For those of you who know me you may be wondering what I’m doing writing about PVP, being the self-professed PVE’er/Carebear/raider that I am. Well I’m not! Writing this article I mean. What I have for you here is an excerpt of Rigelhav’s The 13th Warrior, an extensive and very impressive recounting of his experiences at San Diego Comic Con and his whopping 13 PVP matches which he managed to get in. With his permission I am re-posting choice parts of his post but for the whole deal I would urge you to visit his post over at Ex Votos’ site. So less from this carebear person and more from Rigelhav!

Alderaan View

WHAT IS ALDARAAN?

Aldaraan is a Warzone or PVP battleground match for Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Touted as a PVP match for level 10 characters in the waiting lines, the characters were actually level 11 or 12 in this demo, depending on the day with level 12 being the level for the last 2 days.  I believe the last time we saw this Warzone around the time of the Fansite Summit aka SWTOUR, they were playing it with level 22 characters.

THE GOAL?

The goal of the Aldaraan Warzone is to control 3 control points in different areas of the map – a center control point, a control point on the left side of the map, and a control point on the right side of the map.  The areas are separated by various building walls and various terrain.  The closest thing you can probably compare it to would be something like World of Warcraft’s Arathi Basin, but with 3 control points instead of 5 control points.  There are other games with similar battlegrounds, but not done quite like this.

When your side controls that point, your side controls one of the Warzone’s 3 gun turrets and it begins firing upon the other faction’s capital ship up in the lower sky.  Your side or faction wins once the other ship goes down in flames which happens once it gets down to 0 health.  It takes approximately 6-10 seconds to grab a control point which shows as a ‘casting bar’.  I would guess 8 seconds.  Taking any kind of damage interrupts this action which is a great way to defend the point if your team controls it and you are able to switch targets easily.

The turrets do not seem to start firing immediately after you seize control and it also seems the turret shots might be at random intervals to keep it fun and unpredictable.

QUEUING

Similar to other MMORPGs, you can queue up for PVP anywhere.  They had us in an area where we wouldn’t get into trouble as we players are wont to do.  When it matches each team up with enough opponents, each team gets a pop-up window where they can click to enter the match.  In the bottom right corner of the UI, there is an icon for your faction and there are 2 ways to enter the match:

1. Click the icon to bring up a Warzone menu and select Aldaraan that way.

2. Right click the icon and you can queue for the Warzone with a rightclick menu instead of a nearly fullscreen pop-up.

When the match pops, you get the typical fanfare that says your match is ready.  Click to enter Warzone or there’s the option to cancel out of it.  First and last day we got to queue up for the matches ourselves.  The middle days we entered the room already in queue.

Rigelhav has illustrated for us all.

STARTING POINT

At the start of the match, you are in a faction-only area on a capital ship overlooking the field below, complete with a single PVP vendor.  At this level, this vendor had 3 items in the store.  One item was a PVP-only ‘health potion’ that restores a large amount of health.  The next item was a PVP-only consumable that restores your action bar.  I think those 2 only cost like 1 or 2 marks.  The last one cost 10 marks and was more interesting.  It gave you 6 consumables and a random chance of a PVP item if I’m recalling it correctly.

You have a great aerial view of the whole Warzone up there with 2 windows covered with force fields protecting you.  After 60 seconds, speeder bikes appear at each window.  You right-click the speeder bike to use it and hop on then you promptly are flying off the ship and down to the ground below.

This is also the same point you return to when your character dies in this Warzone.  Thus, it is impossible to ‘camp the GY’ to grief people due to this brilliant mechanic.  Like it’s been pointed out before, when you die, you can instantly click to respawn to this safe point.  The respawn timer is really the flight down to the floor below and it also gives you a quick glimpse of things from above before you are hoofing it to the control points.

Once your speeder lands on the ground below, the only way back up to the ship is death.

THE MAP

Pressing M on your map (which they had all the new people do), shows you the whole Warzone and where the 3 control points are located.  I was able to test the map transparency feature when you move around with your map up in my PVP matches and in my Esseles run.  I have no idea what other fansites were fussing about.  The transparency was fine to me.  More on that in my recap of the Esseles experience perhaps.

The focus of the map is the center area which is a multi-level area with a control point in the middle.  It has ramps going up on each side on the left and right that curve around the center control point that give a good platform to launch ranged attacks on anyone foolish to try taking your control point.  Those ramps also had a back hallway path that lead towards the other control point area on that side.  You had to jump down from the 2nd floor there, but when you land, there is a power-up.  The center control point is pretty much dead center of the map.

This center area also has a passage that ran underground and thus underneath the center control point that linked both the left and right control points.  There was an awesome speed boost power up located on each side when you first go down the ramp.

The previous screenshots we have of the Warzone are the same concept, but the map has been completely redone in a much, much improved fashion.  There is far more detail everywhere you go.  Grass, patches, junk, consoles, different walls.  Environmental artists apparently have been going nuts on this Warzone, fleshing out the details.  Hopefully, they can get us some more updated shots of the Warzone, the map, and the control points.

You can see the turrets firing on the capital ships, even from the ground.

