DPS bonus goes up, the best healer killer class gets a buff (marauder/sentinel), healers get nerfed, damage mitigation is lowered. The total adds up to quite a bit more than 3-5%. And don't forget that not everyone is in full BM gear. And despite the fairy tales out there: it was always entirely possible for ONE DPS to keep a sorc from healing anyone but themselves, thereby effectively neutralizing them.

Don't worry, I wrote the essay for you, three weeks ago, having seen what was on test and realizing where this was heading... seen too much of this heavyhanded idiocy /sigh

With this HUGE difference: If you play on the losing team in the NFL, you still get paid a VERY nice salary. You may not get your bonusses, but at least you won't be forced to wear second-hand gear.

I have played many games (always longer than 6 months too), and I have seen many disasters happen in games. The last time I saw something causing this much of an uproar, however, was in Star Wars Galaxies, during the CU/NGE... a period that lost the game 80% of its subs.

Sadly, this is not the case. What is happening is the extremely predictable result of nerfing healing and damage mitigation while at the same time boosting DPS.

May the schwartz be with you!

You're completely sidestepping the fact that the DEVELOPERS promised that both playstyles, PVE and PVP, could do their own thing without HAVING to step onto the other side's turf. This WAS the case in 1.2, but it isn't any more. Basically, you are telling people they HAVE to do something they do not enjoy doing and basically do not want to do so they can participate in the activity they PREFER to participate in without getting roflstomped in seconds. And in doing so, you become part of the problem. It's like telling pure PVE people that they now have to go through a huge PVP area to get to their dungeons, an area filled to the brim with PVPers. The most common reaction of people who feel they are forced into content they do not like, react by pressing the cancel button. People PAY to have fun, not to be frustrated.

I'm with the OP. My guild is hardcore PVP, for the most part, even though we choose to play on PVE servers (tired of kiddy behavior on PVP servers). And with 1.2, we're out. Give it another chance? No way. Been there, done that, got a stack of the T-shirts, we'll go where our gaming preference (PVP) is taken seriously. I understand we're not alone in that. So maybe it would be more correct to state: "The PVP community in swtor WAS not as small as you think, Bioware.

Well, here's one thing to consider: if you hate PVE with a passion (like me) and wouldn't want to be caught dead doing it, the current situation stinks. Getting money through PVP was a lot harder than getting it through PVE BEFORE 1.2, and that has not exactly improved.

Or maybe, just maybe, we have played a lot of different MMO for long times (my guild averages 1 year+ per game, and I'm its leader... nuff said), have waited and endured through broken promise after broken promise, and are now saying 'not another one, thx'. I cancelled weeks ago, because the game just has too many issues, and because I do not trust devs who say 'it's coming soon' and who perform sweeping changes while they promised they'd do incremental steps. This latest little disaster is just icing on the cake, as far as I'm concerned. /shrug

Pre-ordered GW2, will slumming around a bit in COH and AOC, and playing ancient single player games like Master of Orion. Can't even motivate myself to log into SW:TOR anymore. Never played wow, and after hearing repeatedly how much this game is like wow, I feel zero inclination to try it.

I'm a hardcore PVPer. I win far more games than I lose, with or without my guild's premade. But I will never, ever agree that not giving the loser an incentive to keep trying is a good idea. It's actually the exact opposite: it's a PVP killer. Please people, try to understand. If you have ANYTHING of a competitive spirit, losing is NOT fun. And losing because you are undergeared is even less fun. So the most common reaction I've observed over the last 9 years, is that people just stop participating. Leaving the well-geared hardcore PVPers standing there twirling their thumbs and complaining there is no PVP to be had. Eventually, you get a situation where there are only the people in the top gear and a handful beginners who soon give up, because they don't like getting farmed. I've seen this happen in so many games, it's not even remotely funny. And honestly, what is everyone's problem? Afraid of facing people on the same footing? Afraid to find out that your 'mad skillz' might actually just be your gear?

This is one of the many reasons I think the Legacy thing is very COUNTER role-playing. I watched the devs go all lyrical during the guild summit about their hobby of making family trees for e.g. the skywalkers. MMM***K... nice to have a hobby, I suppose. But what if you play all female characters? Or all male? What if you have traditionally used certain first name/last name combinations during the past 10 years of playing MMO and are now annoyed at being stuck with ONE last name? What if there is just no logical explanation whatsoever for the mix of species you're playing to show up in one family tree? (Seriously, scientifically speaking species of different planetary origin being able to even have sex is stretching it, but for them to be genetically compatible enough to have kids? No way). And most importantly: what if you'd rather go jump off the nearest bridge than engage in roleplaying? (Correct me if I'm wrong, but judging by the number of servers alone, I do think on line roleplayers are by far in the minority.) As veteran reward systems go (and this is one, make no mistake), this is by far the oddest and most irksome one.

