Yesterday was SWTOR's Guild Summit. There were a number of sessions, one of which involved the game's PvP content. I had to check this one out of course, but my expectations were pretty low. I don't play SWTOR for PvP and probably never will.
For once, I wish a developer would just come out and say, "This is not that kind of game." Instead they answer questions in a way to keep players on the hook even though they will probably never get what they truly want. Feels like High School/College all over again.
Ilum. They pretty much said they didn't like the state of Ilum and were going back to the drawing board. Of course, they also had no information to give about how they were actually going to fix it. Doesn't look like much will change in the near future.
Ranked Warzones. I have nothing against rated pvp, but these tend to be very team oriented . I prefer more solo options since I just don't have the time to be a part of a team anymore. Will solo be a viable and fun path? We'll see. These ranked warzones also give a new tier of gear, which I'm not sure how I feel about.
Medals. Now on to something more positive. I do like the medal system in SWTOR's warzones. They provide a fine grained way to reward players as opposed to just kills or winning the match. They will soon be adding 18 more medals which sounds great.
Several of the medals will be for finishing the scenario early. get the medal for the earliest finish and you get all of the time based medals. It should provide incentive to win instead of farm. They are also adding a medal (Valor) cap, to go along with the idea of winning and not farming.
New Warzone. There will be a new warzone coming up in 1.4, which should put the number up to 4. Still well behind WAR in terms of variety, but getting there. It will suppost same faction battles. In fact, they said all warzones will be made to support same faction fighting.
While I like that Huttball allowed for same faction fighting, making every warzone support that does not sit well. You can justify it through the lore by making it a 'training simulation', but in the end it just waters down the 'us versus them' aspect of the game.
Overall, I was not too thrilled with this presentation. The Legacy presentation, on the other hand, was awesome. More on that later this week.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
SWTOR PvP Update
