WoW Review - Part IV

Part I
Part II
Part III

Battlegrounds.

The good -

They offer a central themed area for PvP fighting. They bring team based objectives into play which require coordination to achieve. The fighting is constant and the honor gained is good. The sides are capped and usually equal out at the max amount allowed into a BG at a time.

The bad -

You must stand in line before entering a BG. If enough people want to get in; another instance will open. If there isn't enough people you could essentially wait hours on end and never make it into a BG.

Along with standing in line several servers have the problem where there is only enough people to open a BG during prime time for a few hours. The rest of the day the BGs are closed and anyone that doesn't play during prime time is out of luck in ever getting to enjoy a BG.

The honor system is set up to reward only those that farm BGs non-stop. These people get in early and then leave their machines idle to keep their slot in the BG while people that actually want to play stand in line outside. Along with this the majority of gameplay in the BGs revolve around organized teams just bypassing unorganized teams and farming honor.

The "goals" in BGs are often never accomplished aside from the main goal. The quests and so forth are misleading and there is no solid way to really understand how the whole BG works. There is a few key areas that are attacked and then everything else is abandoned. Even in the capture the flag BG there is little strategy used outside of sitting at the graveyards.

The respawn timers are 30 seconds. The fighting is non-stop. The second you feel as though you are begining to win is the second that the entire enemy force resurects on top of you.

Blizzard answered the call of many gamers who were sick of bored level 60's attacking them around the world. Now level 60's are left bored because if you aren't in a BG there is no PvP action to be found anywhere.

Battlegrounds do more harm than good in the end game.