[Cairenn]

The Gurabashi Catacombs

This was to be third battleground. It was a death match arena. In Stranglethorn Vale, it was below the free-for-all arena.

During the early prototyping (they learned with WSG) it was made into a 5v5 single elimination death match fight. This turned out to be very unfun to the healers, while the rogues loved it.

Thanks to the early prototyping, they quickly found this problem and stopped work. Some ideas sound great at the time they are said... but fail in practice. They learned a lot from this failed battleground.

WoW is not a First Person Shooter. They types of games and rules in those do not always translate. In WoW the level and gear should play some effect in the battle, where in a FPS... its all about skill. In a Fps all enemy players start equal to your self. There is no long one shot kills that are so much fun in a FPS.

Objectives are key in any battleground. Players will kill each other for no reason, the battleground needs to provide more, an objective... a reason for killing.

This battleground is on hold for now, maybe further down the road it will be looked at.

Arathi Basin

They wanted to get back to the design roots with this battleground.

They wanted this to be more players than WSG. Originally it was 30v30, but through play testing, 15v15 felt right.

It was to have a simple design. Accessible and understandable. The locations were “the farm”, “the mill”. No fancy names were used, and the entire battleground was meant to be visible in once glance.

There had to be clear points of interest. Each location was unique, and easy to spot and move to. The early prototyping was used here, and some locations were moved around.

This was also the first battleground to reward the losers also. The winners got a lot more, but the losers received something for their effort. This was brought into the other battlegrounds.

Future

They are working on new ways to get a critical mass... a way to start at least one instance. If one instance is running, more people tend to sign up for the queues, a self fulfilling cycle.

Better opponent matching. Pickups were getting stomped very often by organized groups. They would like to match opponents by skill, history, and organization.

They also want people to choose the battlegrounds based on game play, not in the honored gained. Some people select the battleground that will net them the maximum honor per hour. AB is the #1 for this. Their goal is to even out the honor progression on each BG... so the honor per hour will be equivalent, and you choose the game that is fun.

The big change they want to do is have the battlegrounds effect the outside world. Huge wins in the various battlegrounds would trigger various world events. Victories might grant buffs, resources, or other things. They want the prowess of a faction or side in the battlegrounds to translate over.

They are considering cross server battlegrounds. It would soften the imbalance issues. The issue of honor is the biggest problem. Honor is a competition between people of your alliance on your server.

A world event might trigger a battleground. Some questing or world event might trigger a huge battle, which the people could then join.

In 1.9 they are looking to allow people to enter multiple queues for battlegrounds. You could sign up for AV and AB both at the same time.

They are looking for an auto raid invite feature in battlegrounds. The details of this was not given... and it was “soonish”.

In AV it is possible to wall walk to do something to the alliance. This is a generic flaw with the engine... allowing wall walking when its not supposed to happen. This is being addressed in the engine its self, they won't change the AV geography.

Siege weapons are still in mind... but are a very long way away. They are waiting until its done right

There will be a huge revision of the honor system in the expansion pack.

They are considering changing Warsong Gulch, that if the flag is held for to long with out using it, it will auto return to its home. The details were not given.

They are considering an outdoor open and public battle ground like encounter. It would balance the PvE and the PvP encounter, working on bosses.

Also... a queue jumper is considering being punished. If you /afk out of a battleground they are considering putting a timer on how soon you could re enter the queue.