Having just returned to the game to join some guildies who picked it back up as well, what exactly is the difference between ranked and unranked? I think the ranked Warzones had just been introduced when we left. Obviously there are reward differences and competitive differences, but it's the rewards/gear that I'm most curious about, as my Warmaster gear is 100% obsolete and I am sure we will be que'ing a 3 or 4 man (the other guys already are).

Shouldn't you be exploiting a broken bag mechanic on your burg? (I keed, it was just nice seeing a familiar name from past forums when I checked in this morning).

You are, I believe, basing your heavily flawed opinion on sub 50 play. On top of that, you are throwing out imaginary percentages that you have no basis in statistics to prove accurate. Sure, in theory it seems that kiting on a PT/VG would be easy. I assure you that in end game PvP the reality is much different.

You should work on your guardian play. Decent Juggs can own it up on a VG/PT with equal gear. I'd like to see some video of the people making the false claim that VG/PT can 'kite with ease'. With our 2 pathetic CC's and our insulting self heal, if a melee really wants to stay on top of us, it's not that difficult. The biggest problem with this thread is that every poster without a top level VG/PT is simply posting perceptions and situational opinions. Being able to read the skill descriptions does not make you an expert. Hell, playing their class up to warhero doesn't seem to make alot of people experts.

This.

That, or you were only 'challenging' people who you knew you had no chance to lose to. Not saying that is what you were doing, but it is just as fair an assumption as yours. In my experience, the one guy going around randomly challenging people to duels has found an unbeatable class/build and is just trying to *** his epeen. To the OP, Warhammer had a version of this and it worked very well. I wouldn't want to see the chicken mechanic we had in the RvR lakes there implemented on the planets, but I don't see them doing that anyway because it would close off alot of the 'world' by sort of reverse gating. Of course, in War you also got rewarded with valor and loot drops open world kills. Rather than preventing you from attacking someone significantly lower than you, they just scaled the reward for the kill appropriately, so if you killed someone 6 or so levels or more below you, you got zilch for valor. Level brackets for Warzones would only work with huge, highly populated servers.

Your first point is dead on. Many people roll on PvP servers because it's more exciting to have to constantly pan your camera while you quest. Your second point is pretty inaccurate. While the event mentioned in the OP did result in a sizeable force of 50s coming out to move the Imps away (I'm assuming if 20 republics showed up and failed that there had to be quite a few more Imps), the behaviour that started everything (camping a lowbie base) is almost always done to 'grief' lowbies. The 'we want to promote pvp by getting high levels to come out' excuse is just that... an excuse. That said, if you roll on a PvP server then you WILL get camped by higher level players at some point. That's what's nice about this game pretty much giving you two destinations for each stage of your class quests. If you can't get out of the base on Hoth, then go somewhere else. The people who file a ticket for this sort of thing on a PvP server are the same ones who are convinced that high level players don't want new 50s to have equal gear because we're afraid of competition... As for the meat of the OP... yeah I think I would've let the GM have it. Temporary bans in MMO's are more than worth tearing into some pasty skin GM who is drunk with imagined power.

Active Open World PvP makes levelling more exciting because you actually HAVE to continuously pan your camera. Other than that, the poster a few above me that posted about Warhammer/Lotro keep seige/defense hit the nail on the head for me. Nothing much more fun than being slowly backed into a Keep Lord's room with 5-6 of us against facerolling freep players in LOTRO and managing to wipe them.

Today's gamers won't let a mechanic like that succeed. All it would result in would be massive amounts of QQ and people asking for whatever resource is being denied to them to be handed over on a silver platter, which the gaming company will do. Rewards aren't for the 'hardcore' pvpers, they're to provide the hardcore pvpers with more targets.

Just a couple of comments from the first 4 or so pages. Guard. Yes it's good if you are guarding someone and you drop it if they are out of range...say on the other side of the map. It should be noted, however, that the guarded target can remove guard as well by simply right clicking the buff. Taunt. I saw this mentioned but didn't read in detail. All I'd say is try to taunt someone who is not anywhere near you in the fight. I generally will aoe taunt a sorc ball from behind as I run to a different node. Capping. It's been mentioned that you don't need more than 1 person to cap. If you are wondering if you should be that person, look at your cooldowns. Do you have CC available to cast? If so you are NOT the person who should cap. Capping part b. If you are a smuggler or operative, you can cap from cover. While this won't help with most folks, it will keep the Warrior/Knight who's first impulse is to leap to you and then aoe the door from being able to do just that. Huttball. If the other team has just scored and someone from your team is fighting the 1-3 that scored the touchdown, leave your team mate to his/her fate and avoid that fight. If there are 2-3 of them at the goal, then that means 2-3 less between your team and a score.

This is the classic response and completely ignores the nature of games and gamers. The masses need incentive to remain paid subscribers. Counting on everyone to PvP for enjoyment with no reward or 'carrot' (for lack of a better term) leads to dead games. The incentives aren't there for people who only PvP for enjoyment. They're there to give that minority a more target rich environment.

This. I'm not sure how she's going to feel about me making her wear the dancer's outfit though.

This becomes a population issue, not a reward system issue. It is a prevelant issue for sure. For the poster above, if you really get that people don't want PvPers to get rewarded for PvP out of this thread, then you should really go back and start over on the first page. Both sides of the debate agree that rewards should be there, just not on when or on how easily they should be handed out.

Where did I ask for any of that? Oh right, I didn't. The attitude that everyone is entitled to equal footing as soon as they enter a given tier of PvP is about as ridiculous as thinking everyone on a sports team deserves a trophy just for playing. It is, admittedly, a dilemma that will likely never be solved in MMO's. Go back and read the parts of my post that you were too dense to take in. I do want fun PvP, and lopsided wins/losses aren't it. However, everything in an MMO needs incentive attached to it in order to keep people interested, and what is being discussed here is removing said incentive. Sure I PvP for fun, but if you remove the incentive then more people will leave than already are out of boredom. This is the perfect example of what I was talking about. Nothing in this game is hard work. Nothing. The OLD gear grind to BM sucked, and IT wasn't hard work. The new path to BM gear is so quick that the only grind that anyone could name that was shorter was for a game that HAD NO GRIND. This attitude is what I was talking about because at the tiniest, most miniscule taste of adversity we start hearing people wanting things made even easier for them. Try looking that word up, I don't think you have the definition figured out. That or you're making the usual inane hyperbolic assumptions about me because I don't happen to be 100% behind the OP in his quest to avoid putting effort into warzones. There have been some great suggestions in this thread of things that would ease folks closer to where they want to be without shoveling a pile of commendations their way and saying 'Go get'em Tiger!' as soon as they hit 50. Also, you don't know me, have never played with/against me, and therefore have absolutely no clue (obviously from your post) what I do or don't consider skill in an MMO. I'm sorry you're so mad, but you should come up with some original (and accurate) material.

As long as you don't mind your paraphrasing being both wrong and infantile hyperbole, knock yourself out .