New BG Brackets

[Mangala]

The uneasy armistice between the Horde and Alliance is steadily cracking beneath the strain of Deathwing's devastating return and the Shattering of Azeroth, heralding a new era of bloody conflict.

The clash between the factions has also never been so hotly contested: Battleground brackets now match up teams more evenly. The new brackets span five levels each, except the final bracket composed of level 85 players:

10-14   30-34   50-54   70-74
15-19   35-39   55-59   75-79
20-24   40-44   60-64   80-84
25-29   45-49   65-69   85


Fighters can also join the battle in Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm, and Alterac Valley at an earlier level than ever before:

Level 10 - Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch

Level 35 - Eye of the Storm

Level 45 - Alterac Valley

Level 65 - Strand of the Ancients

Level 75 - Isle of Conquest

Level 85 - Battle for Gilneas and Twin Peaks

These changes should offer players a more consistently competitive experience in the Battlegrounds as their characters level, as well as provide for more exciting PvP conflict than ever before. Are you eager to try 35-39 Eye of the Storm? How about 45-49 Alterac Valley? Perhaps you'd like to cut your teeth on a 10-14 Arathi Basin.

Let us know what you think in the comments!

Very interesting.

[Caradir]

at least this will make things a bit more even, stepping into a lvl 10 pvp match and getting constantly 1shotted by a 19 was never fun.

[Mangala]

at least this will make things a bit more even, stepping into a lvl 10 pvp match and getting constantly 1shotted by a 19 was never fun.

Perma 19's who have switched off xp gain dont even get into regular bgs they have their own for people who do that.  Which is even better.

[Taith]

Ahh, is this where the "Blizz have shafted twinks" screams have come from?

[Caradir]

Ahh, is this where the "Blizz have shafted twinks" screams have come from?

isnt that what a twink is all about? getting shafted i mean.

Detest that word being used in relation to gaming

[Taith]

I think the intent of being a twink is to be the shafter, not the shaftee.

I've given battlegrounds a couple of proper goes over the years, but ultimately they aren't for me. Spending an hour losing Warsong Gulch did it for me the first time, and watching people make the same mistakes they've been making for years in Arathi Basin did it for me last time. The tantrums, the self-righteousness, the screeching - I'm not sure why anyone subjects themselves to it. Damages my calm, personally.

On the other hand, if you do like battlegrounds, I think this is an excellent move. There wasn't a lot of point joining battlegrounds in the 40-45 bracket, which is probably quite a problem now that you can level through pvp.

[Jarkko]

WSG has these days a 15 minute timer, so they never last longer than that. Arathi Basin goes to 1600 points these days, so much faster than before (under 15 minutes usually in my experience, altough some even and hard fought AB's have lasted about 25 minutes).

Leveling in BG's is *very* fast as Alliance (very short waiting times to get to BG's, at least for my toons on the various servers where I have alli toons) and decent as Horde (sometimes several minutes of queuing, but it is easy to do PvE while waiting). Also the PvP rewards are nice while leveling up toons (certain things like Chest armour are not available until level 60 though), the PvP gear is very good even if you mostly do PvE (for example, it takes 120 Honour to buy the basic stuff at level 18 (weapon, jewelry, WSG trinket), and 120 is something you can collect in 2-3 fights during the weekend if you run BG's where you get the extra honour for participiating; basically if you run a WSG on a WSG weekend once per day during the weekend, you will have more than enough honour for the stuff).


EDIT: And Caradir is refering to the original meaning of twink:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twink_(gay_slang) , ie something pretty to whome you buy expensive stuff, and then use for your own pleasures (if you are, ummm...  aligned that way).

[Taith]

I seeeeeeeeee. I'm not going to follow that link from work.

I bet there's a small percentage of the WoW population out there who finds twink as a PvP term deeply funny.

[Mangala]

Getting Guild Achies for L85 pvp rocks.  Had some fun times today and need 4 more achies to get us a Guild Page (unless it needs certain level of rep thats undocumented).