Last week I finally hit the level cap in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but didn’t have a chance to get to Illum until this weekend and holy crap does it suck.  Now if you’re already level 50 and have traveled to Illum, you probably already know what I’m about to say, but if you’re not, seriously take you time leveling, you don’t want to be on Illum.

To start, Illum the “PvP planet” isn’t even dedicated to PvP, half of it is PvE, which blew me away when I got there and I had to spend the next few hours completing more story missions. Yay!? =\

When I finished off those missions I finally made it to the other side of the planet where I was greeted with on-screen notification messages of players who were near certain control points. It seemed like there were a lot of notifications coming up, so I started to get excited that I was in for some good PvP action, however as I neared my first control point, I saw no one. I proceed to another point, controlled by the Republic (Im Empire) and again saw no one, so I figured I’d try to take it over.

To take over a control point, you have to destroy the enemy vehicles in the area, which by the way don’t attack you so after about a min, by myself, I took over the point. I though, ok, that was boring, what next? Finally a Republic player found me as I was leaving the control point and decisively thrashed me.  While I don’t like dying, at least it was something.

I continued to travel around from control point to control point for about 30 mins, seeing a few players here and there and getting my ass kicked a few more times until I finally found where everyone was. It seems about 100 players were lined up standing infront of a narrow bridge staring at each other. I hung out for about an hour getting some kills and valor points, however the lag was too much and I finally logged out in frustration.

Visting Illum has now fully convinced me no one working at BioWare has every played a PvP MMORPG. By far SWTOR has the worst PvP system I’ve every played and makes games like WoW look like the grand-master of PvP.

Continued…

Game Update 1.1 not only brought a new Flashpoint into Star Was: The Old Republic, it also allowed Bioware to respond to player concerns regarding PvP by placing level 50 characters into their own bracket for warzones.

For the most part the bolster system did a good job of levelling the playing field in warzones however it did not account for the expertise stat found on level 50 PvP gear. Higher level players already had access to a complete skill tree and set of abilities, it may have been a mistake to give them a gear advantage (even if only a slight advantage).

As a mid-level character, getting face rolled by full teams of 50′s in all PvP gear was  getting frustrating enough never mind being a fresh level 10 character hoping to try PvP out only to get obliterated. The barrier to entry was increasing with each new level 50 queuing for warzones and it was starting to get slightly out of hand.

On the other hand the inclusion of level 50 brackets has caused problems for some level 50 players on low population servers, leaving them with potentially lengthy queue times just to get into a match against anyone. As far as I can tell from chatting with a few people, the gear gap issue is also still an issue for fresh level 50s going up against better equipped characters. The RNG system behind loot bags probably is not helping this situation either with some players failing to receive a token for PvP gear despite purchasing a LOT of bags.

What’s your opinion?

Are you enjoying the lack of level 50 characters in your warzones? Or do you miss the challenge of taking on a vastly superior opposing force?

Let us know in the comments.

What is currently taking place on the planet of Illum is an absolute slaughter and travesty. Republic forces, vastly out numbered by Imperials, are being decimated with little to no hope of making any type of stand. With no hope of survival, Republic players are staying clear of Illum, turning it over to Imperials who now sit and wait for those unfortunate Republic players, unaware of the situation, to enter.

That’s the current state of the game for Star Wars: The Old Republic on the PvP world of Illum after the release of Patch 1.1. While the patch brought with it a new flashpoint and operation, more importantly it brought much needed changes to PvP.

Up until now Illum has been a merry-go-round where players, for the most part, would stay clear of each other in order to trade off objectives and farm rewards as quickly as possible. Patch 1.1 however introduced some incentives for players to actually kill each other, except BioWare forgot that Imperial players vaaaastly outnumber Republic players on nearly every server. So instead of a merry-go-round, we have a one sided slaughter where Imperial players are camping Republic respawn areas and hunting down new players when their location is revealed through the new Illum notification system.

But it doesn’t stop there. Imperial players are also farming NPC turrets, which respawn almost instantly, allowing them to rack up HUGE amounts of valor. WTF BioWare!?  PvP rewards for killing NPCs? (UPDATE: Seems this was reported falsely by players, turrets and NPCs do not provide valor)

I’m all for giving players incentives to kill each other and I’m still waiting for some in open PvP zones, but this seems like such a rookie mistake. Hasn’t anyone at BioWare played a PvP MMORPG before?  How about some safe zones or added incentive for the factions that’s outnumber to help bolster their numbers. Or maybe just a faction player cap and definitely no Valor for killing NPCs, that’s just plain idiotic.

If you’re interested in checking out the slaughter, below you can find a video that was recently uploaded by a Republic player.

UPDATE: BioWare has responded by adding a population cap to Illum and are working on correcting the issue where enemy players are able to enter the opposing faction’s safe zone without being killed.

Continued…

So you hit level 10 and you feel like you could take on the whole Empire (or Republic) yourself? Star Wars: The Old Republic allows you to take the fight to the opposite faction via PvP battlegrounds called warzones. There are currently three warzones in the game, all with varying objectives required for victory.

