Battlegrounds

From wow.incgamers.com

Basic Battleground Concepts

Origins

The basic battlegrounds concept was actually pioneered by Mythic Entertainment, in their breakthrough game Dark Age of Camelot. DAoC tried, quite successfully, to overcome what no other online RPG had: the problem of implementing PvP into an online RPG. The issue was that many folks liked PvP, while at the same time, they hated to be constantly ganked. PvP had, up until the time of DAoC, either been completely non-existent (a la Everquest), or totally unrestricted (as it was in early Ultima Online). If you’ve ever played an MMO on an unrestricted PvP server, you understand the problems of unrestricted PvP very well indeed. Unrestricted PvP is as ruthless as a car salesman at a free lunch. The constant threats to your online happiness and well-being are very real. The problem is that unrestricted PvP gets old fast, and sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of the game.

DAoC solved the problem by turning PvP into a mini-game. You could not PvP in the main adventuring areas. You had to enter the battleground to do so. (DAoC had only one battleground, unlike WoW.) There were objectives to be met, obstacles to overcome, and rewards for honor kills; overall, it was a pretty solid execution of the concept. For the first time, online RPG players could have a solid PvE game, and yet engage in some serious PvP at their choosing. Things worked out so well – the PvP was a hugely popular feature – that people kept playing the game, long after its natural life expectancy was over, just for the battlegrounds. It was (and still is) that good.

Battlegrounds in WoW

WoW took the DAoC concept a bit further. Unlike other online RPGs, there are three battlegrounds to choose from when playing WoW. This is a huge improvement over other games in this genre, and contributes significantly to players’ enjoyment of the end game. The four current battlegrounds are:

• Alterac Valley (AV)
• Arathi Basin (AB)
• Warsong Gulch (WSG)
• Eye of the Storm (Eye)

Each battleground is substantially different from the others in terms of objectives, rewards, and tactics.

How it fits in

The Lore behind the battlegrounds is that certain areas of Azeroth are simply rife with strife. These "choke points" are the locations of frequent outbreaks of violence between the two factions. By entering these areas, players are choosing to enter a zone, but not for the normal purposes of questing, grinding, or other normal activities. In entering one of these "conflict zones", players are choosing to fight for their side against the enemy. The concept, by Blizzard reads as follows:

"In the battle for Azeroth, certain territories have become focal points for conflict between the Horde and Alliance. Battlegrounds represent key locations where this struggle has escalated into all-out war. Each battleground presents a different challenge and environment, and victory here must be achieved not through sheer numbers, but through strategy, skill, and grit."

Instanced Areas

It's important to note that the Battlegrounds are Instances. They are not normal, static zones on the map. This means that there are an infinite number of Battlegrounds going at any given moment, and that the Blizzard servers have done their best to provide even match-ups to all players. It also means that whenever a player enters a new Battleground, the NPCs, resources, mobs, and other whatnot are all freshly spawned, shiny and new for your bloodthirsty enjoyment.

Joining the Battle

How to join a Battleground

To join a Battleground, a player need merely talk to the appropriate "Battlemaster", the NPC that controls access to an individual Battleground. They are located, appropriately, immediately next to the Warrior trainers in each side’s major cities, and in Shattrath City they are located in Lower City. If you are at all uncertain as to where this is, just ask a guard. They’ll direct you right to them or go to this list of Battlemasters for a list with maps.

There are also secondary entrances to each Battleground besides Eye of the Storm. These are located not in major cities, but in various outdoor zones in several places around Azeroth.

Queues to Battle

Once you've located the Battlemaster for your desired Battleground, a player need merely speak to him briefly, and the battle master places the player in the BG queue. You can add yourself to more than one Battleground at a time, and will keep your place in line in all Battlegrounds until you either joined it, or left the queue. The queue is an important feature of the Battlegrounds. The game uses a seach pattern to try an match you up with characters of similar level, team size and gear. The search pattern start very discriminate to get a good match, but very rapidly widens to include all available players. If you are waiting a long time in line, there just isn't enough players available to do battle with.

Accepted to the Battleground

Once there is a spot available in one of the Battlegrounds that you are in queue for, a message will appear on the middle of your screen, asking you to accept entering that Battleground. You then have two minutes to accept or decline. If you cannot finish up whatever you are doing in 120 seconds, you'll find yourself summarily bumped out of the queue. The moment you accept, you'll be transported to your Battleground. It is possible to just jump into another Battleground if you get the acceptance message while engaged in one. For example: Player 1 signus up for WSG and AV queues. He gets accepted to WSG, and start killing away. 5 minutes in, he gets a message that he is welcome to AV, so he accepts, and is instantly teleported to AV instead.

