When I returned from holiday in Sweden a few weeks ago, Mox and Jason of Corellian Run Radio gave me homework. "Let us know what you think of the roadmap", they said - and so I read through the document and created a page full of notes like a good girl. I figured that, since I'd already written it out, I might as well put together a blogpost. Of course this was two weeks ago and now the roadmap is already old news. But you're going to read this post anyway. *Waves hand*
This is my baby sage, togruta Ashrava. When Traitine of Constant Warfare invited her to join him and Shintar for some PvP on his stream, I thought about it for a while before I agreed. I said yes because I had seen his previous PvP stream and it seemed like fun, but also because I love trying new things, even when I'm terrified of doing them. I should probably elucidate a bit on the latter.
I was playing with my friend Marinka the other day and I thought it'd be fun to show her how PvP works. We queued for the baby lowbie bracket (level 10-29), so we would be up against other inexperienced players. Conrad joined as well. We went over our snipers' skills and I explained focus targeting. We barely had any skills at this low level but who cares, we were having fun.
Hey all, this is Yuniper. Yuniper is a flavour-of-the-month (FOTM) operative. As I wrote earlier, healing operatives are in a very good spot at the moment, beating other healers left and right, especially in arenas. So that's why I'm superbusy leveling mine. Because I'm only interested in PWNing others, obviously.
I could of course instead be totally hipster and play a class that is currently in a weak to mediocre spot before it is cool.
I always think of the FOTM question that rises in every MMO now and then as amusing. There are people who get totally wound up about playing a class that is in a better spot than others and refuse to play one, or accuse others of playing one. Some might actually swap their main for another class because they don't want to be playing a "FOTM-class". Many do of course roll and play one instead "for lolz".
Me, I won't stop playing my sorcerer healer just because she's less optimal for some type of fights, because I love the class to bits. But I will level my operative because it seems the only way to get a taste of ranked PvP.
In about a week, the PvP update will be released and arenas will be added to the game. So I thought now would be the right time give you a look into what to expect (and totally not because I've been slacking with finishing this post of course! *cough*).
You all know my great sorrow after the news that 8vs8 ranked warzones are going to be removed from the game, but I'm a positive girl, so I tried to cheer myself up by investigating their replacement: 4vs4 arenas. So for the first time in my life, I copied my characters to the public test server (PTS) and tried some out. This is what I experienced:
Epic dramatic background music would've been appropriate. My apologies for the lack thereof.
Sorcs & sages in arenas
After I got stomped several times on healing sage Ravanel I swapped to healing sorcerer Fárah instead - she has way better PvP gear so that has to count for something, right? RIGHT?
To clarify, I'm talking about healing sorcs here, my main spec and the one I use in ranked.
So what happened? Even on my properly geared sorc we got stomped and stomped. I recorded those matches on video and watched them back, but I couldn't see any significant mistakes I made. Sorc healers everywhere notice how they are now getting enough heals off in warzones and fail to keep the group alive.
Right now, healing sorcerers aren't viable in arenas against a group of similar skill with an operative healer. The same counts for mercenary healers.
Why? Because class balance issues present in 8vs8 warzones get exacerbated and become very significant in 4vs4 where pressure is high and the only objective is to kill the others. Remember:
1) Defensive cooldowns: these are non-existent apart from Force Barrier, which use doesn't allow you to do anything else (= rest of the team dies)
2) Spec shutdown: Interrupt Healing Trance/Innervate and there's only the slow Deliverance/Dark Infusion or the force insufficient Benevolence/Dark Heal left. Provided you get them off. The AoE heal Salvation/Revivivication is a hotspot that people need to fysicially stand in, making themselves vulnerable to smashers.
3) Force management: It's inevitable to run out of force after a while. With constant pressure on you, it's suicidal to use Noble Sacrifice/Consumption to get force back (it damages your health).
So, what happens to Heal 2 Full, line of sight and let them pay for trying to kill you? Well, I guess you can heal to full if you're line of sighting and healing yourself. However, the rest of the team will die in the meanwhile.
Operatives do have defensive cooldowns (Dodge and Shield Probe) and they can keep on healing when they are up. If they would need to line of sight, they can have HoTs on the rest of their team that will still heal them.