Not only are warzones a fun experience, they also provide good rewards in the form of commendations which can be used to purchase equipment, weapons and consumables. Of course, if you want to get your hands on these goodies you’ll need to get amongst some blaster fire and earn your keep!

Here to assist you on your path to galactic domination and help you and your team to victory is a brief guide to each warzone and some basic strategies.

Continued…

PvP Lead Designer, Gabe Amatangelo, posted an update yesterday about some much needed PvP changes coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The majority of changes are coming to the Warzones and on the Open PvP world of Illum. Warzones will now have a  new level 50 bracket where players at the level cap will be separated from everyone else. I’m not sure why this is restricted to level 50 players only, wouldn’t it be more effective to make the bracket span a few level, say from 40 – 50?

The second major change comes to the open PvP world of Illum with revisions to rewards, more Companion restricted areas and a focus on more player conflict. As part of the reward revisions, Illum will become a major source of Valor for players as new controllable objectives will give factions Valor buffs.

Other general combat features are also being planned such are Ranked Warzone Matches, PvP stats tracking, open world PvP loot drops and more Warzone medals for different objectives, Guard Optimizations and Target Optimizations. Players will also soon be able to select what Warzone they want to play. Thank god, no more Huttball

I haven’t yet reached end-game, but I’m moving along at a decent pace, currently level 34 and at this point I thought I’d be enjoying at least some open PvP goodness. Yet in the last three worlds, Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine and Alderaan, all of which have open PvP zones, I’ve only run across two enemy faction players.

So where’s the PvP? Yes, I know I can join the Warzones, but to be honest, I’ve grew tired of them in Warhammer Online and while BioWare has added new elements and Hutt Ball, I still prefer open PvP much more than warzones, plus I hate Hutt Ball. I basically do my one daily Warzone per day and that’s it.

What I really want is open PvP and while I’m constantly told I’m flagged for PvP, I never see anyone. The two times I did, the guy ran away because I was a few levels above him and the second time we actually fought. He caught me during a mob fight so he killed me first, but 10 secs later after I revived myself, I was able to kill him.

Being my first open PvP kill I was expecting some sort of reward or at least acknowledgement of my first kill, but there was nothing, which just left me with an empty, why bother, feeling. I didn’t even gain XP or Valor for the kill.

Now, I’m not asking for a full fledged PvP rewards system like so many MMORPGs have today, because in my mind that just leads to PvP grinding. But I would like at least some acknowledgement of my efforts. Even something as simple as a personal stat board to show me my kills and deaths.

The problem with the open PvP zones is there is absolutely no incentive for players, which is why they’re empty. Why bother in a open zone when you can queue up for a warzone and get all the rewards? While hardcore PvPers will say the reward is in the kill itself, that’s not enough incentive to get most players to participate, so there has to be some reward be it XP, Valor or something else.

When it comes down to it PvP is flat out broken in Star Wars: The Old Republic and needs to be fixed asap. Being a one character per MMO type of guy, I don’t re-roll or start alts, my biggest concern is getting to the endgame and finding out there’s nothing left for me to do.

At Bioware’s Austin Studio, the first day of the second Fan Site Summit was held where new details to how Star Wars: The Old Republic open world PvP system would work. Up until know, BioWare only briefly talked about the Ilum zone at PAX Prime with a short video and some screenshots, however today we learned the following courtesy of AskaJedi.

• Ilum is a level 50 end-game zone
• About half of the planet’s size is used for the world PvP objective, and it’s a large planet
• There are 5 control points in the zone: a Republic and Empire base at the north and south, as well as 3 central resources
• All 5 points must be under control simultaneously for victory
• Certain control points engage/deploy walkers that can and need to be take down by special shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, and perhaps other means. It takes a good 10 seconds to fire one of these rockets
• Victory conditions award a buff that can stack, which awards extra Valor points (earned during other forms of PvP such as Warzones)
• This buff is faction-wide
• The status is persistent, no timers for the game to artificially start or “reset” – it’s always on
• There are rare crafting resources available throughout the zone
• Zone can hold hundreds of players
• Design accounts for population differences
• Operation (raid) group size is 24 players. (Note: PvE Operation instanced content is designed for 8 or 16, but the group itself can have 24 people in it.)

You can view the PAX Prime Ium world video below.

Continued…

Today was a big day for CCP, the developer behind Eve Online, as they not only released a public apology to their fan base for the whole Incarna/Captain’s Quarters/Virtual Store fiasco, but also announced their plans for a winter expansion.  The expansion, which is planned for 2011, will help alleviate players concerns about the direction Eve Online is heading by completely refocusing the Eve development teams on Eve’s core gameplay: spaceships.

The winter expansion’s goals will be to introduce improvements to warfare and PvP, which will include, but are not limited to the following:

• Hybrid weapons balancing
• Factional warfare
• Assault ships
• Capital ship balancing
• New T2 modules
• Starbase logistics management
• New EWAR-Drones
• T2 Rigs manufacturing
• Ship spinning
• New font
• More captains quarters
• Time dilation

Good new for Eve Online fans who were upset about the direction Eve was heading over the last few months. It seems CCP is not all talk and is following up their words with real action. Can we all be friends again?