Speaking as the guild leader of a guild that's been around since 2003, I think the entire thing is a non-issue. Look at that date, think about it. 2003. We go from game to game, staying 1+ year on average. Allies in one game are enemies in the next, and vice versa, and it's never been a problem. We visit each other's ventrilo, sometimes while mutual ganking is going on, and just laugh about it (a lot). Well, what do you expect, it's a game. The guy on the other side is also just a player trying to have fun. No, I do not think fighting the same faction (or any faction you can communicate with, and of which you know people personally) is bad. It's more fun fighting people you know, makes it more personal. And somehow, it always works out in such a way that the hardcore PVPers DO get to know each other. Even in games where the sides cannot talk at all, like Warhammer, we'd chat in IRC or get in the same ventrilo. Mutual respect and understanding do NOT prevent fighting like maniacs. It makes for more rivalry, sure, but it also makes for a lot less of the more vicious abuse, because the 'enemy' is not some faceless entity. It also rapidly puts an end to the ever-popular myth that the other faction is just a bunch of schoolkids with too much time on their hands, and that YOUR faction is (of course) the mature one... As for the guild versus guild thing... well, my guild is heavily PVP centric. We adore PVP, especially open world PVP, it's what we do. And we LOVE going against each other in matches. We even made mirror imp/pub guilds on our server, so we can do it more. Having guildies on both sides is a reason for much hilarity in ventrilo, and (of course) attempts to gank one another. I've never seen it lead to arguments in guild. And I honestly don't see why it should ever be considered a problem. Look at it like duelling: it is a good way to see exactly how well people perform from the enemy perspective, and compare them to others you fight. Mixing it up makes you a better PVPer, in my opinion, then always staying in the safety of the same group. So if your guildmates cannot handle fighting their own guild... well, I'm afraid they have quite a bit of maturing to do. Or maybe they just need a humor / ability-to-have-fun transplant. Either way, please do not superimpose YOUR guild's inability to deal on the rest of us.