A glance into the crystal ball
Now all of this is of course officially 'subject to change'. However, I think the three recent dev answers to exactly the sorc problems mentioned here aren't exactly a source of great hope (they basically told us to live with these problems and learn to play). We can expect no class updates within the coming months.
What what are my options?
Keep playing healing sorc: you probably can get away with this in regular warzones when playing against a team with less experience, however it won't be viable in ranked.
Switch to DPS sorc: even though these are squishy as well, they can still deal okay damage. I'll never be as good on a DPS class as I am on healer, though.
Roll an operative: this is basically what every ranked healing sorc on my server is doing. I'll need to level Yuniper up all the way from level 18 onwards, and I'm not sure if I like operative heals as much as sorc.
Play a DPS class: the highest one I'm not utterly crap at is a sniper, but she's level 20 or so still. I doubt I'll be able to play her on ranked quality though.
So what does the ball predict?
First, the servers will be overflown with scoundrel/operative healers, since the other healing classes are way behind. Guardian/juggernauts are also preferable to shadows/assassins in arenas, so we might see a bit more of them as well.
As free-to-play players will get unlimited access to warzones, we'll find a higher amount of casual players in our warzones who are unfamiliar with the mechanics. Arenas will be mixed with the other warzones - there will be no option to pick whether you want to play them or not when you queue. This might encourage people to play deathmatch in other warzones as well (as opposed to following objectives).
The 'base group' for an arena will consist of:
guardian/juggernaut tank
scoundrel/operative healer
2x DPS class
However, players on the PTS have already been experimenting with other group compositions that might be fun to try out.
To the left a regular team (voice chat is theirs), to the right the "Super Dong Cleave" team.
This setup revolves around having 3 or 4 DPS vanguards/powertechs spamming loads of AoE damage. Will work until groups learn to position themselves so that they are never grouped up (although they will be pulled into the AoE now and then).
This group stacks Madness sorcs, heavily depending on DoTs. Without healing sorcs in the opposite team (as a result of the aforementioned) or due to the sheer number of DoTs players are getting attached to themselves, damage output is pretty crazy.
Conclusion
Knowing that I won't be able to play my favorite class in ranked greatly diminishes my initial curiosity/careful enthusiasm for arenas. In addition, I don't think arenas are 'for me'. For as far as you're able to make any objective opinion after getting stomped over and over, I thought the lack of objectives and constant killing made the gameplay plainly boring. The experience strangely enough reminded me a bit of shooter games, which I really don't enjoy playing.
Winning or losing a warzone will depend strongly on what class composition you have and are up against. From what people have tried out on the PTS, either the basic team or stacking classes is a win. There's a fat chance people will want to play it safe by taking the jugg x op x DPS composition. I think this is a shame, as I believe class diversity is something that makes warzones more fun. Everyone playing the same classes is just (excuse me for saying it again) boring.
That said, we can't be sure how big the influence of arenas will be since there are still the old warzones mixed in the regular warzone queue. Also, regular warzones will be less affected than ranked ones. I do look forward to trying Dong Cleave for giggles with my vanguard, and I just hope I'll discover the (hopefully existing) charm of arenas when the time is there.
With many thanks to Tiger for keeping me up to date with all the arena streams posted.
So the new sorcerer representative went to the devs and got three answers to his questions. Yay! ...right?
Here's a quick recap:
1. Defensive Cooldowns (PvP/PvE)
"The biggest problem the sorcerer faces is one of survivability.
Currently the sorcerer takes the most damage by a sizable margin, one
that is noticeable in raids and PvP (our guess is around 20%). While we
have some tools that assist in keeping us alive, they are insufficient
and inferior when compared to other classes. (...) So with all this in mind, do you think that this very obvious disparity
between sorcerers/sages and every other class’ defensive cooldowns are
fair?"
"There may be a little room for improvement here,
though comparing a Sorcerer to a Marauder or Sniper is not exactly a
fair comparison. The fact is, Marauders and Snipers cannot heal
themselves to full. Sure, you cannot deal damage while you are healing,
but knowing when to heal or when to deal damage is part of playing a
Sorcerer. (...) As a Sorcerer, you must play defensively and make them pay for trying to kill you."