Episode 2: Species War is the latest content update to hit Black Prophecy and introduced PvP Warzones. Over the last week or so I strapped myself back into my fighters pilot seat to see just how much Black Prophecy has changed since the launch of Episode 2.

Getting right to it, the biggest issue I found with the Warzones is that they’re always empty. The largest group of players I’ve seen in the last week was four, including myself, which is pretty sad. I’m not sure if this is due to a lack of players, interest in warzones or incentive to participate, but it’s clear it’s a problem.

I don’t believe it’s a lack of interest, one of Black Prophecy’s early issues was a lack of content and the new Warzones greatly help to fix that issue, so I really think it’s a problem with player incentives. Currently players have two incentives to fly into a warzone, Honor Points and faction rewards.

Each of the six warzones has it’s own reward, something like an XP boost, cheaper items from vendors, things of that nature and everyone in the controlling faction receives it. This gives players an general incentive to take over a zone so everyone in their faction receives the reward, but lets be honest, people are greedy and want personal rewards.

This is where Honor Points come in. Each time you kill an enemy pilot or take over a sector in a warzone, you receive honor points. However the problem is that Honer Vendors have astronomical prices, some items costing 500,000 points.  Even the lowest level items cost a minimum of 50,000 points. Couple that with the fact that you’re restricted to only one warzone at a time because of level restrictiosn and you can see that the process becomes even slower.

The currently rewards system leads to honor points grinding. What Black Prophecy needs to do is offer better personal rewards so players have additional incentive other than to grind honor points. Something as simple as a kill board would fit the bill. I think once the incentives have been readjusted and players get a real reason to participate, the Warzones will become a hot spot.

Aside from the emptiness of it, the Warzones are actually really fun even with a few people in them. They just need to figure out how to get them filled.

Below is a brief video intro to Warzones as I try to take one over solo. Enjoy.

Continued…

So you’ve spent the last few weeks grinding the same raid and finally got the epic item you’ve been dying to get.  Congratulations, too bad it sucks in PvP.

Over the last few years we’ve seen the separation between PvP and PvE grow, with developers creating gear specifically tailored for one type of combat, but much less effective in the other. It used to be that each class had that one item per slot that was ‘the best’ item possible for that character, period.  Whether it would be a sword, armor, or additional trinkets, once you got that item, you were done and could move on to obtaining the next item.

Today it seems more and more MMORPGs are having players create two complete character builds in terms of gear, one for PvP and one for PvE. While this isn’t necessarily new, even in MMORPGs where there isn’t a separation, players will still normally switch up certain items when going from PvP to PvE, or vise versa. However today theses items are specifically created for one style of combat in mind.

When looking at Guild Wars 2, this separation has taken another leap forward and one can pretty much make the argument that PvP and PvE are two separate games.

First lets take a look at PvP, which we have two types, PvP matches and World vs World PvP.  For matches, players select from pre-made, max-level characters and only have to disperse their skill points, making PvP matches entirely separate from the rest of GW2. This type of PvP match system can be completely removed from the game and not effect it in the slightest or if you want to go the other way, can be added to any current MMORPG without changing it as well.

The second is the World vs World PvP system where servers are matched up against each other in two week PvP battles. In this system the fighting doesn’t take place in the same areas that PvE does, instead it’s a custom map specifically made for PvP.

While players do enter World vs World with their skills and gear obtained from PvE, it is completely possible to level entirely within one of the systems. Now I’m not 100% sure if gear will be tailored towards PvE and PvP depending where you are, but I’m going to assume it will be since that seems to be the trend these days. So if you take a player that only participate in PvE or only in PvP, their gear will be tailored towards that combat. If they ever decided to dabble in or make the switch they’ll have to re-acquire a whole new set of gear.

One can argue that what GW2 has done is make two separate games, one for PvP and one for PvE, but allow players to use the same character in both, with PvP matches completely independent of both systems.

Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I’m very much into and excited for Guild Wars 2, but when I think of what a MMORPG is, I think of one world where everything is intertwined. What I think ArenaNet did was create two games and mashed them together.  On one side you have a PvE MMORPG and the other you have a massive multiplayer online battle arena (MMOBA). The only connection between the two would be that players use the same character.

Lord of the Rings Online has something similar to this, being a PvE centric MMORPG then having one map dedicated to PvP. Although in their system, there is no end time, no winner, so it turns into a merry-go-round where each side takes turns controlling keeps or areas. Perhaps credit should then be given to Turbine for creating the new MMOBA genre.

Being a more PvP centric player, I really don’t mind the separating that is taking place. In fact I think eventually we’ll see the emergence of a new MMOBA genre where developers eventually drop PvE all together in favor of what ArenaNet is doing with their World vs World system. Until then, I’ll be playing me some GW2.