Yup. Ranked needed some really cool rewards to have any chance of staying alive. The fact that they hand out some **** that you would throw away if you got it in a pack shows just how invested they are in pvp. I think most of the outrage comes from the fact that the few people left who do ranked KNEW how much was riding on these rewards. Ranked is already all but completely dead, 85% of the player having already quit/left for WildStar, and the rewards for S2 were our last hope for something to breathe some life back into season 2. No such luck. **** sucks. Well done BioWare

Time to stop caring guys. Let the game be what it is, a $500 million failure to launch. Personally I unsubbed about 2 weeks ago and these rewards just reinforce my decision. If you're finding it hard to move on from this game, as is bound to happen (it takes soooo much time and effort to get a toon to 55, not to mention fully min-maxed in brut), I suggest you do what I did and find another game that interests you, and then slowly transition from one to the other. The *******st part about mmo's is that initial "getting to know the game" period, but once you start to get familiar with another game and realize just how terrible SWTOR is, you'll find yourself naturally wanting to play that second game instead of dealing with the awful state of swtor, especially if you're a pvper. At first I hated WildStar, but after playing it more and more I can't wait to get home every day to log in. Remember that feeling? Breaking up is hard to do. SWTOR has been an amazing and fun experience but it's time to move on. It was fun while it lasted.

^^^This. I honestly wouldn't care if the top tier award was a re-skinned mount that has been out forever. But it has to be something that is recognizable IMMEDIATELY (aka a mount or a big *** pet). A lore based, frankly quite dull, helmet is not that, it's just an excuse for BioWare to be lazy. A lot of people do ranked specifically because it is the only part of the game where you are given a public statistic that represents your success relative to other players. Bragging rights. That's what it's all about. That's why the rancor was awesome, and that's why tons of people queued up for a shot at it. These rewards are not ok.

What BioWare completely failed to realize is that people want PVP rewards they can show off. I remember when I first saw the rancor mount, I thought it was the coolest freaking mount the game had ever produced, and it motivated me to do ranked until I got at least one toon over 1500. On the day we got our S1 rewards, I remember EVERYONE who had a rancor was parading that thing around the fleet, because it was a sign of personal achievement that was instantly recognizable. I doubt anyone will notice someone wearing the tier 1 special needs helmet we're getting this season. BioWare has chosen instead to shove stronghold garbage down our throats, to further encourage pvpers to spend money on Cartel Market junk. Once again, BW has shown a fundamental misunderstanding of pvper psychology, and it's just going to be another nail in the coffin of the already dwindling ranked community.

You sound like you don't pvp... Why are you so opposed to the best SWTOR players getting good rewards? It doesn't matter how small the population is or whatever biases you have against solo queue, the players who top the leaderboards are among the best players in the game. It's only fair that they receive the best rewards. I couldn't care less if the stuff top tier players get is eventually put on the Cartel Market. I don't even care if it goes up at the same time. But providing pvpers will utter **** rewards is only going to hurt this already dying game.

There's nothing inherently wrong with buying things off the Cartel Market, but the fact that the CM is now the central focus of the developers will be the ultimate undoing of this game. Once they saw how much revenue they were generating just by putting up the same reskinned pets/mounts/armor over and over again they lost all intention of providing actual content. IMO cosmetics do not constitute content, they are just a supplementary way to enjoy the game. Personally I'm very upset with the season 2 rewards, not because I care all that much about cosmetic stuff, but because it shows that EA has no intention of providing decent rewards for their best pvpers, people who spend time and effort trying to master the mechanics of the game. They would rather earn a quick buck than build long-term appreciation of the game and what it has to offer. What this shows is a trend that is very anti-player and very pro-buyer. In the long run that's not going to be good for anyone. Also, I really believe that there are some people who can't help but spend money on Cartel Coins, and EA is ruthlessly exploiting them instead of actually putting in some work to improve gamer experience. In that sense, SWTOR isn't really a game anymore, it's second-life with lightsabers.

