Battlegrounds Archive

So there I was a few days ago, in AB to finish up the daily, and it was like… I dunno, like my 4th or 5th Arathi Basin attempt of the night. But this one felt right. It felt like a winner. We had 3-4 capped the whole battleground for the first 15-20 minutes of the match, and then all hell broke loose. People got complacent, fought in the road, left their defense positions, and we were down to 1 flag for about 10 minutes… just long enough for the Alliance to catch up.

In the last minute of the match we were literally neck-and-neck, when all of a sudden we cap a second flag which slows down the Allies. I swear, if the score was to 2100 instead of 2000 we probably would have lost, but as luck would have it we literally inched out a win by the seat of our pants, 2000 Horde to 1990 Alliance!

If you have a chip on your shoulder with the Alliance and feel the need to exort them to “respect my authoritie”, may I suggest joining the war in PVP Battlegrounds. I’m about a gnat’s fart away from earning the Exalted reputation with the Frostwolf Clan of Alterac Valley. Its rewards are great and now that Blizzard has changed the dynamic of the battlefield, it is much more frenetic. I saw events tonight I hadn’t seen before in the entire time I played in that battle ground. I’ve been in rounds where I never died (not once). I’ve seen a boss elemental summoned by the Horde to roll a frosty ball of death up for the Alliance (twice). I’ve even seen a Night Elf druid who didn’t shape-shift to get away (gasp!). All this and more awaits in the battlegrounds.

Sure, the Alliance actually won in the example I’m attaching via screenshot here, but if you get your hordey-behind up to lvl 60 and snag some sweet gear from our guild’s increasing raid schedule, you’ll be living the glorious life of battle soon enough. Check out some of the lower-level battlegrounds early on too, just to get a feel for the thrill of it all.

Ever since I acquired my beautiful black raptor mount, my presence in any battleground has been scarce. You might even understand this, given that towards the end of the 4-month grind to Rank 11, I was spending 3-4 hours every weeknight, and up to 10 hours each day of the weekend in order to acquire well over 200,000 honor points each week.

With the upcoming patch v1.12, the battleground system will be changing to blend Greymane with about a dozen other servers (Battlegroup #8), and may well make battlegrounds a completely different experience. With the Burning Crusade expansion pack, the concept of PvP ranking as it stands will be going right out the door, replaced by what sounds like contribution/experience points that can be accrued and spent… on what exactly remains to be seen.

Several people over the past several months have indicated interest in getting their feet wet. Well, your time has come! This weekend is Arathi Basin (AB) double-honor — which essentially means that even if you lose, you still get a decent chunk of honor, and because of that, every n00b to ever fondle a mouse will be there. AB is (IMH0) the easiest, sanest, and most enjoyable battleground: 15 vs. 15, 30-ish minute time limit, king-of-the-mountain sort of game.

Although I expect Necromage, Gorysh, and myself to be in and out all weekend, we’re going to try to gather any and all 60’s around 10pm Greymane (8pm PST), on Saturday. We also encourage the 50-59 members to do the same, and I may well bring Skykomish along for a few.