TL;DR: Sorcerers should heal themselves in between the DPSing to make up for taking more damage.
It is interesting how the devs don't think having to stop DPSing to heal yourself doesn't give your class a disadvantage over others such as snipers/slingers and marauders/sentinels in a raid, who can just keep DPSing with their defensive cooldowns up. Especially considering that these other classes already generally score higher on DPS without either healing themselves in raids (cause yeah, nobody actually does that). Why would you then bring a sorc to your raid?
It is also interesting how the devs only seem to have considered DPS sorcs in their answer, while this problem is even more apparent for healing sorcs, in PvP specifically. Healing sorcerers/sages are too squishy to survive arenas, but more about that in this post.
"A big problem we face as sorcerer/sage is that our specs (all of them) are very easily shut down. For example; madness and its dots are too easily cleansed, corruption has far too many casted abilities and is extremely prone to interrupts, and lightning falls victim to severe LoS. Thundering blast and AoE heals being the biggest offenders. The other classes/specs we compete with on the battlefield have some sort of protection against a lot of what might be detrimental to their jobs. (...) Given the current state of PvP, is it intended for our class to be so easy to shut down?"
"It is not intended for Sorcerers to be easier to stop because they can heal while specialized to DPS or vice versa; however, the ability to heal is considered to be part of a Sorcerer’s overall survivability. (...) Sorcerer’s are an “easy to play, hard to master” class, in that most of their abilities are rather straight-forward and easily understood, but getting the most out of those abilities may require a higher skill level than many players are comfortable with."
TL;DR: Learn to play. Also, something unrelated about being able to heal.
While I think sorcs aren't in a terrible spot in PvP DPS wise, the representative does make valid points regarding the ability to cleanse DoTs and interrupt channels (also for healing!) in PvP. It's mind-boggling how the dev just ignores the whole point about DPS and heals being shut down and instead babbles something about survivability and learn to play.
"In the current state of PvP and soon to be 4v4s it is going to become a challenge for Corruption and Madness sorcerers to maintain force. In long, drawn out fights which we can expect to see in 4v4, madness and corruption will likely run into force issues. As corruption and it’s fairly easy spec to shut down, it will become increasingly difficult as the fights drag on to keep yourself alive and your teammates (most likely the tank). As you start to fall behind in force trying to keep some of your cast’s instant, it will not be optimal to start sacrificing your health. (...) Is there any plan to add some force management abilities/talents/mechanics to our corruption and madness trees? (...)"
"We currently have no plans to add any extra Force management abilities, skills, or mechanics to Corruption or Madness. (...) In PvP, healers should not be able to keep everyone alive either because too much damage is being done (...) within a short timeframe – not because they are running out of resources. If this is not the case for a well-played Corruption Sorcerer, then we will make necessary adjustments when it becomes more apparent." "The Critical Rating stat is currently adjusted to a level that grants a critical chance with which we are not completely satisfied, and this means that some specializations lacking a built-in auto-crit are at a disadvantage (...). We will be working to rectify this issue with the Critical Rating stat in the future, and that should alleviate some issues (...)."
This reply is actually answering the question, makes sense and even gives the impression the devs understood what was asked. An unicum!
I'm happy to hear that something will be done about the crit stat being broken at level cap, even though it doesn't sound like it's going to be anywhere near in the future. As a healing (corruption) sorcerer force management in PvP is indeed challenging and I believe arenas won't prove survivable (but again, more about that in this post). In PvE my highest annoyance is that consumption (skill to get force back) costs a global cooldown, in PvP it is that it is dangerous to use. Try gaining some force back while there are two marauders jumping on you in an arena... you'll just run out of health.
Heal to full
Save the last one, the devs weren't exactly taking any of the questions seriously. In fact, it seemed as if they didn't understand them at all and answered with different topics. The hard-to-master comment is especially cynical since the devs have recently shown they could do with some learn-to-play themselves (they got annihilated by players over and over in arenas on the public test server).