I played in two open world PVP systems that actually worked well, to an extent. Most others failed, mostly because victory gave too much of an advantage to the winner, creating an ever greater advantage for the winning side. Star Wars Galaxies (before CU and NGE) had no real objectives or PVP rewards but it massive player generated PVP on my server (Bloodfin). This mostly came about by three mechanics: - the player ability to place faction bases that went vulnerable during a player determined time window each day. Guilds that made a name for themselves in PVP could count on a LOT of players of the opposite faction trying to take away their toys - the ability to have guild wars. Apart from the 'regular' guild versus guild events, we also organised huge faction versus faction wars (600 rebels versus 600 imperials) by having all participating rebel guilds declare on all participating imperial guilds and vice versa. And last but not least, the infamous red versus blue wars, which meant people were randomly assigned to the Red guild or the Blue guild, regardless of faction, and then declared war one one another. In one infamous example, husband and wife were pitted against each other, and husband bribed the children to spy on mommy for maximum gankage. - the fact that certain star ports were more popular and more travelled-by then others (each planet except Lok had at least 2) meant it was always fun to camp one of the popular ones while PVP flagged, and wait to see who brought the fight. Key thing about SWG PVP was the strong community, the willingness to support your faction, the intense rivalries, and the resulting desire to stick it to the other side. The other game that did well for open world PVP to a point was Warhammer with its PVP lakes. Once they introduced some carrots, open world PVP did fine. Sure, some groups were playing musical keeps, but us more PVP minded types abused that little fact by ambushing the trader-wannabes left and right. Then things went wrong, and I'm not even talking class imbalance here. - the valor rewards for taking objectives and keeps was made partly dependent on locking the zone these objectives and keeps were in. This drove out the casuals (no time to wait hours for a zone lock), brought in the valor farmors (they'd just move from zone to zone, standing AFK to catch the zone flip rewards, but never fought) and took a lot of the tactical flexibility out of the game (a lot of people refused to move to another zone to fight enemies if that meant missing the zone lock bonus). - a zone was introduced that held uber loot, and was unlocked for your faction by locking PVP zones. The second this loot zone (Land of the Dead) was unlocked, 90% of PVP participants vanished to go do dungeons, while the remainder, now desperately outnumbered, was left trying to defend. LOTD was touted as a PVP zone, but this PVP never really materialised. Worse, the loot gained there (PVE trinkets especially) were completely over the top imbalanced in PVP. - keeps were given a second access ramp, because people complained they were too hard to take (uhm... sure), fortresses were removed for similar reasons, and because the developers thought the endgame PVP (city sieges) were too rare. As a result, city sieges started to happen 4-6 times a day, each siege lasting 2 hours, disabling half the max level dungeons, disabling all regular max level warzones, and carrying with them the risk of a city downgrade, resulting in your faction having a harder time of it in PVP. The core mechanics in Warhammer open world PVP worked OK, until they started emphasizing loot, and until they started caving in to the 'it's too hard' crowd and made it PVP for dummies, with big neon arrows on the map saying 'enemy is here'. City sieges especially should never have been implemented in a form that allowed only one playstyle (city sieging) at the cost of all others AND punished the underdog by downgrading their city. I think implementing the OTHER planned cities would have taken the sting out of this. People like different things in games, telling the ones who like dungeons or warzones 'sorry, wait till after the siege' did not go over well. One reason Warhammer PVP worked, was because a small, dedicated group (1-2 warbands) could still do a LOT to obstruct the other side, even while badly outnumbered, because there were many objectives and they were spread out over 3 faction areas. It also helped that there were so MANY paths to objectives... there were always ways to do the unexpected. Guerilla worked. Having observers in zones worked. Strategy and tactics worked. This, too, is why Ilum fails. Objectives are easy to take solo, no teamwork required (no NPC guards requiring at least 6 to take them), access routes are few and easily predictable, zone wide warnings (??!) about the locations of players make it VERY hard on the underdog to sneak around, and in the end, it's just the one zone, without any alternative. I don't believe in limiting access to a PVP lake. I believe open world PVP CAN work, even for an underdog, because I've BEEN the underdog, and I've seen it work, in games that didn't try to funnel everyone into the same boring zone.

1) The legacy system is one of the crappier veteran reward systems I've seen 2) This game (and especially the increasing amounts of credits required for everything) reminds me more and more of Korean grinders like Aion.

This. The resolve bar IS working as advertised, just hardly anyone seems to understand how it works. Still, the fact that it's working as intended doesn't take away from the fact that it is a bad mechanism. Losing control of your character by getting mezzed/cced is one of the most hated things in MMO, period. Introducing so many CCs into a game, giving ALL classes CCs and then giving so little CC defense is just plain bad design.

Nice that you should mention AOC. I actually play it, it's a very good game. NOW. It wasn't at launch, which is why my guild avoided it like the plague. Why pay for years for that misery until it's fixed? Let them clean up their act BEFORE they make people pay for it, like that one Final Fantasy game did. As to not listening to complaints... well now, that's a bit of a double edged sword. While I agree a lot of the complaining in here is just silly, and caused by people who don't know the game mechanics and/or their own / other classes, there are also some VERY legitimate concerns, that need addressing. Do you think those issues would be addressed if no one complained? I have my doubts there. Human nature would make a 'they haven't noticed that one yet, let's focus on something else for now' approach more likely. And in the most extreme example, I would like to mention Star Wars Galaxies. A game with a subscriber base of over 200K (which was considered a VERY good MMO performance pre-WOW). Which subscriber base almost completely evaporated after SOE/LA decided to wowify the game AGAINST the strenuous objections of the players. Oopsies.

True: rewards are meaningless, I just want to beat others in combat False: I'm willing to do the same warzones over and over again until my nose bleeds I actually prefer open world PVP over anything else. No, not quester ganking, fighting over obectives and enemy owned bases or plain controlling a travel hub and taking on all comers. And with 1.2, the last of that will be gone.

