Breakfast Topic: What makes you love your favorite battleground?

Alterac Valley sets my towers aflame. I fell in love with AV during classic WoW, in those sprawling, drawn-out matches that spun out over a day or longer. With a big map and plenty of time, you can savor the micro-encounters that make up a true battle -- that exquisitely frozen moment when you come face to face with an opponent behind a bunker, the off-objective chase that neither of you will give up, the "happy" grudges that leave you seeking out the same opponent the moment you respawn. I gulp down that stuff like water. Objective-driven play has its appeal, but it's the serendipitous moment of connection with the enemy that really turns my flag.

I have a friend who adores siege weaponry. For him, PvP queuing means a beeline for Wintergrasp, Strand of the Ancients, or Isle of Conquest. That's fine. While he's staying busy with catapults and cannon, I'll be slowly throttling some newly met nemesis in the somber shadows behind the keep.

What do you enjoy most about your favorite battleground? Is it something that's there by design, or is it some player dynamic or bit of byplay that fires you up? Tags: battleground, featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

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The Strange, Empty SWTOR Battleground

Remember Ilium? When SWTOR launched last year, it was the focal point for complaints about the game – a badly-balanced, badly-designed PVP zone.

Now, a year later, Shintar revisited Ilium, and found it to be … well, odd:

“About ten minutes later, we were back on our mains, Commando and Vanguard. Since we were now on the side that didn’t own the area, we could actually capture all the objectives. It felt kind of anti-climatic though, as everything just consisted of two ten-second casts which then declared the objective captured… and nothing else happened. No rewards, no fireworks, no big changes. There were no more Imperials in the area either. The only good thing about it was that we received a buff that would grant us bonus valor from warzones for an hour.

We did queue up for a couple of games to make use of the buff, while staying on Ilum the rest of the time to see if anything interesting was going to happen between our matches. It didn’t. Eventually another guildie joined us, and it was rather amusing that he too was utterly confused by the place, considering that he’s been playing for a long time and PvP is his big passion.”

Read more here: The strangeness of Ilum a year later

If you enjoyed this article, check out our other posts from these categories: Star Wars: The Old Republic

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Goldrush: Another new datamined battleground?

The good folks over at Adriacraft have been busily mining through the data in the Patch 5.2 PTR, and unearthed another new battleground map! Adriacraft's Stevan informed us that this map is currently titled Goldrush BG, which, given the titles of Eye of the Storm (Netherstorm BG) and Gilneas BG for, well, Battle for Gilneas, it seems relatively likely that this is another new battleground map.

Looking at the map itself, which Adriacraft have provided an overhead screenshot of, this seems like a far smaller map than the previously datamined Defense of the Alehouse. It's likely for 10 or so players, and appears to have, or intend to have, two bases, as well as at least two resource nodes. Given the name of the battleground file, it's possible that these are gold mines, but from the map there are three small golden bits in the middle, also visible at five seconds into the video, so perhaps it's a spawning node capture.

Stevan also informed us that there are human models in the patch 5.2 PTR files, and therefore speculated that this battleground could have NPCs in it, bringing gold to players, who might have to defend resources that allow the NPCs to carry out their task. Or, to bring my own speculation into it, perhaps there are mines or nodes that can be captured, which permit players to ferry gold back and forth, and the NPCs mine up the nodes or gold.

Naturally, this is datamined information, and should be treated accordingly, not as confirmation of any new element of the game. But, it's fun to speculate, and encouraging indeed to see new PvP content appearing in the patch 5.2 PTR.
Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: adriacraft, defense-of-the-alehouse, dota, gold-rush, gold-rush-battleground, mists, mists-of-pandaria, new-battlegrounds, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-battleground, patch-5.2-ptr, patch-5.2-pvp

Filed under: News items, PvP

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Early DotA Battleground footage revealed

Adriacraft.net has revealed initial footage of Blizzard's DotA styled battleground, Defense of the Alehouse, reportedly arriving in patch 5.2. This is very basic footage, without the internal decoration in most cases, but gives a brief idea of the layout and feel of the battleground.

Initial observations would be that it's definitely a large battleground, which is to be expected, possibly indicating that it could be for more than 10 players. Given that all the recent battleground additions have been 10-player, this would be welcomed. This overview map defined by Leviathon indicates the same, it's definitely a decent-sized map. There appear to be two defined areas, and lots of bridges in certain points. Of course, it should be noted that these are very, very early PTR datamined images, and should not be considered final.

Lastly, I really enjoy the name of this battleground, and its not-so-subtle reference to Defense of the Ancients!
Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: defense-of-the-alehouse, defense-of-the-ancients, dota, mop, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-battlegrounds, patch-5.2-bgs, patch-5.2-notes, patch-5.2-ptr

Filed under: PvP, Mists of Pandaria

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