So over the past weekend, the dev's ignorance rapidly developed into a micro-meme, complete with guild and numerous character renames (of which one in my guild). The devs have reacted that players should "deal with it" and respect them. Seems to me like that didn't work the other way around in the first place.
But hey, what do I know, I should probably first L2H2F*...
The last few days, people around me have been buzzing with disbelief, sadness and anger at the news that ranked warzones are going to be removed from the game with update 2.4. Assistant designer Alex Modny wrote on his developer blog:
"A smelly part of those Tauntaun guts is that for Game Update 2.4 we are removing 8v8 Warzones from the Ranked Queue. We are sad to see it go but the truth is that because of many factors not enough people played them and we didn’t support them well enough, so they are going away for now. Getting eight friends together and hoping another eight people are doing the same at the exact same time AND your two teams were equally matched was a nightmare for the players."
No ranked anymore? So what will competitive PvPers have to do then? I quote:
"Right now, the Warzone maps we have in the queue focus on full team, objective based combat with a series of goals needing to be accomplished for the team to win. In 2.4 we are introducing Arenas, a Last Team Standing Warzone in which players have only one goal: to eliminate all players on the opposing team. That’s it. No planting bombs, capturing points, just a team of four versus your team of four in a battle royale to determine the victor."
Ranked players will just have to play deathmatch instead of spending their time on silly things like objectives.
Now there are just so many reasons I feel this is wrong. I'll name a few:
1) Arenas don't equal Ranked
Once more, Alex Modny:
"The same amount of attention to team strategy and coordination will be required in high level Warzone Arena play so right now we want to focus on Warzone Arenas for the current Ranked matches."
This is a promise I don't believe the devs can keep.
Remember that Huttball where the enemy team obliterated your DPS but somehow lost with 6-0? Right, that was because they were playing team deathmatch in the middle and not objectives. I'm sure everyone playing warzones remembers a similar event and this is exactly the reason why Alex is wrong. Killing players of the other team has always been an objective in current ranked, but it is an objective that has to be balanced with other objectives, such as scoring a goal, defending, or capturing a node. This requires a high level of awareness of what is going on and a prioritization of the team effort over yourself. With deathmatches having no objectives and only four players it sure may be easier to form teams, but it will certainly be a different form of gameplay (dare I say, perhaps a more casual one?).
It is mind-boggling that the developers seem to think that arenas can replace ranked. The two sorts obviously have completely different objectives and a completely different team dynamic.
2) Don't fix it...
While the developers might believe the current ranked warzones are broken, I think the fact that people are enjoying them proves that they are not. Scour the official forum, and you'll find loads of useful and less-useful ideas from the community to improve ranked warzones. These threads should not be interpreted as an indication of them being broken, but as a sign of people truly caring. Just like others write down ideas about their class, operations or gameplay balance. Look at the zeal and passion the community has displayed since day one when it comes to crucial topics such as nerfing operatives, yet the little buggers are still around (nerf operatives!). Why should ranked warzones be treated differently?
In my opinion, the ranked warzones function well and are great matches to play. As with all high skill level requiring gameplay, it has a limited player base. How many guilds per server are progressing in Nightmare mode operations? The fact that there aren't many doesn't mean Nightmare mode should be removed all together. This is a problem many MMOs face. Challenging content may be played by a minority, but this doesn't mean you should only listen to the masses and reduce your game to a Farmville skill level.
Removing something that people enjoy is not a way to fix it. Sure, more people playing ranked would be great, but I think I speak for many as I say we'd much much much rather keep ranked warzones as they are than not being able to play them at all.
3) Breaking up communities
Not enough people queuing to being able to constantly fight ranked warzones whenever you want is not the problem the devs apparently want us to believe. Motivated players have looked for ways to circumvent this problem, by communicating about when to queue against other teams. Wait, so people are communicating with each other instead of just using the queuing system anonymously, and this is considered a bad thing? Yup, seems so.
Let me look at my own server, the Red Eclipse, as an example. Despite officially being a PvE server (!), it has its own forum with a thriving PvP section, where people post when and with whom to queue for ranked, together with the occasional organization of ranked kickball events (wherein players of different teams mix up together for fun). An in-game chat channel for ranked PvP was created to communicate as well as an IRC channel for cross-faction communication. One player was as generous as to gave out voice chat details or anyone needing communication for ranked. Ranked players often drop down to other group's voice chat to discuss the ranked scene on a friendly base and fill in spots on other teams when needed.
