We've received the word on high about the current BoA leveling gear:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> 80-85 and Heirloom items

The gear stats will not update as you progress from 80-85 (level 80 stats are the highest they will update to) and bonus XP will not be granted for 80-85 leveling as well. It's probably safe to assume they will continue to work for 1-80 leveling forever but after 80 they will be useless; chances are good that the new guild leveling items will be superior to these anyway.

I wouldn't call it "the word on high" as he specifically states that no final decisions have been made yet. But that certainly seems like the most plausible outcome.

Has anyone tested whether the heirloom items have any impact on xp gains through battlegrounds?

A very brief test shows that BoA items do not effect the exp you get in battlegrounds. On that note, has anyone recorded an average exp per hour or such as a point of reference to compare against regular questing?

Heres a breakdown of AV experience gains that someone posted on the wow forums. (I've heard other bg's besides AV give much lower amounts of exp)
In a premade realistically you're looking at maybe 3 wins an hour. So around 600k exp an hour assuming you do 3 wins and another half of a game. I'd say probably average 400-600k an hour. If you can do more than that questing go for it. But AV would be nice if you're not too hot at questing, or just bored of it.

My average time for 70+ level was ~3:30 with both BoA items and normal flying. With epic flier and knowing exactly where to go - instead of general "nesingwary chain now, Freya later", it would go under 3 easily, especially if you twink your character a bit more with random BoEs. Seems roughly the same as best case AV scenario.

By questing on a death knight, I had 1000 gold at level 69. Granted, the flying mount was bought with money from my main, but that's besides the point. The price of epic gems on my realm is ~100g. Can you get 10000 honour in the time it take me to do 20 quests (assuming 5g per quests)?

Epic gems are 200g on my server, obviously this will vary widely. But yes, I can make 10k honor in about 40 minutes. The gold gain is besides the point, it's a nice byproduct of easy leveling within battlegrounds.

Has anyone produced sufficiently reliable test results comparing quest / PvE levelling with PvP levelling? By reliable I mean including variables such as questing/grinding in a team, questing in zones of differing levels compared to oneself, and latterly, premades against non-premades. I'm sure there are others which may be applicable.

I do not have test results, but I can give you my experience for pvp vs pve and exp. PvE wins hands down because it is controllable. The thing to keep in mind about PvP xp is that it only comes when BG objectives are met, ie a flag is capped, a tower burns, etc.. And even then, the XP is fairly small. A WSG in the 60 bracket will net about 3k per flag cap and 5k/3-4k for a win/loss. So a 7 minute win could be good XP, but the average game seems to last 20 minutes with one or two flag caps. XP in AB comes on a timer like resources so its slightly more reliable, but the que's are much longer in my battlegroup. There is no XP for kills. Additionally, the sub 70 que's can be very streaky based on your battlegroup. I imagine that it would take some sort of premade to match questing xp efficiency. And even that would be a short lived thing as the opposing faction would promptly quit que'ing if they were getting steamrolled.

The only "worthwhile" bg for XP is 70+ AV in my experience with two characters now. And even that requires that both factions play "right" and no one recaps towers and just races. Any sort of D can really throw off your xp gain in an AV game.

I will say that if you're leveling a char for the express purpose of PvP, then leveling through the BGs is the way to go. When you hit 80 you should have more than enough honor to purchase a full set of all the honor gear and be ready to begin arenas or anything else. Just make sure to buy items before honor caps, which means you'll be buying level 80 pieces before you actually hit 80.

I've been doing this and supplementing my XP gains with dailies and some of the more "centralized" quest hubs to provide me with some upgraded green/blue gear and gold. It's a pretty good moral booster and break to go off and do some PvE after a bad streak of PvP.

I don't PvP often as I think it's boring but there's one thing I've noticed in "my" battlegroup.

Horde can not win the rush race in AV ever, we always fail it. Our only hope of winning is to slow the alliance down, even as little as 10 people at Galvan slowing alliance down will do usually does the trick. Alliance then seems to be at a loss of what to do "What? They're defending, what do we do now?" and we can win it.

