Yesterday, Allison Berryman took the time to seek out Rob Hinkle, Senior PvP Designer, and get a few questions from the PvP community answered that were originally asked in this forum thread. Some of the information revealed pertains to Ancient Hypergates, Ranked Warzones, Season 1, and 8-man team queues in non-ranked Warzones.

Originally posted by AllisonBerryman (Source)

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Hey everyone! I don’t have answers to all the questions in the OP and throughout the thread, but I’ll keep them coming as I’m able to. Here are a couple I got answers for after talking to Rob Hinkle (Senior PvP Designer).

Ancient Hypergates will be available in the Ranked Warzones queue as soon as it’s in-game; no wait for it to get added.

Regarding queuing as an 8-player team for non-ranked Warzones: We won’t say “never,” but we don’t have plans for this right now. We want to try to keep the regular Warzones competitive in their own right, and allowing full pre-mades to potentially match with a full PUG could be problematic. We’d want to avoid situations like that.

For Ranked Warzones and queuing with less than 8 players: This is something we have plans for, but we haven’t announced a timeframe for it (it won’t be available in 1.4).

About Season 1: Right now, we have a little more work that needs to be done overall before we’re ready to officially kick it off, and I can tell you that it won’t be launched as part of 1.4. We’ll keep you updated! The PvP game won’t be neglected – we do have Ancient Hypergates on the way as well as new PvP gear, and we have a lot more in store for you!

The good news: at least the PvP community has received some answers, and may be getting more in the future. The bad news? Most of them aren’t that encouraging, and from the looks of it– Game Update 1.4 won’t be very focused on PvP fixes and updates to current in-game content.

Yesterday, BioWare posted a community blog article detailing some of the behind-the-scenes plans and goals for Team Ranked Warzones, which will hopefully reach live servers when Game Update 1.3 hits. You can check out the article here.

Here’s one of the most important bits of the article:

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.

We will not be pushing Team Ranked Warzones to the live game until we have significant PTS testing of the feature. Fortunately, 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.

Check out the community response to this community blog here, and keep reading to find out some responses straight from the community!

At the London MCM Expo held on May 26th, there was a SWTOR panel with Emmanuel Lusinchi that focused on some highlights of Game Update 1.3. Some interesting points were revealed. The entire panel can be seen on Gamespot’s Twitch TV. A very awesome transcribe of the panel can also be found over at Dulfy’s site.

One of the most interesting bits, I found, was regarding the future implementation of ranked warzones. Click “continue reading” to find out what went on.

After canceling the release of Ranked Warzones a single day before players were expecting them, Bioware has yet to give us an update on their status. They haven’t even said the typical “we’re working on it but can’t set a deadline” and no one on the dev team has commented. Unfortunately, if they had good news I bet we would hear it, but right now all we get is silence.

Of course the fans aren’t being silent. There are rumors that thousand of players resubscribed to the game just for ranked warzones. From their perspective, Bioware waited to announce the delay of ranked warzones as a marketing and business plan to gain subscriptions.