Oh well, It's been fun while it lasted but the game is officially a $500 million sky mall catalog for obsessive Star Wars collectors. I bet they make more money off of their top 1000-2000 CM buyers than they do from all their subscriptions combined. If your hobby isn't buying cyber-crap, I'm guessing this isn't the game for you. EA would rather reward people who spend $20 on packs than the people who spend hundreds of hours committing themselves to this game. It just goes to show that when money is involved EA will gladly cut whatever corners they can, especially when they know they can bank of the devotion from a loyal fan base of a beloved series.

LOL. +1 Best post of the year

I would say that I'm "shocked" or "enraged" that they would wait so long to announce season 2 rewards, but at this point it's just business as usual, and I say that in the most level headed of manors; saying we longer expect contribution from the devs isn't just hyperbolic forum QQing, we really don't expect them to do anything. I assumed the point of waiting to announce rewards was to get people hyped up for and reinvested in the last month or so of the season. But, with only 2 weeks left and still no rewards, I now see that we all were mistaken in attributing that level of foresight to the devs. This season proves that they don't announce rewards until the end not because they have the intelligence to understand the psychology of their player base, knowing that dangling out those rewards will entice a butt load of people to give ranked another shot as the season comes to a close, but because they are legitimately apathetic at this point. Thanks BW, you've made an *** out of me and a raging ******e out of yourselves. 2 more weeks until the sub ends. I'm curious to see if they can manage to get their "blog" together before then. P.S. - Telling us you haven't released the rewards because you can't get a *********** blog post just the way you want it is the biggest steaming pile of **** you have ever handed us as an excuse. That's like next level disrespect of the pvp community. You guys are paving new roads on the path to pure awful.

Please hurry up and make the announcement. Haven't had a solo ranked pop in a week. What's worse is I haven't even had the will to try and wait it out. Slipping BW, slipping.

This is about right. I doubt it will be a mount, just a reskinned pet, as BW will use the excuse, "it's a "shorter" season and we've reduced it to 3 tiers" for offering less epic rewards. Hopefully I'm wrong.

How many of your friends are primarily interested in ranked pvp? Last night I signed on to check out what was going on on pot5. I was in queue so long I forgot, ended up going to get some dinner, came back and was still in queue. Decided to try out the Bastion. Every single arena had a MINIMUM of 1 player completely throwing the arena. 3 roaving trollers total i believe. Now I know people complain a looot about people "throwing" arenas, but these guys were for real there to ruin people's time. Anyone who had played on the bastion knows about kill*%^& and War&$% and Psi&%^ (Names hidden so BW can't have an excuse to delete a thread, which seems to be the one thing they are capable of). The population doing ranked was so low that for one arena, all 3 trolls were in the same one. Regs might be fine. But ranked is dead

The party is at WildStar. Surprise surprise but all that end game content is actually waaaaaaaaay more fun than sitting around fleet begging people to queue up for ranked. Swtor had a decent run at pvp, but for EA, the money lies elsewhere. If you want to come to wildstar feel free to respond to this message or start your own thread in the swtor forms about making a wildstar guild; I'll be sure to contribute until my sub runs out. Trust me, if there's one thing i've learned from playing this game, its that's BioWare does not give a ****.

It's time.

/signed

In some ways I agree with you, but personally I would never bother playing this game without a leaderboard. I may have a year ago but since then WZ's are just too stale to keep me interested. The only reason I play this game now is for the competition and to watch my elo rise. I get why you think getting rid of ranked might be a good idea, but I think that will only further ostracize players who enjoy it.