I joined a few AV with my shaman alt while leveling 70-80 and it's very bad XP/hour ratio, the games can take up to 20-30 minutes for a win and ~15 for a loss. I assume it's different on other servers. Which is also kinda interesting, a sort of mass psychology. I guess Horde assumes we'll lose so they'll not bother that much and just plays a bit worse, doesn't try to do objectives as much and just runs around and collects their tokens. Which of course only means the alliance have it easier to win.

I finished my last toon with AV, and got to a whooping 450k exp/h with a rough 70% win-ratio over the course of several hours, which is really good compared to a 600k exp/h that can be managed by effective, rested questing.
Nice things of Alterac-leveling (don't bother doing other battlegounds, they won't make you happy) are the won honor, the fact, that you need a lot less attention doing it this way, and that you don't touch your rested status (meaning you can grind this in instances or mobs if you want).
Downsides are not-progressing gear, weapon skills for physicals and no real income as you are just hacking players or battleground mobs, which don't seem to do the trick.

You can pretty much level weapon skills on the NPCs in the mines, and the epic gems you can buy for honor (10k a piece) have already been discussed as a good way to pay for your epic flapper, cold weather flying and dual spec. At any rate, you should be gaining honor quite fast.

Alternatively, you could level in other battlegrounds as well, but the longer wait times and lower XP gains could deter you from that. BUT the positive side is that you can grid a lot more honor above the current 75k cap by stacking different marks of victory. And you could use that to at least kit yourself in deadly gladiator gear soon as you reach level 80. Not ideal gear, but good enough for the Tournament dailies and some heroics.

I'd say this a pretty fair estimation/comparison of the two different leveling methods.
However note: w/o rest bonus you will still average 400-450k exp/h from questing. (The usual 4hr (+/-30min) per level)

I leveled my shaman from 73 to 80 in AV's over 5 days last week. It definitely was not faster then normal grind leveling, but it was not much slower and it was A LOT more fun. Had my media player setup as "Always on top" and watched movies and TV shows while doing the rounds.

Total to get from 73 to 80 I played 91 Alterac Valleys and had 50 wins. By the time I was 80 I had bought Furious boots to not hit honor cap and had enough honor to buy another piece. Compared to the gold I was happier to start 80 with 2 pieces of 226 gear, even with the resilience it will still last me a while as this character is slowly geared up.

Leveling in AV has been nerfed hard. At lvl 73 I am only getting 8764 per tower, 5842 per tower remaining, and 11686 for a win. I also didnt notice any experience gains when Galv died but I may have just missed it in my combat log.

Also, it appears the brackets are now 60-69, 70-79, 80 which I didn't see in the patch notes.

This was due for the next Patch but got slipped into this patch early.

now that the dust is settled on the AV nerf... any word on the effectiveness of the buff to xp gains in BG's in general? are any of the other BGs competitive with questing in terms of xp/hour in the 70's bracket?

After some of the dust has settled ( initial "nerf" since it was no longer a BG with level 80s thus reducing XP/Rep for all events) followed by a buff to all events in all BGs:

At 71: For each Tower+Boss : 13957 XP. This includes 20% experience boost of BOA items. Plus 4652 for when Air Marshals reach safely home.

Don't have numbers from other BGs since everyone was still in AV.

I would so like the see the zerg jump into a IotC game and see how XP goes in that game, and if its possible for a side to blitz for faster XP?

True, it is actually very easy to get to lvl 40 under 1 days when you're rushed. Takes about 20 hours. I'd say you can drop it down to 18-19 hours if the person rushing you has mammoth to give you a ride.

It IS faster then questing by far, but it requires 2 persons. You can get rushed like this till 70 easily by just 1 person. And it is still worth it.

For those who want to get rushed, if you wanna get xtra xp, try getting friends of your lvl or lower to come with you, you will get more xp.

A well geared lvl 80 paladins could easily rush 4 ppl to lvl 70 in about 2 days.

It's been a long time, and the long ago locked thread probably contains dozens of reports, but getting to lvl in <20 hours played is trivial with refer a friend and instances. Obviously, if you are paying attention, you avoid the instance cap by taking 12+ minutes per instance clears, etc.

Not sure how much new is here, just wanted to make clear than 60-65 is reachable this way in 1 day played, 40 would be a pretty bad result of the method.