"The notion that you don't mount in SWTOR PvP is absolutely incorrect. Unless you're heading for mid on Hoth, you absolutely mount up, if you don't then you're not getting to that point before the other team; they'll cap it before you get there."

I don't know what you're talking about here: you CAN'T use mounts in warzones, period, and there is no warzone set on Hoth (You've got Alderaan, a spaceship, and the Huttball arena on Nar Shaddaa). I don't know if maybe you were referring to Ilum when you said Hoth, but even though you can mount on Ilum, he was specifically discussing warzones, not world PVP or TOR PVP in general.

"The ideal that you get to know you team purely because there's only 7 other people is utterly false. You get to know people that you PvP with because there's no cross realm PvP so you're often on the same team with the same people over and over again."

That's ... what he said: "The smaller teams make a difference. You get to know your team members as well as your opponents. The names are familiar, especially since SW:TOR doesn't have cross-server matching. It's a much more personal kind of PvP, and it's one that helps build community." Yes, the main thing is the fact that you're only playing with people on your server so you see the same people all the time, but smaller teams play a factor as well. Even in WoW, I notice the names of my teammates a lot more often in WSG or even AB than I do in AV or Isle.

"SWTOR's reward system is horribly broken at this point"

This comment (along with the inaccurate comment about Hoth and mounts in Warzones) makes me believe you don't really play SWTOR and therefore don't have a solid grasp on how the systems in the game work.

"The system also vastly favors hybrid characters over pure characters. As a DPS Commando with access to healing abilities, I can easily max the Damage Done badges and get the first Healing Done badge, plus I get the High Crit badge and the 10k Heal Badge. A Sentinel with no healing abilities is shorted two to three badges every match because of that -- although with Biochem it's possible to make a medkit that will give you the 10k heal one."

Uh...not really. It's pretty tough to hit those numbers as a non-hybrid. Additionally there are rewards that are Tank only, etc.

"The badge system, while great in theory, is very poorly implemented in SWTOR. Further, since the better rewards come from badges, the game becomes focused not on winning the objective but on getting as many badges as possible. "

Compared to the WoW system of "HKs = more honor" its pretty well implemented. You get rewarded for doing your job in a warzone, as opposed to being rewarded by honor farming HKs.

If you defend an objective you get Medals, you get nothing in WoW.
If, as a tank, you prevent damage to your allies, you get Medals, you get nothing in WoW.
If you heal your teammates you get Medals, you get nothing in WoW.

Sounds like a pretty good implementation to me.

"The badge system, while great in theory, is very poorly implemented in SWTOR. Further, since the better rewards come from badges, the game becomes focused not on winning the objective but on getting as many badges as possible. "

1) You get Commendations from warzones, not badges. This is a semantic argument, but I feel it needs to be addressed.
2) Earning Medals increases the number of Commendations you receive.
3) Most medals, come from either completing objectives for the warzone, or by properly performing your class role. In Huttball, for example, you get medals for scoring points.
4) You gain more commendations for winning a warzone than losing a warzone.
5) Your daily/weekly warzone quests, at max level, are "Win X Warzones"

Explain to me exactly how this system discourages participation and doesn't make a team want to win.

"A Sentinel with no healing abilities is shorted two to three badges every match because of that -- although with Biochem it's possible to make a medkit that will give you the 10k heal one."

And to further elaborate on that specific point; as a 50 Sith Juggernaut I can always cap out on the Damage Prevention Badge (3/3) almost always get a defender badge (turret defense in Alderaan or killing the ball carrier in Huttball) plus the Commando badge (for participating in 10+ kills)

So I'm almost always at 5 Medals....and Sentinel = Juggernaut. The classes are identical.

"And to further elaborate on that specific point; as a 50 Sith Juggernaut I can always cap out on the Damage Prevention Badge (3/3) almost always get a defender badge (turret defense in Alderaan or killing the ball carrier in Huttball) plus the Commando badge (for participating in 10+ kills)"

Untrue. Juggernauts are akin to Guardians, a Sentinel is the same as the Marauder. Sents/Maras do not have damage prevention nor healing abilities, ergo they have no means of qualifying for those Badges. Getting 3/3 in your respective archtype is easy for any class/spec. A healer can go 3/3 healing, a DPS can go 3/3 damage, a tank can go 3/3 damage prevention. However, healers and tanks can also easily go 1/3 or 2/3 in damage while pure DPS cannot do the same. There are also "burst" Badges. One for a large single hit, one for a large single heal, and another for a long string of damage protection; these have the same issues as the base Badges.

"Explain to me exactly how this system discourages participation and doesn't make a team want to win."

