Darth Hater

Welcome back to yet another installment of the Darth Hater PvP column, where we’ll collect and update the news about PvP that matters to the PvP community. This thread will be updated periodically as necessary throughout the week, so you can refer back to it for new information. If you have any tips on current content that should be featured, or if you think your PvP video or PvP guild should be featured in a future column, send them to darth@darthhater.com.

This week’s installment looks at the new warzone Ancient Hypergates, a great explanatory hybrid sage healer PvP video, and some interesting discussion topics. Hit the jump for all the PvP news from the past week.

News

Official SWTOR Posts:

No official posts of any relevance were posted, though some PvP events were featured in BioWare’s Community Round-up. 

Devtracker Highlights:

No Devtracker posts of PvP note for this week. As discussed last week, we should see increased activity in the forums from the community team, and this was confirmed by Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez in the forums. 

PvP Patch Changes:

Patch Notes: 1.3.6: http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/21365-patch-notes-1-3-6-8-21-12

General

• Corrected an issue that prevented players from receiving the correct rewards when a Warzone match was completed very quickly.
• Warzone Information is once again displayed in the Warzone interface.

Community Highlight

Around the Forums – Discussion Highlights:

gpwarner argues that BioWare should make Huttball a spectator sport, and allow games to be set up and spectated by players.

MelliMelon presents a video of 8 Scrapper Scoundrels in one Warzone. 

random_kick presents his newest Guardian PvP video.

TwistedTony asks about the viability of Vengeance Juggernauts in Rated Warzones. 

PvP Video Spotlight:

This week’s PvP video spotlight comes to us from Damonshine, playing Frankbooth on Tomb of Freedon Nadd (EU). His Hyrbid Sage skills are formidable indeed, but what I like most about this video is that explanations of what is happening are given throughout, so you understand how he is doing some of the insane stuff in the video. This is my favorite style of PvP video and I am very excited to be able to present this one for your approval. You can check out Damonshine's channel here.

Op-Ed: Ancient Hypergates and the return of Khaine’s Embrace

So at Gamescom we got confirmation that Ancient Hypergates is a two-point exploding capture map. Those of you who have played Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will recognize this map: Khaine’s Embrace, one of the initially low-level scenarios, was this type. For those of you who haven’t, I’ll explain. There are two points on the map. When you capture both and hold them for a short period of time (about 10 seconds in WAR), you score points.

Oh yeah, and then they explode.

There’s a middle area that is safe, but that otherwise has no strategic benefit (there’s no point here to capture). When the flags explode, this area turns into a desperate struggle for survival as players attempt to retreat to it after fighting for the flags. Players are slowed, snared, and knocked into the incoming explosion. Low-health players make extreme sacrifices to keep enemy players from escaping the blast radius. As the blast clears, whoever is left in the middle emerges to attempt to recapture the flags again for more points.

You may be able to tell that I am a huge fan of this type of map. I really think that it is one of the more unique PvP game types available out there, and forces all players to remain situationally aware. It’s also pretty fun to throw a fleeing player into a massive explosion.

While we don’t have much high-quality footage of the game type and don’t know 100% how scoring will work, it appears that kills grant some points while most points are derived from capturing both flags. [EDIT: Commenter Frag971 pointed me to the fact that kills are stored as points, the value of these kills increases over time and points are awarded when both points are captured.] Here is some more footage of the warzone, taken at Gamescom:

Poll: Are you excited for Ancient Hypergates?

Last week’s poll: Free-to-Play and Ranked Warzones

Question 1: Do you think BioWare WILL allow free accounts to participate in ranked warzones?

Yes 6.1%
No, but I think they will be able to unlock them via Cartel Coins 84.8%
No, and they won’t be able to lift this restriction with Cartel Coins 9.1%

Question 2: Do you think BioWare SHOULD allow free accounts to participate in ranked warzones?

Yes 10.3%
No, but I think they should allow them to be unlocked via Cartel Coins 62.1%
No, and I don’t think they should allow them to be unlocked via Cartel Coins 27.6%