Do you enjoy writing SWTOR guides for your fellow guildmates or on the official forums? Are you always maximizing your GTN profits and coming up with new, awesome ideas for DPS rotations? If so, we want to hear from you!

Force Junkies is looking to add a few more enthusiastic, talented volunteer writers to our team. This time around we’re looking for specific columns to be written.

• Crew Skills and Credits

• Professional Tank

• Dealing Damage

• Warzone Combat Log

If you know your class like the back of your own hand and constantly lead Ops, you might be the Sith or Pub we’re looking for.

All that we ask is that you’re a true fan of the game and can show us that you know a thing or two about writing. You’re more than welcome to set your own schedule and write whenever your feel inspired..

If you have any questions or would like to apply to become a writer for Junkies Nation and Force Junkies, please feel free to contact Jason Dodge at dreagon@rerollz.net or Garrett Charkalis at garret@rerollz.com. Make sure to have a writing sample handy when you contact us!

/Salute

Silverstrike

I tweeted last week about playing Warzones in SWTOR. The comment was “If you can’t tell who the rookie is, it’s you.” With that mind set, I held my head high and carried the rookie tag with pride. Needless to say I took many blaster bolts to the cranium.

There is hope though, fellow rookie Warzone adventurers! It is safe to say my skills have improved and there is a definite PvP future in my playtime. Keep reading for all the gory details of my Warzone experience.

As part of BioWare’s regular Meet the Developers feature, players were able to ask Rob Hinkle, Sr. Systems Designer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, a few questions. A few of the questions that were asked was regarding future PvP updates. Rob’s answers revealed nothing definite per say, but they did hint at a few reasons for SWTOR’s PvPers to keep a careful watch on the forums and in-game updates. Keep reading to see the corresponding question and answer.

With Game Update 1.6 fresh on the PTS, players are now able to preview the new Warzone, Ancient Hypergate, which will be available on live servers when 1.6 launches. Just in case you haven’t had a chance to check out the Warzone for yourself, here’s a video preview of some basic Ancient Hypergate action:

Special thanks to Physics for sharing his video on Youtube!

During Wednesday’s launch of Game Update 1.4, one very interesting change made its way to SWTOR’s live servers without being documented in the original Patch Notes. With this change, players who are queued up for both a Flashpoint in the Group Finder and a Warzone will find themselves taken out of the Group Finder queue if they accept a Warzone invite. Here is Allison Berryman’s forum reply confirming the change:

Originally posted by AllisonBerryman (Source)

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Hey everyone, I wanted to post to clarify that this was an intentional change that unfortunately did not get documented in the patch notes. We’ve added the patch note (you can read the full patch notes here).

Here is the note:

Players who are queued for Group Finder content are now removed from the queue if they accept an invitation to a Warzone.

We apologize for the confusion about this change!

This change came as a surprise to many players who will routinely join both queues in order to play a couple Warzones while waiting for the Group Finder queue, which can sometimes take longer (especially for DPS players) to pop. On the flip side, this change was most likely done in order to cut back on players declining Group Finder queues due to being in a Warzone. Anyone who’s been in a Group Finder group knows that players repeatedly declining an invitation can get a bit frustrating. Still, it’s unfortunate that the change wasn’t correctly documented.

This change now correctly shows up in the official Patch Notes.

Massively posted a two-part specific class guide to Huttball that offers tips and discuses strategies individual classes often use to succeed while playing a match in the Warzone. Players might think their particular class isn’t very useful in Huttball, but in reality, every class has a niche of sorts. Here is what the author says:

Admittedly, certain classes do have more utilities that make them a better fit for the game, but I believe every class has its role in this particular arena. And more importantly, I believe that every class can have fun and feel useful. However, some players need a bit of training.

The article goes on to explain specific strategies and abilities that players of various specs can think about using. It also describes the areas where each class will excel at in a Huttball match. In all likelihood, this advice is probably more suited toward newer players, but even experienced Huttball fans may learn a thing or two.

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!

We got an update late yesterday from Gab Amatangelo, Lead PVP Designer, on the upcoming ranked warzones in a new blog post.

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.

This is a long awaited feature for many players. A common theme to most players is that they really enjoy the PVP in SWTOR. Finally bringing a competitive nature outside individual warzones is a fantastic step forward. We can’t wait to see what comes from this.

Star Wars: The Old Republic’s presentation just concluded at EA’s E3 show and Dr. Ray Muzyka had some pretty exciting things to say. With a video everyone will likely be able to see soon, the good Doctor gave us a ton of new things coming down the pipe for all SWTOR fans.

• Ranked Warzones and PVP
• Level Cap Increase
• New Planet: Makeb which deals with the Hutts
• New playable species: Cathar
• New Companion for everyone: HK Series Assassin Droid
• New Nightmare Hardmodes
• New Operation
• Server Transfers
• New Space Missions – Think Lando attacking the Deathstar in Jedi
• Free to play up through level 15

Stay tuned for more details as we find them out.

Video after the break.