On the state of PvP

I've seen a lot of moaning lately that the Republic currently sucks in random warzones on The Red Eclipse. Anecdotally, I have to say I agree. Of course things vary depending on the time of day and on who else is queuing up at the time, but generally speaking we seem to be doing more losing than winning as of late, especially when compared to how it was a few months ago.

That's the thing though, there always seems to be a certain ebb and flow when it comes to the power balance between factions. A few months ago it was Imperial PvP that was the pits after several of their major PvP guilds apparently all faltered at the same time, and I regularly felt sorry for the poor Imps that bravely queued up again and again just to get their asses handed to them every time. It's certainly frustrating to experience one losing streak after another, but based on previous experience I think that it's safe to say that it's also something that will pass.

What has been frustrating me though is a visible deterioration in people's attitudes in pugs. Maybe it's related to losing more, as I understand that it's frustrating, but I'm not even talking about generic raging here ("you all suck" etc.), which is something that I've become more tolerant of, but very targeted nastiness. In the past couple of weeks I've had someone whisper me to say that they'd reported me while refusing to tell me what for (in a match that we were winning and where I hadn't even said anything), I've been singled out as "terrible" for failing to get a pass off in Huttball while dogpiled, I've had people call me and my guildies names, and last night I was called the c-word in Ancient Hypergates for losing a pylon to a stealther tag team.

There's always been the odd asshat in the game, but I don't recall having to deal with rude behaviour this frequently. It's easy to say that you shouldn't let it get to you, but if I run into that kind of thing enough times it will get to me, at least in the sense that I'll find myself thinking that it's no fun to have random people spout profanities at me and that I can find better things to do with my time. I seriously hope that this is only a temporary thing brought on by some particularly bad matches.

With that little rant out of the way, things aren't always that dire of course. Warzones still provide plenty of entertainment if you know where to look. First off, this is what I'd call "overexplaining", as seen in Huttball:

Up next, the award for the most awful yet funny pun name I've seen in a long time goes to:

This guy made me laugh as well though:

(I wonder if including that screenshot will result in even more "Bear Grylls knives" spam comments.) Finally, you think it's embarrassing to die to an obstacle in Huttball? Then try this: