What if they changed it so instead of queuing up for a specific battleground, you queued up for the game type? And each game type could be fit into any of the existing maps? Would that be enough variety to make BGs fun again?

So if you queue up for CTF, you could potentially end up playing CTF in EoTS, AB, WSG, or perhaps even AV (though AV is significantly larger than the other ones). So while you're still playing CTF, you at least have different maps to choose from.

Modes would be CTF, Node Capture (ala AB, EotS), and perhaps Deathmatch, first team to a certain number of HKs wins. That way you can pick the game style you enjoy most and not be stuck with the same map over and over and over.

**edit** I'm not entirely sure what you'd do about honor returns, but I'd certainly have more fun playing different things on different maps than the same exact shit we've had for years.

It is mostly the same thing with arena too.

In BG, you get far fewer (1 token as compared to 3 tokens, far fewer bonus honor points) "objectives" for losing the BG. you can still get the reward that you are going after, it is just taking a lot longer.

Same thing with arena. You can still get that arena reward you are going after, it is just taking a lot longer if your rating is 1400 not 2000.

Personally I think this system is excellent. It provides incentives for people to compete and win, and it doesn't penalize the loser too much.

Yeah, regardless of whether you are queuing for a specific map and the gametype is randomly chosen, or vice versa, the end result is to play new things on different maps instead of the same thing we've been playing for years.

The honor from the non-av battlegrounds is being increased in 2.3, it's in the patch notes. I have no idea how much though, does anyone have the numbers?



Well if you take a look at the loot acquisition of everything besides battlegrounds it comes down to the following:

Be pro, surround yourself with pros, and you'll get a lot of loot and get it very quickly


As a guild we raid 7 hours a week and come out with a truckload of epics. In arena at 2k rating you get an epic about every other week for just about an hour of play. Both provide a challenging experience in addition to being rewarding

In battlegrounds this is thrown out the window. The challenge is never right since you're not matched against equal opponents, and the rate at which you're rewarded doesn't change much depending on how well you play and who you team with

That's another thing. The honor in AB and WSG suck for the amount of time you spend in them. If I didn't need the marks, I wouldn't even go in them at all.

Yes, they are extremely different.

In the arena, you are *punished* for losing. You lose rating. You do not simply get a third of the reward you would have gotten for a win.

In BG's, if you lose, you still get honor. You still get a token. Combined with how stale and old the BG's are to most players, it creates apathy. Who cares about trying your hardest and winning when you can get almost as much honor for losing? Tokens don't even matter - by the time you have enough honor for a piece of gear, you'll have more than enough tokens even if you lost every match.


The other key difference between BG's and arena is that arena is pure, undistilled PvP combat. Combat in WoW has tremendous depth - there are numerous strategies to use, and in a well-played match you are forced to constantly make game-changing decisions. Furthermore, you know that if there are 2 of you, there will be 2 opponents, no more and no less.

BG's have none of this.

AV is PvE of the most basic type - it's essentially two separate tank & spank instances, with "victory" going to the side that completes it first.

AB is 75% standing around guarding a stupid pole, waiting for someone to attack. When there is combat, it's usually not decided by who plays the best, but by who happens to have 4 people and who happens to have 2 people with them at the moment.

WSG is either sitting in your base waiting for attackers, or running from one end of the map to the other, with some combat mainly occuring in the middle of the map.


This applies mainly to Pugs, where there is usually not an overall cohesive strategy. Playing in a pre-made is a blast, but queueing solo is pretty much as described above.

On this topic, one way to do that would be to reduce the honor cost of the blue pvp sets, and keep them available alongside Gladiator gear. Set them to maybe 5k honor per piece, maybe even less, such that in say 2 weeks of casual BGing (say an hour a day), you can get a decent starting pvp kit to cover slots. On that same level, the Terokkar and Halaa items are a good idea, but who on earth thought it would be smart to make them iLvL 100 epics? You can armory me, and see I've got a basic PvP kit together without any honor epics, but imagine how much better it would be if I my helm/legs were iLvL 115 blues, and I could afford say the blue pvp gloves/ring easily?

edit: this is in conjunction with making it possible to spend arena points on the epic honor pieces, so people gearing or those on low ranked teams can do BGs to supplement their PvP kit without forcing those who don't need to be in BGs to go there.

I think the general consensus is that Arenas are pretty cool and Battlegrounds (as they currently stand) are not. What makes Arenas cool?

1) The "grind" is kept to 2 hours (10 games) a week. This can be divided into very small chunks of 10 minutes at a time. Everything past this only nets you more rewards based on your skill.

2) You are matched up evenly in Arenas. For all the complaints about Rock/Paper/Scissors in 2v2, it is fairly balanced. You will be going up against the same number of players, who have a similar win-loss ratio. If they are stronger than you, you will get more for winning and lose less if you lose.

Compare this to Battlegrounds:

1) The grind is unlimited.

2) You might meet players with T6 who just went 10-0 in their last 10 games, while you went 0-10 in your 70 blues. The skirmishes within battlegrounds tend to be unbalanced in numbers, with the victory going to the side with numbers.


I love the OP suggestions for new battlegrounds and adding new games to the old ones. However, there are only 3 arena maps and you play the same game on each. On paper that sounds really boring, but in practice, it has been pretty successful.

I think that is because the Arena strips away all the superflous stuff (flags, cap points, NPC's) and leaves everything to the actual combat itself. Each class has dozens of abilities, 3 fairly different talent trees out of which many combinations are possible, and many different possible strategies.

There are only so many ways you can make clicking a flagpole exciting. The biggest reason Battlegrounds get so boring in my mind is because the focus is taken off actual PvP combat. In every BG, killing your opponent is a secondary objective.

I think it's actually quite a waste for Blizzard to have created such a compelling array of classes and abilities, only to shy away from making all-out carnage the goal of any of the BG's.

Make Badges of Justice purchasable by Marks/Honor. It'll show a good blend between PVE and PVP and let those of us who have been capped, well, forever, get something for PvPing although we already have 75k honor.

Guilds dont exactly form perfect 10 man groups all available at say 7:30 either, Heroics will still be run , But primal nethers are indeed rapidly approaching their end of usefulness as 90% of the nether based gear is replacable through honor or badges. The heroic quests should be enough to keep heroics in use.

When the honor system came out I swiftly decided that if i tried for the rank reward it would become not fun. I had allready got my 1st 60 Av exalted and then not played a single AV for 6 months becasue I had become so sick of it. It was obvious to me that the rewards werent worth the time invested if I stil wanted to enjoy battlegounds.

Despite that somehow with Season 3 approaching the feeling has developed that we must have that 15 ilvl increase in every slot and we all need to grind that 85k honor or whatever is needed.

A few games a week in battlegrouds with friends is fun, Grinding out 85+ hours every 4 months is not.

Their are a few things that would breath a bit of fresh air into bg's, probably the foremost is allowing the starting positions to be randomly swapped. But no battleground should ever come to the point its a complete stalemate and people should have the feeling they can allways contribute. That one of things that ruined AV for me in its first few months, Our method of winning was mainly to keep playing till enough opposition logged off and went to bed or stopped contributing that we could get the win.