While Waiting

It's also important to note that you can do anything you want while waiting for a BG to open up. If you are flying Wyvern or Griffon, farming gold or sorting your mail, the Battleground queue pop-up window will find you. One click of the mouse and you'll be instantly transported from wherever you are to your chosen Battleground. It’s all easy peasy.

Leaving A Battleground

To leave a Battleground, you can either type "/afk" or leave through the Battleground entry prtal. When you leave a Battleground, the game transports you back to where you entered the Battleground: Either the entry portal or the Battlemaster you spoke to. If you joined the Battleground queue in Ironforge. The same is true if you leave the Battleground by other means, such as a win or a loss, or an unfortunate disconnect that keeps you disconnected long enough for the game to remove you.

AFK if you want to leave

The best way to leave a Battleground is ofcourse by winning. The second best is to leave by loosing. The primary mechanic for leaving a Battleground in the middle is the chat command "/afk". The Battleground system does not want idle players staying inside to leach Honor Points without fighting and is very strict about going AFK (away from keyboard) in a battlefield. The game will remove you from the Battleground if you go AFK for an extended period of time. Using the "/afk" chat command will have the same effect.

Deserter Debuff (AFK)

Be very careful of the "/afk" chat command feature, as the game also have a way to make sure players only leave before they win/loose if they absolutely have to. When you "/afk" out or leave before the battle is through, you will be given the "Deserter" debuff of a fifteen minute wait until you can be accepted again into another queue. The timer of the "Deserter" debuff runs out while logged off, so if you really have to go for whatever reason, the debuff is gone if you have been gone at least 15 minutes, even logged off. The Deserter debuff will not be applied if you win or loose a Battleground game.

This system has a number of advantages. It has dramatically reduced the epidemic of "/afk"-ing out of Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch instances, which used to be a great problem for people who actually wanted to play. People cannot simply quit and get into another Battleground right away, as there is now a "downtime" penalty. The only minor disadvantage is if you somehow accidently would type "/afk", or are turned AFK when you visit the toilet or answering the phone. This is only a problem in Alterac Valley though, as you should not go AFK even for a short bit in any of the other Battlegrouns.

This used to be a bigger problem, when Alterac Valley matches could take up to 14 hours (not totally uncommon), but is mostly never an issue today.

A Different Kind of Warcraft

The battleground zones are more than just another in-game adventuring zone. Entering a battleground for some PvP isn’t like running an instance, nor is it like doing some raid content. Running Dire Maul, or even Molten Core, is nothing like running a battleground. Heading into the battlegrounds is, for the most part, like playing an entirely different game.

When playing World of Warcraft normally, even on a PvP server, any combat between you and enemy players is minimal. It’s the exception, not the rule. You’ll spend 99% of your time playing the PvE aspects of the game, fighting monsters and collecting loot. The tactics, strategies, and overall character abilities you successfully employ while playing WoW are really geared toward this “me versus the world” style of play.

For this reason, players will often begin playing in one of the battlegrounds instances and come, quite quickly, to the conclusion that they suck. And they’d be absolutely right in that assessment.

The BGs: Different Game, Different Goals, Different Rewards

So the battlegrounds are much more challenging than regular PvE play. They are different in a number of other ways as well. Despite the fact that PvP is so challenging, you don’t get any drops, any loot, any money, or any treasure from fighting in the battlegrounds. Further, you don’t get any experience from killing other players.

As the whole purpose and intent of these conflict-laden zones is different from normal zones, so are the rewards and objectives. The purpose in entering a battleground zone is to kill your enemies, and in so doing, gain both reputation and honor. Achieve enough honor, enough reputation, or both, and you can purchase epic-quality gear at bargain-basement prices.

It’s important that you understand the previously-stated concept very clearly: you won’t make money, get drops, or anything of the sort while in the BGs. (In fact, although the game allows you to loot enemy corpses of trivial amounts of cash, the BGs will probably cost you some money in repairs, potions, bandages, and other whatnot. It’s a small price to pay.) The rules of the game are simply different.