The map in more detail. Rigelhav whipped up a map from memory. That's what I call dedication.

As a bonus feature for reading this far (and as an afterthought), I added a map I of the Warzone I tried to recall from memory. Please note that I am just sketching things as I remember them and it’s not anywhere near as awesome as the real map. It’s general. It’s Photoshop. It’s not to scale (I don’t have THAT much free time). Picture the center area a little larger with the tight hallways above and below a bit narrower. With that out of the way, read on, my friend, read on:

MAP LEGEND:

A - Where the Republic speeders land.  You can jump off the ledge there to go left or center/right.  There is a wall in the middle so you have to make that choice.  Similar to G for the Empire.

B - This area has a catwalk around the center control point.  There is a ramp leading up to the catwalk on each side.  The catwalk is a great spot for the Sniper and Gunslinger.  You can walk underneath the catwalk also so the center control point has a lot of line of sight points, open areas, and advantage points.

C - This ramp leads down to the basement (see map below) and comes out eventually to D.

D - This ramp leads down to the basement (see map below) and comes out eventually to C.

E - The left control point.  It’s a platform with 3 ways up.  Not so easy to defend unless you see the enemy coming.  There is lots of debris around the platform.  Might be more than the few spots I remember.

F - The right control point.  It’s a platform with 3 ways up.  Not so easy to defend unless you see the enemy coming.  There is lots of debris around the platform.  Might be more than the few spots I remember.

G - Where the Empire speeders land.  You can jump off the ledge there to go left or center/right.  There is a wall in the middle so you have to make that choice.  Similar to A for the Republic.

H - A hilly ramp that leads to a health powerup.

I - A hilly ramp that leads to a health powerup.

J - From the catwalk (2nd floor) there’s a hallway that servers as an escape route, but it ends abruptly.  You have to jump.  When you land, there’s a 50% damage power up below you can grab on your way to the outer control point or if you want to zip down to the basement or even circle around.

K - From the catwalk (2nd floor) there’s a hallway that servers as an escape route, but it ends abruptly.  You have to jump.  When you land, there’s a 50% damage power up below you can grab on your way to the outer control point or if you want to zip down to the basement or even circle around.

L - Down the ramp to the basement leads to a speed boost powerup that seems to last for about 10 seconds.  It’s long enough to run from L up the ramp at D and over to front stairs of F.

M - Down the ramp to the basement leads to a speed boost powerup that seems to last for about 10 seconds.  It’s long enough to run from M up the ramp at C and over to front stairs of E.

Power Ups

POWER UPS

Power ups were placed in various locations: there were some that healed you (white) or gave temporary 50% damage boost for a few seconds (red) or gave a temporary speed boost for a few seconds (white).  I think I heard someone say one of them was an invulnerability buff for a few seconds as well.

THE SHIPS

Each faction’s capital ship has 500 health points at the start of the match.  The turrets seem to take this ship health bar apart bit by bit roughly 15-20 points at a time.  I’m guessing a little more damage is done if you control all 3 turrets and ending the match faster.

Once you ship hits 0, the match is over.  You lose – the other side wins.  And vice versa.  We had one long match end with 15 to 0.  It went back and forth constantly since we were pretty evenly matched.

END OF MATCH

At the end of the match when one side’s ship reaches 0 health left, the summary window pops up.  It shows like they said before, top damages, top heals, top kills, and pretty sure the one for tanks guarding was there (that shows the damage you helped protect a party member) although I did not hunt for it specifically.

You could give a commendation to someone on your team on that window.  Every team member is selectable except for yourself.

You also get marks at the end of the match.  Some matches I noticed 7 marks as a reward. This also shows in their current build as a buff on your character with the number of marks on the buff.  One of the staff there had said 6 marks is good and 4 is not too bad if you want a reference.  On matches where my team is just getting killed left and right, I could only pull off 4 marks.  Other matches were we dominated, were the 6-7 mark.

Alderaan View

PVP was very balanced at that level.  I think that is really what they wanted to showcase at Bioware Base – that the harder part of PVP to work on actually is starting to get there, it’s fun, and they wanted to show the changes they’ve made so far.  Normally, MMORPGs balance only the endgame PVP but that can make it unfun if you like to PVP as you level up since those are often still unbalanced or not quite as balanced as endgame at best.  I think this also makes another interesting statement for Bioware to its MMORPG brethren.

The other thing to keep in mind here is that this is roughly a demo of very balanced level 10 PVP.  At it’s core – everything is definitely balanced.  This allows them to build on top of that base instead of fudging things at the endgame like many other MMORPGs who rushed their product out the door and ignored low and mid-game balance.  Now, each of these Advanced Classes will have additional abilities as they level up for class, advanced class, and skill trees.  So each of those will need to be tweaked and balanced for PVP, but now that job is far easier with a solid reference level of where things should be and what they want to strive for at endgame.

Thank you so much from all of us, Rigelhav, for letting us share your work with our readers!

This was only a small excerpt of Rigelhav’s full write-up so if you want the full deal I would recommend you visit Ex Votos. Right now!