Because "4) You gain more commendations for winning a warzone than losing a warzone" is not balanced at all. If one goes Medal farming in a warzone, it is beyond easy to gain enough Medals in order to earn more Commendations and be on the losing team than someone that didn't Medal farm and is on the winning team. Getting Medals is far more valuable than actually winning.

You potential to gain Medals when assaulting a point in Alderaan is much lower than your potential to gain Medals when defending a point in Alderaan. This is because fewer people coordinate attacks on nodes, particularly the far nodes, and assaulting node points doesn't provide the same contribution towards gaining Medals as defending as point does. Assaulting a point comes with a higher chance of death, death significantly cuts back on your ability to gain Medals, especially when there are Medals that require you to be alive for a prolonged length of time.

This is why even Michael said that people are often "yelled at to get off defense and go fight." His assertion that having all these people defending a point is a good thing is incorrect, it's a bad thing, but those people are Medal farming because they want Commendations. They gain far less benefit from attacking points while doing this, and winning on losing has an insignificant impact on their total Commendation gain.

"If you heal your teammates you get Medals, you get nothing in WoW."

Not true, they changed this a long time ago that healing allows for contribution points towards gaining Honor for HKs.

The others in your list are only partially true. Tanks don't have tools to prevent damage from players in PvP in WoW as they do in SWTOR. This is a base design difference that Blizzard would have to completely re-design far more than just tanks to compensate for. To say that tank's aren't rewarded for contributing their role in PvP, though, isn't true. Tanks in WoW, as a general rule, have more control tools and are able to take more damage than other specs/classes. Their "role" in PvP is to soak damage and control other players, and they are rewarded for doing that with Honor.

Defending also has perks, you gain 50% more honor while defending a node. Thus there is a reward for defending. The problem with that has more so to do with the established player tactics in BGs and the difference in BG design. For example, AB has 5 control points compared to Alderaan's 3. While it seems fairly minor, this is actually a primary reason why the similar perks fail in one situation but not in the other. In both AB and Alderaan, there's generally only going to be a single "contested" node at any given time. You usually won't see 4 people attack mid and 4 people attack right/left. Nor would you see 5 people attack LM while 5 attack BS. Usually, the attacking team focuses on a single node.

In SWTOR, that's fine. If mid is contested, there's on left/right to think about, and there will always be a few strays testing your defenses. In AB, the same happens, but there's more points. If one team controls Stables, LM, and BS while the other controls Mine and Farm, most of the attacking is probably going to be in the LM/BS area. With players already focusing on the battles threatening 4 nodes, it's easy to forget about the fifth node that's stationed away from the action. This is usually how every single AB plays out and those left defending Mine get screwed purely because no one attacks it.

The same would happen in SWTOR, too. If you were stuck defending a node that no one attacked, you would get far less Medals than someone that was defending or attacking an active node. Yet, because there's only 3 nodes, none of them ever go without any action. If AB was just Stables, BS, and Farm, it would play out exactly like Alderaan and defenders would get just as much as a reward.

That is the major difference between WoW and SWTOR BG PvP; map size. WoW BGs are vast, they're epic battlegrounds that are meant to show the grand scope of the war. SWTOR BGs are tiny in comparison. Alderaan is probably half the size of WSG. If WoW just shrunk the map size of their BGs, it would go a long way in increasing the pacing of the battles.

AB to EotS is a great example. EotS has 4 nodes to AB's 5, not a major difference, but you never see a point in EotS where none of the nodes see any action. EosT is a smaller map than AB.

People don't have an innate want to defend a point. They want action. You can give any rewards for defending that you want, it won't matter. Look at Voidstar. How often do you see teams where everyone focuses on a single door. All the attackers, all the defenders, they all just rush a single side. Why? The other side is just as close, there's no difference, but there's no action there. It'd be more prudent to attack/defend the empty side, but people will totally ignore it specifically because there's no fighting going on.

@tyler,

Complaining that people just go in to warzones to farm medals is the strangest reason to promote WOW over SWTOR. There are plenty of people in battlegrounds that are just there to farm honorable kills/honor, so don't pay any attention to the objectives there either, so that topic is a wash between the two games. Some people are just out for themselves no matter what game they play.

And as for an extra mechanic for healers in battlegrounds? That mechanic is: if you are standing nearby a teammate killing an opponent, you are included in the honorable kill. This is not a healer-only mechanic, and you don't even have to be doing something relevant to get it.

The 50% honor increase for defenders sounds familiar, but what good does it do if you are a lone defender getting killed by 5 attackers. If you don't take an objective (return a flag, defend a node, etc.) or kill anyone, 50% of 0 is still 0.