LONG POST WARNING
There seems to be a lot of uproar about the state of world pvp, and with good reason. And despite all the opinions that exist, at the moment I think we are all in agreement on one thing -- world pvp as it stands needs a lot of improvement.
So what should be done? What are the real issues? As a person who has played a few games with amazing world pvp (Pre-BC WoW, Lineage 2, and Darkfall as examples) I have had the opportunity to see this mechanic done right, along with many others in the swtor community. With that many years behind my personal history, I have identified two major ideas (or problems, however you may look at them) that need to be addressed in order to make world PvP a success in SWTOR, along with possible suggestions on how to improve this.
Number One: Enable in-game mechanics that will make guilds more than just a list of players in a UI frame.
As great as your story is BioWare, the best stories that come out of these kinds of games are not the ones that are being made your writers, they are the stories that are made by your players. Everybody wants to be on Teamspeak or ventrilo talking about how *insert guild name here* are a bunch of douches, and you can't wait to hunt them down on Alderaan. Create zones on these planets where guilds can establish context for their role in the world of SWTOR. This can include things like player made structures such as guild halls, academies, whatever. Make them siegable (not freely, but against rulesets that make sense for this game). Make them have impact on the world and other same-faction players around them.
Give me a reason as an Imperial player to rally people to destroy an icon of power of the other faction. I want to be able to make a decision outside and inside of the game to create impact on this world.
And Number Two: Give me many reasons to visit the opposing faction's side of the map.
This seems like a no-brainer to me. SWTOR already has systems like bonus quests and heroics in place that tempt me to go out of my way to do things. This is great because players can choose to opt in and out of these things at their discretion. For PvP servers it makes sense to encourage a sense of danger in my day-to-day responsibilities as a player (such as questing, crew skill training, etc) and besides, as a player of swtor I have already chosen and opted into playing on a PvP server. Why can't we have quests that require us to go out and hunt others of the opposing faction in the open world?
I hope that this thread creates some dialogue regarding this feature that many seem to want. What do you guys think?
TLDR:
We can fix world pvp by creating meaningful systems that don't break the existing game but expand our choice as players:
1) Create game mechanics that give the ability for guilds to make impact on the world (setting their footprint), such as buildable or attainable world structures
2) Give players reasons to go to the other side of the map, such as PvP incentivizing quests and heroics