Ranked warzones as they are now don't limit our gaming experience, they enhance it in ways Bioware did not foresee. The ranked scene feels more like a community than I've ever encountered in SWTOR before, and then I'm not even remotely as much involved as many others.
4) Recent events
With the introduction of paid server transfers about a month ago, many players from the ranked guilds of my servers transferred to the Tomb of Freedon Nadd to play against other guilds of high skill. It was often a difficult decision, as players left non-ranked friends behind. I can imagine that finding out those thousands of cartel coins were spent on something that won't exist anymore within a few months leaves a sour taste.
At the same time, the ranked scene at the Red Eclipse got to know new players who felt they could give ranked a try as the remaining teams to play against consisted of ranked 'noobs' as well. Many guilds tried to assemble a team, sometimes even a cross-guild team, resulting in the revival of ranked on the server. Ranked may not be as sophisticated as on the Tomb of Freedon Nadd, but it's a lot of fun nevertheless.
My point is that it takes a lot of effort and time to build a ranked team. Removing ranked warzones as they are is pretty much a blow in the face for all the players who took that effort.
5) Personal
I have not written about it before, but I've recently gotten into ranked on the Red Eclipse. This summer our Rep guild went into temporarily hibernation (many people were on holiday) and Tiger and I joined a wonderful Imp guild that had many PvP enthusiastic players. Tiger ended up becoming PvP Officer, assembling a ranked team for our guild (I'm the team's sorc healer, Tiger takes care of the operative heals). Topics on our guild's forum were opened about ranked PvP specs and gear. We spent the last month working our arses of to gear up and get some team experience. Even though no one had played ranked before, we have been doing pretty okay, and it's been amazing fun.
I can safely say that ranked is one of the things that hugely motivates me to play SWTOR right now.
Summary
I'm not against change, but I think it's a great shame that perfectly well designed gameplay like this is thrown out of the window. Ranked is already there and there is no good reason not to let it stay, Arenas and Ranked can just coexist. Removing Ranked is a totally unnecessary move that will deprive a lot of players of the thing they like doing the most. Whether you play ranked yourself or not, if you agree, please sign this petition on the forum. I'm not getting my hopes up, but you never know. Let the devs hear what you think!
TL;DR
Ranked warzones should not be removed, so get off your lazy arse and sign the petition here.
Just a short post to tell you that I made it: I did one million healing in a warzone!
It was in an Ancient Hypergate (Voidstar would've been another suitable candidate). Tiger was guarding me a lot and we were nearly impossible to kill together. The first two rounds consisted of just insane constant fighting in the middle. It was hard work, but a lot of fun!
The question is what my next goal is going to be. Two million? This seems impossible at the moment, but perhaps it's possible in ranked warzones. However, I've never played ranked before and my guild doesn't have a team. It is said it's super tough, so I'm not planning on trying it anytime soon. However, I'm almost level 55 now and unranked level 55 is close. I wonder what that will bring.
This was our Hypergate, with many thanks to Tiger (Rheiya) and my friend Telperíon for the protection.
Yesterday was the first day of Makeb! So did I run to my ship for some first class disaster tourism and giant slugs? I did not. It all comes down to boyfriend aggro.
Yup, boyfriend aggro. I'm sure you've all heard of 'wife aggro' or 'girlfriend aggro', but 'boyfriend aggro' certainly exists as well. While I wanted to go to the new planet to check out what's new, Tiger just wanted to PvP.
"Makeb's out and you want to PVP?!"
"Yes, Makeb is full of quests." *looks disgusted* "Besides, we can do lowbie PvP on our level 50's now."
"But but.. there's a whole new story, surely you want to check that out?"
"We can PvP and I'll play my guardian. I will guard you always and nobody will be able to take you down!"
