Hi, I’m Gabe Amatangelo, Principal Lead PvP Designer, and I’m excited to tell you guys that Pre-Season One of Team Ranked Warzones is back on the Public Test Server! In the current Game Update 1.3 PTS build, you’ll find a new button in the Warzone queue window: Queue Team Ranked. This button is available to any player that is in a group of eight level 50 players, and allows that group to queue up for Team Ranked Warzones with a single click. Team Ranked Warzones can only be participated in by a full team of eight players. If any player drops out of the queue before a match is made, the team will need to find a replacement and re-queue.

We are also introducing a concept to Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ called ‘dual queuing’. With dual queuing, players will be able to queue for a normal Warzone, either by themselves or with a different group, while remaining queued for a Team Ranked Warzone with that group.

Queuing for a normal Warzone while waiting for a Team Ranked Warzone will not affect your position in the Ranked Warzone queue, and spots will be reserved in a Ranked Warzone match for players who are queued, but currently in a normal Warzone. Players who are in a Ranked Warzone match will not receive further invites for normal Warzones until they either play through the Ranked match, or leave the queue.

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.

A player’s Team Rating is not tied to a specific combination of players, but to the individual player, and is a measure of that player’s success when participating in full team queued Ranked Warzones. So you can queue up with an entirely different full team of eight players every match if you want to.

Ratings are adjusted when a player wins a match, loses a match, leaves a match early, or declines a match invite. Various elements factor in to the adjustment, including your team’s predicted chance to win the match, the ratings of players on your team, the enemy team, etc. In short, if the only match available is between skilled PvP players and unskilled PvP players and the unskilled players lose, their rating would not go down much, if at all.

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.

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.

Thanks!

Gabe Amantangelo

Principal Lead PvP Designer