I've canceled. I think I'm going back to EVE. The latest update there looks pretty good and my old Alliance is re-conquering our old space...

Releasing this patch without the ranked warzones breaks a lot of the other stuff that is in it. They were supposed to be there for you to earn war hero gear from. Which is still going in without a supporting system. They were part of the reason for the class changes/nerfs. They and the introduction of war hero gear were the reason for the removal of centurion gear and the degradation of champion gear to blue. Ranked warzones were also a replacement for Ilum dailies/weeklies which have been removed from the game. In other words releasing without them leaves a HUGE whole in the 1.2 patch, pretty much destroying it's value.

Yep. Everyone would have accepted a delay as the price to pay for getting the whole thing. Bioware would have even deserved praise for it. Instead they've done IRREPARABLE harm to their relationship with their PVP'ers that they may never be able to recover from. First deleting Ilum, then nerfing classes and Champion gear and now this final insult. At this point they might as well CEASE development on ranked warzones and a "new" Ilum (if they are even working on them in the first place) because by the time they finish them (if ever) they won't have any PVP'ers left subscribing and they will just hack off their PVE players who will (rightly) be angry at them wasting time on stuff no one is left to use!

They don't have the guts. They'll just delete this thread before they will respond. You can't defend the indefensible so why try? Anything they say will just make people angrier at this point. The whole 1.2 patch should have been delayed UNTIL ranked warzones were ready for live.

Yep. I was already pissed off at the removal of open PVP on Ilum. I was ready to unsub based on what they did with 1.15 when they moved EVERYTHING (effectively) to the warzones, because I am sick and tired of depending on whatever random idiot I get sent in with rather than fighting AS A TEAM with my friends (which you could do on Ilum). I was willing to accept the changes with 1.2 since that problem was to be fixed in the ranked warzones as we could come in with our own group, on teamspeak, and fight for objectives instead of dealing with, as I said, random idiots. With that gone everything left in 1.2 is basically fluff to me.

Seriously, whomever designed and approved the appearance of the "endgame" Jedi and other armors should be sacked.

I suspect many of us will be. The Bioware fanbois might fill one single server... at best.

As someone who has worked in a Q/A testing department for one of the biggest tech companies in the world (IBM) I can tell you that what Bioware and other MMO publishers call "Q/A testing" wouldn't pass muster in any other part of the software industry.

Well, they do employ a number of ex SOE devs. The rest probably worked for Microsoft in the Windows Q/A department.

12 hours notice is bait and switch. Especially after all the promotion of the feature, including produced video.

I've been playing MMOs since 2004 (SWG). In all that time and in all the MMOs I've played, I've experience almost every disastrous mistake in industry history, from the NGE to the shenanigans in EVE. I can't think of one time anyone got fired for anything.

Yep. If ranked warzones weren't ready, 1.2 wasn't ready. It was, other than legacy (which has little) the most advertised feature. It's like selling someone a car and then 12 hours before delivery telling you that you are getting it without wheels "for now" because they "weren't ready", and they decided to pull the feature "very late" in the car delivery process.

So do you believe that 12 hours notice is reasonable to yank a central feature from a major patch?

I'd rather have the broken SOMETHING we did have than NOTHING but future promises. Anyone who ever played SWG can tell you that the odds of those promises ever becoming reality are approximately 8,720:1.

Yeah, if making family trees of your characters is now the main feature of the game the LEAST they should do is let us play dress up barbie with them and change their hair styles, colors, etc...

They don't really want this feature in the game for the same reason they don't want to allow us to CHOOSE which warzone we queue for: They know that the "random idiots" who go for medals rather than victories will never be invited into groups, AND they know that Huttball would effectively be removed from the game. I think the 8 man group was why they pulled them. I also predict that when they add them the ability to queue as a group won't be part of them...

No, it means warzones are the same as before, you are forced to group with random idiots instead of being able to group with people who know what they are doing. Which was what we WANTED, which was by far the BEST feature of ranked warzones. The ability to do this is what would have made warzones (which are a lame form of PVP) at least TOLERABLE. Where it is NOT the same as before is that Ilum is now only a place. The one open world system we had IS GONE FROM THE GAME. Here yesterday, gone today.

How about just reinstating Ilum as it was pre 1.1.5 until they have something better? Like I said, we PVP'ers log into the game today with LESS than we had at launch!

A EULA is only good for intimidation and saber rattling. If a software company can't sue/prosecute you for violating copyright law they can't touch you. There was an attempt back in the 90's to get various states to legislate the legalization of "click through" EULA's as a standard but it went almost nowhere. Most contracts (and a EULA is a contract) are null and void IN THEIR ENTIRETY in most places if a single part of it violates contract law in your locality. The severability clause in them won't preserve the "legal" bits because statutory contract law>contract. One example: Every software EULA, especially for MMOs contains a clause that allows them, at their whim, to change ANY OR ALL of the EULA's terms at any time, for no compensation, and you do not ALSO have this right. That piece alone makes the EULA illegal under contract law, because contracts are supposed to be agreements between equals with no coercion.

EULA's are not worth the paper they aren't printed on (because every single one has something in it that's illegal to have in a contract in nearly every jurisdiction). Which is why no software company in history has ever taken anyone to court over them.

I'm not glad, I am LIVID. What they did in releasing 1.2 while tearing the HEART out of it is unacceptable. Ranked Warzones with the ability to take YOUR OWN group into them was, for us PVP'ers, all we had to look forward to AFTER TAKING ILUM OUT of the game in this same patch. Today PVP'ers log into the game AND HAVE LESS than we had the day before. Everyone with Champion gear today have LESS than we had yesterday and we have fewer options than ever for progression. If ranked warzones weren't ready then 1.2 wasn 't ready.

And since their "band aid" is to allow buying the war hero gear with regular warzone commendations, how much you wanna bet they NERF war hero gear when (if) they actually ever release ranked war zones so that we have to grind it again? 1.2 DOES NOT WORK without ranked warzones. If they aren't ready, 1.2 isn't ready.

PVP is dead now in this game. Bioware had better bring cots in for people to work around the clock on this or they are going to lose every PVP subscriber they have.

A very SOE like move wasn't it? The difference between MMO developers and Steve Jobs is their "Oh, and one more thing..." moment is always a disappointment. Like I said, if ranked warzones weren't ready, the whole 1.2 patch wasn't ready. This is a SHOWSTOPPER for PVP'ers.

If ranked warzones weren't ready, then the 1.2 patch wasn't ready. For PVP'ers, 1.2 is all downside with nothing POSITIVE to show for it. We get our Champion gear nerfed (as well as battlemaster), Ilum gets deleted from the system, and we still have to group with random idiots to grind for the new gear. For what reason? To do slightly better the next time you group with random idiots in a warzone? Not to mention we get all the class nerfs too.