His eyes were just twinkling with PvP so much that I understood there wouldn't be much point trying to get him to do something else. And secretly, I was also a bit curious at what it would be like to PvP on my sage. She hit level 50 before we tried lowbie PvP and I only healed in PvE on her. Of course I do have some PvP healing experience from my sorcerer Fárah. But Ravanel is wearing full Dreadguard with the best augments and everything. Surely that had to count for something?
The results were hilarious.
Ridiculous healing in Voidstar. Tiger was playing his sage Adelynn because Belaselle promised to guard me.
Some observations:
Numbers overall have gone up so much! It's of course because everything gets scaled up to level 50 or higher, but it's funny when you're used to lowbie PvP as it used to be. Before the expansion, getting over 400k damage was already ridiculously high, and now people are getting 600k without effort. And look at that healing. My next goal is 1 million!
Fighting feels so much quicker. Inductions are shorter (alacrity has been buffed) and people deal more damage. Playing warzones has a different feeling to it, they are over before you realize. It's something to get used to, but I like it so far.
Of course we lost this Voidstar because of some the high damage of the other team and some people not calling out when their door got attacked. Some things never change.
Healing on Ravanel in PvP was fun. She's just so much better than Fárah! I will play some warzones while leveling up to 55. I just hope I won't level too quickly.
Eventually, I got Tiger to come to Makeb with me and of course he did like it after all. I'll write about that in my next post.
I wrote earlier that I liked the smuggler story so much, but I could not
have foreseen that I would level my little gunslinger as fast as I've
done the past month. She's actually my highest leveled character after sage Ravanel now!
While the class story still is fun, I've become a bit bored with the landscape quests. Even though the quests look pretty cool, being fully voiced and all, it's the same bunch all over again for each character - there's only one planet per level range (two if you count Republic + Imperial worlds), as opposed to LotRO, where there are multiple regions to pick from. I'm not such a sucker for quests in the first place - they start to look all the same for me in each game. So what changed Y-u'no's life so rapidly?
Going lowbie
The answer is simple: lowbie PvP! I have been wanting to try PvP in SWTOR for a long time, but I was afraid to queue up solo, because I didn't know how it worked and didn't want to mess up for everyone. I'm usually pretty terrible at PvP. Finally, a guild mate wanted to show me the ropes, while Tiger was sitting next to me, dictating me around giving me useful tips about how to play my character. And it was fun!
At first, I died a LOT. Even though I was supposed to be shooting at people from a far distance. I just forgot to move and couldn't keep up with everything that was happening around me. I ended up halfway the scoreboard as a general rule, but I was already happy I wasn't at the bottom!
It's nice to play warzones together with Tiger. The best thing is to queue up for warzones with a bunch of friends and try out crazy plans. I like the occasional solo queue as well, though.
Team Gank in preparation. No I don't need to pee, I'm dancing! Very important WZ preparation technique! What, you didn't know? *rolls eyes*
Twink twink
Then one day, Y-u'no got a mail from a guild mate. It was full of mods, armourings, augments and augmentation kits. The guy takes an evil pleasure in twinking his guildie's lowbie PvP characters and observes them obliverating their opponents. I like to think it's not *only* due to the new twink gear, but nowadays I'm more or less on the top of the scoreboard. Not at the top, of course, that place is reserved for Tiger. He has some sort of DNA code that makes him deal the most damage of everyone around him - doesn't matter what game (it's the same in LotRO). I'm still a noob now, but as I'm learning it gets more and more fun.
I've been playing PvP matches from level 15 or so onwards, and I've leveled quicker than I could've imagined. In addition, Y-u'no mysteriously ended up being the richest of all my characters - apart from just handing in the daily PvP quests, I've been selling some warzone stims and medpacs. A full stack of 99 currently goes for 99k of credits. Now I'm above level 40, I spend my comms on ranked warzone commendations, so I'm able to buy the PvP set when I hit 50 (or wait for the expansion and the level cap of 55 to use them) - although I'm not sure if I ever want to do serious ranked PvP on her: I may suck too much!
Y-u'no's favourite spot, up high, where she waits for the targets volunteering to get shot at.
Favourite occupations
Hutball: what's possibly better than dominating the upper ramps and shooting at helpless people who can't do anything back?
