SWTOR Drops Ranked Warzones on the updated 1.3 PTS

Written by: (@WadeDMcGinnis) | June 21, 2012 4:00 am

15 Comments

Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Principal Lead PvP Designer Gabe Amatangelo dropped a blog post on the SWTOR site discussing the addition of Ranked Warzones and a number of PvP features added to the updated 1.3 PTS.

Major highlights  include:

  • Players are able to form an eight man team at level 50 to queue for Ranked Warzones.
  • Dual queuing – players are able to queue for a normal Warzone by themselves or with that same group while they wait for a Ranked Warzone.
  • Players will find after a match that their group has not been disbanded.
  • Team Rating is tied to the player and not the team.
  • If players are match against a skilled team versus an unskilled team, various factors are in place to ensure the unskilled team’s rating will drop less than normal. The opposite is true for the skilled team.
  • Solo Ranked Warzone queues are in the works.

The update is a nice start for the PvP community.

Let us know in the comments below if there was something you really wanted in the update that wasn’t there or if you’re pumped for ranked matches.

star wars the old republic mmorpg mmorpg     Ranked Warzones Originally Posted by Bioware
Hi, I’m Gabe Amatangelo, Principal Lead PvP Designer, and I’m excited to tell you guys that Pre-Season One of Team Ranked Warzones is back on the Public Test Server! In the current Game Update 1.3 PTS build, you’ll find a new button in the Warzone queue window: Queue Team Ranked. This button is available to any player that is in a group of eight level 50 players, and allows that group to queue up for Team Ranked Warzones with a single click. Team Ranked Warzones can only be participated in by a full team of eight players. If any player drops out of the queue before a match is made, the team will need to find a replacement and re-queue.We are also introducing a concept to Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ called ‘dual queuing’. With dual queuing, players will be able to queue for a normal Warzone, either by themselves or with a different group, while remaining queued for a Team Ranked Warzone with that group.Queuing for a normal Warzone while waiting for a Team Ranked Warzone will not affect your position in the Ranked Warzone queue, and spots will be reserved in a Ranked Warzone match for players who are queued, but currently in a normal Warzone. Players who are in a Ranked Warzone match will not receive further invites for normal Warzones until they either play through the Ranked match, or leave the queue.Also introduced in this build is Warzone group persistence. In other words, when you queue up as a group of up to four for normal Warzones or as a full team group of eight for Ranked Warzones, you will remain in that group at the conclusion of the match. We completely agree with you that this feature was needed for Warzones and is especially required for the Ranked Warzones feature when dealing with a full team group of eight players. We are excited to see the tech in place for it in Game Update 1.3.Ranked Warzones will award Ranked Warzone Commendations instead of regular Warzone Commendations at the conclusion of matches. Additionally, every player will have a ‘Team Rating’ that can be seen on the Warzone queue window, character page, and on the ‘Who’ list by all other players if it is a high rating. Ranked Warzone Commendations are still used to purchase the best PvP gear and Ratings remain requirements for gear and vehicles with unique appearances.

A player’s Team Rating is not tied to a specific combination of players, but to the individual player, and is a measure of that player’s success when participating in full team queued Ranked Warzones. So you can queue up with an entirely different full team of eight players every match if you want to.

Ratings are adjusted when a player wins a match, loses a match, leaves a match early, or declines a match invite. Various elements factor in to the adjustment, including your team’s predicted chance to win the match, the ratings of players on your team, the enemy team, etc. In short, if the only match available is between skilled PvP players and unskilled PvP players and the unskilled players lose, their rating would not go down much, if at all.

Before Season One begins with official rankings, we intend to rank and post the players and guilds with top Pre-Season ratings. Season One will begin with completely new ratings. Additionally, we do intend to have a Solo Queue Ranked Warzone option in the future.

Those of you on the Public Test Server can now queue up for Team Ranked Warzones and test this feature out now. Be sure to submit any feedback to our PTS forum here.

Thanks!

SWTOR Drops Ranked Warzones on the updated 1.3 PTS

  • jon Tang

    The background music is really annoying 

    • Damir Miric

      I alredy said that 10 times on other videos they did it.

    • Camzillasmom

      totally agree on the annoying background music. GBTV Crew, you’re at your best without.

      Had to quit watching after 15s but I’m sure the content was great ;-p

  • Damir Miric

    Dual queueing woah what a stupidity. So people will be leaving matches even more in normals and spoil the game for everyone. 

    Just imagine tank guading the tower on Alderan leaves and says nothing or ball carrier. Woah how could they make such an idiotic feature.

    • SeNtReX

      Thats not how it works.
      For Ranked WZ  : spots will be reserved in a Ranked Warzone match for players who are queued, but currently in a normal Warzone. So when match is done you will be able to join the Ranked one. Thats how i read it.

      • Damir Miric

        In theory. But in practice ppl will leave normal wzs

        • Malloci

          Yeah this is the first thing that came to mind when i heard this, i dont understand why anyone thinks this is a good idea.

          • Kagitaar

            Yeah, that seems to be an issue in my mind as well. What reward is there for you to stay when your real queue pops?

  • gary lusk

    loud music

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/FJR5OIFQII4WKUPYIHXMODD44Y Monolyth Tha Great

    LOLswtor

  • http://twitter.com/cipero Matt Cipriano

    Gary, good stuff man. Need to update the b-roll one of these days to actually reflect the features you’re talking about. Just have your boys on the PTS get some fraps action going.

  • Joseph Gabrielli

    Clearly gary isnt very good at this =p

  • Key Foster

    Nice post, I like all of it, even the music lol.

  • nexxe

    Ranked Warzones fail.  You can’t even get ratings until you play at least 10 RWZ games.  You can’t even see other player’s ratings or stats either.  With dying populations, it’s going to be even harder to get 8 people together.  I’ve tried it on the test server, and it’s not that great.

    • Bronopoly

      Considering how elo rating systems work (assumes a player’s mean value over time), 10 RWZs before displaying a value seems reasonable. Within the first few games a player’s rating is likely to increase or decline significantly and, as such, showing the earlier ratings is rather pointless.

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