For me, the whole not-upgrading-champion stuff is game breaking. I play on two servers, Vornskr with my own guild (Imp) and The Fatman with a friend's guild (Republic). I levelled a trooper and a BH to 50. After a horrific grind, I got the BH in full BM gear and the trooper in champion gear (PRE patch 1.1.5, and strictly legit, thank you very much). The trooper could play with the republic guild, was competitive. Not after patch 1.2 though. The expertise difference is just too large. And I see the same happening in my imperial guild. People had a rethink on what class they wanted to play, and rolled alts. People who played more casually (we ARE for the most part working people), and took things at a slower pace. People who are currently absent from the game due to work/study obligations. The gear they worked so hard for in their available time is suddenly WORSE than the starter gear, and they (and by extension we as a smaller guild) will NOT be able to participate in the rated warzones unless they start the grind all over again. Woohoo.... I really don't see the logic in this. I hear people saying 'it's normal, all MMO do this when new gear is introcuded'. Uhm, no, it's not normal, and I've actually never seen any MMO do this. I hear WoW did (never played that game), but WoW is not all MMO by a long shot. And if I wanted to play WoW, I'd be playing WoW. I am one of those people who actively follow developer blogs and forums. And one of the things they all warn against is taking things away from players that those players have spent a lot of time acquiring. The general consensus is that it's a good way to drive players away. And essentially, that is what Bioware is now doing. Gear that people invested a lot of time in getting, is made worse than entry level gear overnight. This is NOT a good thing. I'm left wondering whether these developers have ever studied what happened to their predecessor, Star Wars Galaxies. While the circumstances of the gear changes there were very different (the entire game was rewritten during the CU and then again during the NGE), it was THE most demoralizing thing I have ever experienced in a game. ALL STATS on ALL in game items were changed. EVERYTHING. Things we had spend YEARS crafting and perfecting became useless overnight. Then they did it AGAIN 6 months later. And guess what? 80% of us quit and never came back.

I used to fence in the university team. We wore Kevlar armor. Looks like cloth, can take pretty much any shape you want, protects against blunt impact and sharp edge penetration ("bullet proof"). 20th century technology. The imagined technology in SW:TOR is many, many centuries in advance of our own. I'd assume that society has fabrics like Kevlar, only better, with say limited energy deflection. So what's stopping the designers? Lore? Sure, all BH look like Boba Fett... that makes sense... not. Really, is it so hard to imagine something less bulky and plain ugly than pretty much all armor? My BM geared BH looks like a giant bug (helmet) with a baby carrier strapped to its belly. Not that the lower level gear is better: pretty much all identical looking, just different colors. Be still my heart...

First off, when speaking of my guild, I'm not talking about new players. I'm talking about people who have played from launch, and who have gradually worked their way towards champion gear. Which is now made obsolete, and which to the best of current knowledge is not getting a stat change. So people who have it, go from a position of able to compete to pretty much the same status as ungeared 50s now (a 12% expertise gap). Second, new players IN the new PVP gear will, as I understand it, have a max of roughly 16% expertise. That's 8% less than people running around in BM/WH gear. I would say this is a significant difference. Keeping in mind that the CURRENT starter gear, centurion gear, has an expertise difference with BM of maybe 1%, I don't exactly see how the new PVP set is an improvement over the old situation. If anything it's a step back.

And this here is where I have a huge problem. Most people in my guild prefer PVP over PVE. We are veterans of many PVP games, and we do premades as a guild. We're good at it too (win WAY more than we lose). Not all of us have the same amount of time available though. As a result, only two of us have full BM gear, the rest mostly have champion. And they spent a LOT of their available time getting that gear. Champion gear made you reasonably competitive with people in BM. We could PVP as a guild, without having to tell people 'sorry, you can't, you're gear sucks'. But with the increase of effectiveness of expertise on BM and WH gear, this will no longer be the case. So what am I going to tell my people? "Just grind for another month or so, and then you can play with us again"? That is NOT how we do things. I already hated how gear grind was emphasized over fighting for the fun of it. This only makes it worse. And I honestly think it's BAD for pvp, as it excludes more casual players from participation in the competitive aspects of the game, and limits the pool of participants ever further.

I play mainly on Vornskr. According to statistics gathered in game, we used to be in the top 30% of servers for population. I've played here since pre-launch, and over the months, I've seen a fairly steep population drop, to the point that it takes longer and longer for warzone queues to start popping, and to the point people are complaining in fleet how hard it now is to get a hardmode started, let alone an ops. BW may have 1.7 subs for this game now, but while these subs may be active, the people owning them apparently are NOT playing.

Well, not exactly unnecessary, since this would be a MASSIVE change, and the devs were very slow in reacting, despite people mentioning this during twitter chat and 3 full and redirected forum threads.