Civil War: defending the middle from high up is Y-u'no's speciality. Assassins or operatives are my bane, but luckily on lowbie most aren't too bright and let me kick them in the nuts + send them back down.
Novare Coast: whether it's defending a turret, running around to help where needed or fight a hot battle over mid, I like this warzone. Only downside is when people don't call our incomings, but that's the case for all the defensive maps.
I realize I just gave away my secret warzone tactics to those playing on the Red Eclipse. I'll get prepared for flamey death!
It's official: even noobs may end up at the top of the scoreboard! (Click for a larger image.)
Who's that Y-u'no person again?
Y-u'no is a young flygirl with a multiple name disorder that just manages to make ends meet by smuggling goods. She doesn't like dangerous situations, but is sometimes forced to take part in them in order to earn her credits. Luckily she has a talent to escape certain death. In warzones, Y-u'no likes to keep a safe distance, preferably seated at a high place, shooting while others cannot reach her. Recently, she has specialised herself as a cybertech, crafting parts to keep herself outfitted with the best gear. She's now already level 43!
Just like everyone else, I went to Ilum to check out the new event. As everyone knows, PvP on Ilum is dead. Just read Shintar's The strangeness of Ilum one year later. Patch 1.7 was going to bring some life into open world PvP on Ilum, though, or so the rumours told us. So how did it turn out?
Ilum PvP
My adventure started with the obligatory polite protocol droid, this time sending me off to Ilum to investigate a strange Gree landing. The Gree are a somewhat mysterious but generally friendly race, or so I thought, but okay, off we go.
On Ilum, I soon found that there were two different areas: a large area to the north where dailies could be completed, and a small circular area in the south where PvP-related quests took place. Off to the PvP-area then, to see what it had to offer. I went with some guild mates in a party. Forming a raid wasn't possible: probably an attempt of Bioware to prevent huge gank fests.
The PvP-quests seemed to revolve around bringing glowy thingies to a pylon, much like in the warzone Ancient Hypergate. Only this time, both Republic and Imperial forces had to bring them to the same pylon, over which, I assume, we were supposed to fight.
The only problem: the numbers of both teams were that large, that a fight would end up being a massive slaughter, and nobody would be able to use the pylon at all. So when I arrived, people were actually peacefully lining up in order to use the pylon. Sure, there was some nagging with stealthers interrupting people interacting with the pylon now and then, but people generally didn't seem to want to fight. Ignoring each other was the fastest way to proceed the quest.
Don't be shy Tiger - crawl into the tauntaun to warm yourself, like a true Star Wars enthusiast!
The closest thing to PvP we encountered, was an oddball that was stealthed next to a quest crystal and attacked us... only to find out that we were with four and he alone.
In short, there wasn't much actual PvP going on on Ilum, although it was nice to get some 'free' warzone commendations for handing in the quests (100 commendations per quest).
Quests and rewards
Apart from the PvP quests, Tiger and I also checked out some in the non-PvP area. They were nothing than your regular dailies - gathering some here, killing some there. Not much interesting apart from the dead tauntaun above (awwws...). There was much competition for quest items and mobs because there were so many people around. Hopping to another layer wasn't really an option - even instance number 13 (!) was full at that moment.
So why do we need to do another set of dailies? What's in it, for me?
These tentacle guys will make your wet Mass Effect RP dreams come true
As far as I've seen, the rewards are mostly cosmetic. There are some cool weapons, among which lightsabers with a special Gree-tech appearance. Most importantly, the weapons are bound to legacy, meaning you can use it to transfer certain items from Imperial to Republic characters and vise versa. I will want this to eventually get myself a purple crystal for Delanee. There are also new outfits that look like they come right from Mass Effect:
From left to right, from top to bottom: Blue Scalene Set, Red Scalene Set, White Scalene Set, Gray Helix Saberstaff and Gray Helix Autocannon. I didn't put on the silly head pieces to prevent making it all look even more ridiculous.
I really like the look of these armour sets, especially the white one, but it looks out of place on a jedi sage. I prefer the dresses myself. The looks are so good that I'd almost consider rolling a trooper for the set only, but I don't know if I can bear the daily grind. I really don't feel that enthusiastic about grinding dailies, and I have little time to play alltogether.