Honor, Faction, and Reputation

You hear players blather on about honor, faction, and reputation quite a bit, and they often use these terms interchangeably. It can be a bit confusing.

Faction

A faction is a group of NPCs in the game. These NPCs can come to love or hate you, depending, basically, on what you do for them. If you complete quests for them, kill their enemies, or give them certain items (like cloth or herbs), they become friendlier and friendlier.

Reputation

Reputation is your standing with one of the above-mentioned factions. One of the factions in World of Warcraft is the Timbermaw Furbolgs. If you want to improve your reputation with the Timbermaw, they’ll want some enemy furbolgs (from a different tribe) killed, and they’ll want some quests completed. Each enemy you kill gains you a bit of reputation with the Timbermaw, as does completing each quest. If you gain enough reputation, the Timbermaw will let you pass through their territory unmolested. If you continue to gain reputation, you’ll eventually be able to buy some highly prized items (mostly tradecraft recipes) from them. Gain even more reputation with the Timbermaw faction, and they’ll sell you some of the most rare and sought after trade recipes in the game. Basically, you’ll be able to make some very nice (and very profitable) stuff.

Similarly, fighting in an individual battleground earns you reputation with specific battleground factions.

The Horde factions are as follows:

• The Warsong Outriders (for Warsong Gulch)
• Tge Defilers (for Arathi Basin)
• The Frostwolf (for Alterac Valley)

The Alliance factions are:

• The Silverwing Sentinels (for Warsong Gulch)
• The League of Arathor (for Arathi Basin)
• The Stormpike (for Alterac Valley).

Gaining reputation is a slow process. For each of the battleground factions, players start out as neutral. Gaining reputation elevates them to friendly status, which allows players to buy some moderately useful items from faction vendors. If, for example, you become friendly with Silverwing Sentinels, they’ll sell you some bric-a-brac commensurate with your reputation.

Additional reputation elevates players to honored status, at which level a faction will sell them some truly good items. At revered status players can buy some powerful and useful knickknacks, and at exalted, the items a player can purchase from a battlegrounds faction are truly epic. Getting to exalted status with a single battleground is really quite difficult, and takes a lot of dedicated fighting over many weeks. However, most people consider the purchasable rewards (which are linked later in this guide) worth the effort. Of course, there are the rare individuals that are so dedicated that they’ve achieved exalted status with all three battlegrounds.

Honor

(This honor section needs revision as it refers to the old system)

Honor is completely unrelated to the above two concepts. This can be confusing, because people tend to mix it into any discussion involving faction and reputation. Honor is what you get by killing members of the opposing faction anywhere in the world. (These enemy players have to be suitably close to you in level. You gain no honor by ganking newbs). You gain honor in direct relation to how much damage you do to them. If you kill an enemy player by yourself, you gain all the honor. If you and a friend gang up and kill him, you get a portion of the honor based on how much damage you did to him; your friend gets a similar portion based on his damage.

The amount of honor you gain in a given week results in your honor rank. The ranks for the Horde and the Alliance are called different names, but they are equivalents. You accumulate honor for killing the enemy anywhere in Azeroth, not just in the BGs. There are still hotspot locations around the world where people gang up to ruthlessly gank one another. Prior to the implementation of the battlegrounds, the hottest of these hotspots was Tarren Mill-Southshore corridor. The Alliance raided TM every day, and if they didn’t, the Horde raided Southshore. The area basically served as a big, informal battleground. If you wanted to accumulate some honor, TM was the place to go.

Your honor rank allows you to purchase items from special vendors in your capital city. These items range from very good to truly epic, depending on your rank. Unlike reputation (which is permanent) honor is very temporary. If you PvP a lot, you’ll go up in rank. If you don’t PvP much at all, you’ll go down in rank.

In addition to killing enemy players, you can also gain bonus honor by accomplishing some objectives in the various battlegrounds. In Alterac Valley, for example, you gain bonus honor by killing various NPC commanders and leaders, and by destroying towers or capturing graveyards. In Arathi Basin, you gain bonus honor according to how many resources your team gathers. Generally speaking, the relative value of bonus honor varies. Remember, the most consistent method of gaining honor is to kick the living crap out of your enemies.

Just as each of the battlegrounds has a different system of accumulating bonus honor, each has a radically different set of objectives. These require some in-depth explanation, as there are numerous nuances and strategies for gaining reputation with each of the three battleground factions.