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DISCLAIMER: This is a pretty long article, all of it my personal opinion. If there are an errors or omissions, they’re mine. Also, this all took place on a test server, so most of it is subject to change before it goes live.

It’s the end of the world. Battlegrounds are live on Blizzard’s test server. Patch 1.5.0 notes are available here.

To preface my impressions, here’s a little info about the two Battlegrounds added:

Warsong Gulch PvP Battleground - 10v10 Capture the Flag Battleground
(Entrances located in Northern Barrens / Southern Ashenvale)

Warsong Gulch will have a level range of 21-60 but will create instances on a 10-level range scale.

In other words, characters between levels 21 and 30 will be matched up with each other, characters between 31 and 40 will be matched up with each other, and so on up to 60.

Warsong Gulch is a fast paced “capture the flag” style Battleground, with an optimal playtime of around 45 minutes. This particular Battleground is geared for players of all levels, starting from level 21. Of course you will be instanced into a version with players of a similar level.

Of course, we already knew quite a bit about the Alterac Valley battleground from the previews released earlier by Blizzard.

Alterac Valley PvP Battleground - 40v40 Battleground
(Entrances located in the Hillsbrad Foothills)

Alterac Valley will have a level range of 51-60.

Well, it’s not really the end of the world. But it definitely beats zergs rushing back and forth between Tarren Mill and Southshore, for no obvious reason other than farming each other for Honor.

So, what does this mean to you, the casual World of Warcraft player?

I copied my two highest level characters over to the test server yesterday — a 60 Orc Hunter and a 45 Orc Warrior (yeah, I like orcs, so sue me.) Downloading and installing the test server client was a pretty painless process. I was up and running (though I had to copy my /WTF and /Interface folders over to the new test sub-directory to preserve my key bindings and UI mods) within about 30 minutes. Blizzard’s BitTorrent downloader could still use some help — 25 minutes to download a 50mb file on a cable connection is a bit much. Once I had my test server account ready to go, I logged into an Orgrimmar filled with guys in near-full suits of epic gear from the Molten Core and Onyxia’s Lair raid instances, a little intimidating for your average casual player with a few blues (rare items) to his name. Anyhow, after a few minutes of ogling gear I’ll never see on my own character sheet, I hopped a flight to Splintertree Post in Ashenvale and took off running south looking for the new Warsong Gulch battleground.

After a little looking around (I didn’t realize the Horde entrance was actually in northern Barrens, whereas the Alliance entrance is in southern Ashenvale), I saw a new path heading up west of the road just before the Mor’shan Rampart at the north end of the Barrens. Curious, I ran up the path and noticed a little village of new NPCs — and a raid instance entrance a little further up the path, surrounded by about 50 Horde players waiting in line. An NPC beside the instance entrance offered me a PvP quest requiring “completion” of the instance.

This being the test server, and the first day of battlegrounds, I had expected a long wait. I moved into the instance entrance and was offered a popup asking me if I wanted to join the first available instance, or select a specific one from the list. I picked “first available” and was pushed into the queue. A new icon (for the Horde, it’s a little red Horde shield icon) showed up on the bottom left hand corner of my mini-map — mousing over this icon showed me the instance I was in line for and the estimated time left before I would get in. Mine showed approximately 5 minutes, which was pretty reasonable considering the massive volume of people on the test server all there to test battlegrounds. Unfortunately, it was about 5 minutes to dinner time, so I bailed out and left my hunter sitting in front of the instance entrance.

EDIT 5/13/2005: Blizzard just posted a preview of the Warsong Gulch battleground on the official site, so make sure to go check it out.

A couple of hours later, I logged back in, and repeated my previous attempt to enter the Warsong Gulch battleground. This time, after selecting the “first available” battleground instance, I was immediately ported into the Horde base in the battleground. Slightly bewildered, and not knowing where I was, I turned around a couple of times to get my bearings — and noticed two Alliance characters fighting a Horde character downstairs from where I was standing. I was automatically flagged for PvP when I entered the battleground, so I started firing and killed one of the two Alliance baddies in the base — of course, an Alliance priest was a level above me nuking me the entire time and I ended up outside the base, resurrected in a graveyard about 30 seconds later. (A quick aside on how the graveyards work in general — you have to accept resurrection, and it looked liked every 30 seconds everyone standing around the Spirit Guide NPC would be resurrected automatically, including pets, with around 75% health and mana.)

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