The White Scalene Set and Gray Helix Autocannon on an NPC model, including the 'interesting' head piece.
Summary
I was perhaps a bit too enthusiastic in my post title, but so far I haven't seen much real open world PvP on Ilum, which is a shame. Perhaps this will change during the coming days, when (if) the areas get a bit less crowded; perhaps it will continue like this for the rest of the event. If the developers would really have wanted open PvP, they should have included a daily quest like "kill 5 Imperial players" - but that might've caused a lot of outcries and drama.
For me, I'll just do a bit of dailies here and there - it probably won't be enough to get me a legacy saber, but whatever. I will try the dailies on other planets as well as the world bosses the coming few days.
When I logged in the other day in the festival area, a distinct lack of festival NPC's caught my eye. I had missed the last day of the festival, aargh! I almost had enough tokens to get the beautiful new festival dress when I logged off the evening before, but now I'll have to wait another year to get it. I'm absolutely terrible at remembering such things as festival dates. Sigh.
Fashion show
I didn't know much to do as there was no raid planned and not many people on, so I logged my warg to check something out that I had initially missed: the creeps had also gotten cosmetics with the Anniversary Festival, in the form of special skins! Here some I tried out:
From left to right: Black Moria Uruk Appearance (Blackarrow), Shak-hai Smith Appearance (Blackarrow), Corpulent Orc Appearance (Reaver) and Drake masked Gangling Appearance (Defiler). Click here for a larger image. I might add more pictures later.
How does it work?
Depending on how old your account is, you get a certain amount of Tokens of Dedication:
less than a year: no tokens
1-2 years: 1 token
3-4 years: 2 tokens
5 years: 3 tokens
There is a skin available for 1 token and one for 2 tokens. My account is 4 years old, so that meant I could choose between either the cheap or the more expensive skin, but I could not get them both. I got my boyfriend to roll a creep, try a skin, and then reroll the same class to try the other skin. He doesn't play his creeps seriously anyway, so he had not done anything on them yet and didn't care to delete and recreate. The result was a great fashion show of which the mannequins would cause Charles Worth to turn in his grave.
Creepy names
Somehow I'm a lore-addict on freep side, but as soon as I'm on creep side I don't really care anymore (sorry, creeps!). Sure, you can name your creep something terrifying in Black Speech, but I'm fine too with horrible puns. Thus I created a spider called "Ravenomous" and eventually settled for the dark purple skin (picture below) because it looked, well, more er... 'venomous' than the other. Also, I've already seen a lot of people run around with the pretty epic hairy one (picture above), and it's a bit boring to look the same as everyone else.
Creeping around
After doing the introduction quests on my new spider (sweet commendations!), I spent the rest of the evening sneaking around in a warg pack with my tribe mates. It was great fun! I'm rank 3 and still feel extremely squishy, but it's not as bad as it used to be. Not sure if my rank 0 boyfriend warg agrees, but let's keep it at that. It's funny how being stealthed is still bugged: instead of half look-through we are all totally look-through, even while in the same fellowship. We therefore marked each other so we could at least know where everyone was. I love sneaking around in a group, it's so much fun, especially when chatting on Vent!
I choose the Twisted Warg skin from the Tower of Orthanc Acid trash (picture below, left warg) - gosh those things totally freak me out when I'm raiding! It's getting better now we don't wipe on every trash pull anymore, but those three yellow staring eyes are still pretty creepy. Below my boyfriend and I at our most common spot of residence (sigh) yesterday: see how totally disgusting I look! Why oh why didn't I take that beautiful tiger-like skin my boyfriend took? I guess I hope everyone is as much of a whimp as I am. I myself would certainly totally freak out if I would get sneaked upon by a warg looking like myself.
Why? Because class balance issues present in 8vs8 warzones get exacerbated and become very significant in 4vs4 where pressure is high and the only objective is to kill the others. Remember:
Save the last one, the devs weren't exactly taking any of the questions seriously. In fact, it seemed as if they didn't understand them at all and answered with different topics. The hard-to-master comment is especially cynical since the devs have recently shown they could do with some learn-to-play themselves (they got annihilated by players over and over in arenas on the public test server).