I actually like this idea. It would eliminate the entire problem of queue syncing, would decrease queue times, and so forth. Why would Giradda the Hutt bother to seperate people into republic/imperial anyways? Do you think he gave them an interview before the arena? Do they have to fill out a questionnaire? "Do you associate more psychopathic galaxy conquerors or do you prefer the colors blue/green and enjoy peacekeeping?". And before you say "Well it has to be republic vs imperial, the good guys would NEVER fight each other!!", ask yourself how many people rolled dark jedi? I think it's a great decision all around. It would spice things up big time without BioWare having to add much content, which is their favorite thing in the world.

I have seen it work several times. In fact, I was once called out on my sin by one of the top rated sins as a **** player specifically because I didn't use the phase walk exploit. That means it's so prevalent it is the accepted strategy among high rated players. It's an exploit because using phase walk makes you immune to 1-2 ticks of acid damage, which is a huge amount. Phase walk technically has no defensive benefits other than escaping, and therefore should not prevent damage. It's exploiting some poorly programmed mechanics, and therefore by definition is an exploit. On the other hand, I think you're right, the barrier thing isn't an exploit, but it might be something to look at.

LOL zoom you see really defensive about that acid. The acid is easily exploitable in a variety of ways. The most obvious one is for assassins, who can use phase walk to avoid 1-2 ticks of acid damage while staying away from their opponents. This is a massive advantage that basically guarantees a victory in a 1v1 with acid. A good way to fix this would be to make acid further away from the center do more damage. Also the barrier thing is totally an advantage. Definitely needs to be reworked. Also fix tatooine canyon arena already. Having the smallest size player be able to slip into a spot that blocks out other body sizes is stupid and an obvious exploit.

I think I've had a total of 2 arenas in the past two weeks on imp where every player on my team had an elo above 1200. 3 players on a team with above average elo's isn't enough. One bad player on a team is still a 3v4. Get ride of pot5, people will be happy.

So many people would come back to this game if x-server queues were implemented. It would completely change the face of the game. People don't do ranked anymore because they are either sick of playing the same people over and over again, or sick of the long wait times. Cross-server queues would breathe new life into this game. The problem right now is that on no single server is there a big enough pvp population to support real match-making. Imagine if you could be queued with people from alllll the different server, actually getting placed with players at your rating level. But BioWare has already stated multiple times that cross-server is never going to happen. IDK why the **** these threads keep popping up. It WILL NEVER HAPPEN YOU GUYS AND GALS AND OTHER OPTIONS BESIDES GUYS AND GIRLS THANK YOU /thread

No offense to Jung Ma. It's just that pot5 and bastion are supposed to be on a different level. At least they used to be. Now Pot5 is a freaking ghost town. I played about 6 arenas today and I think there were 4 imps total who had an elo about 1200. It's a travesty. Idk if people transferred off server/left for WS because of queue syncing or the rapidly increasing hoard of terribads/trolls but there is basically .5% of the ranked population left. For the love of god, gut the wretched beast and let us be done with it.

^^^^This. Soulcaster unfortunately the real problem here isn't the ranked queue. The problem is that SWTOR failed to implement cross-server queues. You'd think that spending $500 million on a game (Stop and think about that number. They spent $500 MILLION on this. $500 MILLLLLLLLION), would get you some decent hardware. Apparently not. Now the pvp population is so low that it's not even relevant to their business strategy. They probably make 1/1000 as much from pvp'ers are pve'ers, and about 1/100000 as much from ranked pvpers. Pvp is insignificant to them. Of course they'll never admit it. Would you? It's never going to get any better. The best we can ask for is some server merges before the whole ship goes under.

Playing on pot5 feels like playing on Jung Ma, which is unacceptable. As one of the true two North American pvp servers, the pvp population needs to be high enough that there is never more than a 10 minute wait for a ranked pop. Unfortunately the wait times are often ridiculous, and if it does pop it's almost always 8 out of the same 20-25 players left who do ranked. It's basically the same players queuing/switching factions every night. I don't particularly want to go WildStar. I love Star Wars, and this game is fun. But dead is dead. Do something BioWare. If as big a fanboi as me leaves, IDK who could possibly be left.

Please?