yes, even worse than now) if they come at all, incredibly long content development cycles (if content is developed at all; often it is not) and the quality of that content is often slapdash, ie retread dungeons/enemies/maps or a lot of meaningless art fluff. Games in maintenance mode are rarely fun to play for very long. If you think the same 4 WZs we have now are getting stale, wait until you know to a cosmic certainty you'll never get another new one.

I feel bad for all of the optimists in here who still think this game is going to magically turn around. I really liked this game.... I really would love to play a finished version of it, some day. But you simply cannot trust anything BW or EA tells you at this point. Every scrap of info comes with "Soon ". The mouthpieces giving interviews use underhanded PR tactics like screenshots of a server selection page with nothing but Heavy servers showing, while over a hundred servers languish at Light. Deceiving their own shareholders by using free months to greatly pad their real active subscription numbers. Frequently stating that subs have not declined, or that the game is meeting expectations. Awesome features like rated warzones and tons of new crafting schematics are touted in trailers and promised by devs, then yanked in the 11th hour (rated WZs) or pulled with NO explanation whatsoever (1.2 armormech and synth crafting schems--NOT augments, but the new armor models promised). This game is in a perilous slide folks. Just because one server has a huge pop (Fatman) does not mean the game is healthy or that tested, quality content will continue being released for the soon to be 200k people playing. This is exactly what happened in the end with SWG and Starsider, with Warhammer and Dark Crag... it is not a good sign. Add to that the fact that EA is notorious for corporate suits deciding what we gamers want (wrongly), then rushing out games too early to get big holiday revenue, and promptly shunting them into maintenance mode when they inevitably fail as a result. If you think EA is still behind TOR or has any illusions about it regaining a healthy footing, you need to look at their track record. They do not gamble on the underdog. They knock the last few quivering legs out and let it lie there whimpering until it passes, milking it for whatever it may still be worth. This is assuming LA doesn't get disgusted again like they did with SWG and pull their IP. Ironic really... the only people playing SWG in the end were Star Wars Fanboys who loved to pvp or roleplay in that setting. That's pretty much all that's left here, too. LA must be livid, even as they cash their checks.

Once in a blue moon back in Stranglethorn or Ashenvale or some other locale I'd respond to a call for help to find that the griefer really did in fact want a real fight and was using lowbies to bait someone like me out. I give them credit as is due. But man, I can count those times on one hand compared to the vast number that would simply stealth, hearth or run when someone like me showed up (and no epeen here, I'm no PvP pro. But beating the kind of PvPers who enjoy this sort of passtime is usually not difficult for a geared, experienced and competent player). TL;DR griefing lowbies =/= PvP, it's just pathetic griefing. That said, in this game, there's no reason for someone like myself or the OP to ever roll on a PvP server.

Very well said. If you're not in a guild, who the hell are you asking for help on Tatooine? Also... that same bizarre lack of logic applies to those who claim to gank to mystically summon the level 50 meat-eaters that are just hanging out in Mos Ila for S&Gs. Give me a break. When I used to kill gankers and griefers as a passtime, there was one rule almost universally true about them---they ran or hid when a real fight showed up. They were never happy to see me. I spoiled their fun, I didn't enhance it.