Just another day in the warzone

I was a bit wary of stepping into warzones at max level, since I was highly aware of the fact that there would be no more bolstering, gear suddenly mattered, and I would start out at the very bottom of the totem pole. However, I'm very glad that I dared to give it a go eventually, because it's been oodles of fun.

Yes, I did feel very powerless at the start. The combat medic's lack of mobility still annoys me sometimes. In a frantic PvP battle, the ability lag that so many forum posters are complaining about and that I never really noticed in PvE is apparent even to me, though I'm not sure whether "ability lag" is even the right term for it. It just feels like animations and gameplay are a bit out of sync in some cases, so a cast might not actually go off even though it looked like it, or you might find yourself stunned or rooted with no real visible indicator of what's going on (this one happens to me a lot).

And of course, at the worst of times, you might find yourself sitting in the warzone queue for a long time, just to be thrown into a match where your team is several members short (one of the "perks" of playing the less popular faction) and you end up getting farmed near the spawn point while the enemy semi-premade owns you at Huttball. Been there, done that.

However, I do love the overall feel of warzones. I'm generally not a fan of playing melee classes, but I love to watch other people's Jedi whirl through the air and slash the enemy with their lightsabers. I love how each warzone has all these ramps, tunnels, nooks and crannies that reward strategic positioning, and I'm still learning new tricks every day.

I love the goodie bags that I get from the daily quests. I've been told that gearing up for PvP is grindy and annoying, but seeing how I'm not really that focused on it, every quest reward simply feels like a welcome bonus. Getting at least a couple of pieces with expertise on them isn't that expensive either, and every little helps.

But most of all, I love the feeling of community that I see developing in the warzones. TOR PvPers are certainly no angels, and I have seen the occasional moan about how this or that enemy class is overpowered or how people aren't paying enough attention to the objectives. However, for each of these negative comments I've seen about ten useful or simply positive ones. People greet each other and talk strategy. Incomings are called out and reacted to. Enemy healers are identified and marked up by the ops leader for easier targeting. Congratulations and cheers abound when things go well. And this is all in pugs!

In the last couple of days alone I've had some particularly awesome games. There was the Voidstar where our ops leader immediately complained about the system making him leader again, and then led us to an amazing victory against what was a pretty strong enemy team. There was the Huttball game where we were 0-2 down within the first couple of minutes but then ended up turning things around and into a 5-2 victory. Or the Civil War game where I guarded the left turret on my own for the entirety of the game, but every time I needed help and called out, the same trooper came running over to rescue me and then thanked me for doing such a good job defending. I could go on and on.

I have to admit that I was a bit dismayed when I read in last week's Q&A what sounded to me like a hint that Bioware intends to introduce cross-server queuing for warzones in the future, even if they were kind of vague about it. Since PvP isn't the main focus of the game for me, I certainly wouldn't rage-quit over it or anything, but the notion does make me a little sad. I reckon that now is probably the best time to get into SWTOR PvP, balance issues and all - because I don't know how long this enthusiasm and community spirit will last.