Aw shit, another expansion is coming. This means there's going to be a wealth of information and much of it not quite grounded yet. There's going to be a lot of speculation and changes while Blizzard works on the expansion. So the following is ALL likely to change in one way or the other. -Three new battlegrounds at launch. The only one announced so far is Battle for Gilneas. -New Arena maps. No specifics yet. -No major changes to Arena. Blizzard likes the way it is right now. -Rated Battlegrounds. PvP rewards will require Arena or Battleground rating to be purchased. -Rated BGs will focus on one BG each week to help with queue times. -You gain points and rating when you win. The arena points you gain has a weekly cap based on last week's rating. -Losses do not reduce your BG Rating? -Tol Barad will be the new outdoor PvP zone, being similar to Wintergrasp in design. Unlike Wintergrasp, however, Tol Bard will be a daily quest hub similar to the Isle of Quel'Danas when the battle is not active. Rewards for controlling Tol Barad include access to an instance and special daily quests that have larger rewards than the average daily. This is the Player versus Player (PvP) thread for the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft (WoW)! Hope you're not allergic to acronyms. Why PvP? PvP is fun:Raid encounters against static, pattern-based AI are quick to turn into soulless grinds for that next piece of loot. But PvP is always fresh and exciting. There is no website to look up strats to beat Howard, and Howard is always thinking up new ways to beat you. Each fight is unique and the metagame is always evolving. PvP is competitive: Other MMOs will tell how awesome it is to fight "epic" battles with 100 spaceships or 500 angry mutants. But let's face facts: this isn't competitive. In most cases, things boil down to numbers. When skill is even, you can just shovel on more guildmates to bend things to your favor. And more people means more lag and, most importantly, diminished feelings of impact in the battle. In WoW, arena still emphasizes teamwork while providing the smaller, intimate battles to ensure each player feels like they've got to give it their all. No MMORPG comes close to WoW's competitive environment. It's Blizzard: While they fuck up (something I bring up a lot), this is still a Blizzard game. It is a quality fucking game. There is no sloppy combat engine here or lackluster UI. Everything is very smooth and customizable to give you the most control possible. When you lose, it's generally your fault. Unless Blizzard fucked up. Just...don't play on patch days. It's Easy: There's no attunement for PvP. You...PvP. Grind out honor, get starter gear and then grind arena points. It's not a perfect system, but it's very open and requires few people to do. Okay, so let's start to PvP. What should you do? 1. Pick your class and spec. While every class can do well it PvP, certain specs fare better than others. Note that nearly EVERY spec can do well. I know a guy that managed to get nearly 2000 with a Prot Warrior/Enhancement Shaman team. Stick to your spec and learn it. 2. Gear up via honor. This is the shitty part. You're going to have to take it up the ass for a month or so before you get the baseline gear to compete. Start off with the crafted set. You can actually deck yourself entirely in crafted resilience gear, but you may opt for some raiding gear to augment your dps. Your mileage may vary. Do honor quests. These quests allow you to gain honor with having to take it up the butt in BGs. The less you suffer, the better life is. Honor quests are... Make Them Pay! No Mercy! A decent daily, but can be very time consuming since it only counts in Icecrown. This quest is not even worth doing on PvE servers. The honor is around 200, which is fairly low. Call to Arms The daily battleground. Randomly picks one each day. There's no reason not to do this quest: you're going to be doing battlegrounds, so why not eke out a little extra honor when you win? Wintergrasp Quests Sort of "weekly" quests, they have a weird reset schedule. I know I've done them twice a week on occasion, so it's hard to say how often they reset. Nonetheless, you should at least do them all once a week. It's fantastic honor. Spirits of Auchindoun "Rorus, this is a level 70 quest!" Yep, and for some reason they scaled it up to 80. It awards the same gold as an 80 daily and gives you over 600 honor. The towers have a six hour cooldown, so head to Terrokar when you log in and set up an alarm for when they go up. Defense of Halaa Enemies Old and New Like Spirits, this older daily scales up to 80. Unlike Spirits, it's almost impossible to do. There's little reason to bother with Halaa, so you could spend hours trying to kill 10 people. If you're in Nagrand for any other reason, you might want to keep it in mind. But I wouldn't set out to do it. Wintergrasp Commendation Not a quest, but for thirty shards (which you get from t he Wintergrasp quests) gets you 2,000 honor. A nice way to up your honor income. Commendation of Bravery For 100 arena points, you can buy up to five commendations at a time. While this does means you get 10,000 honor for 500 arena points, you must realize that arena points will be hard to come by when you start out. It's better to just wait in most cases, but remember this item when the end of the season comes, as arena points are reset each season. 3. Arena! Once you have the latest in honor gear, it's time to really get into arena. While your gear and talent may be lacking, it's best to do at least ten games a week so you can stockpile points. Once you start hitting the required ratings, you'll be glad to have the extra points stashed away. To clarify: you should always be doing ten games a week, even if you have shitty greens from your questing to 80. But don't worry too much about arena until you've started to really collect a respectable set of PvP gear: you're just going to get frustrated trying to figure out a way to beat teams that outgear you by a large margin. While gearing up, just arena to get a feel for the maps and to tweak your UI as needed. Building communication skills with your team doesn't hurt, either. And keep farming honor! Gems and certain enchantments are available via honor, so save yourself some cash and stock up. Epic Gems Epic gems are here and you might want them. So here's the skinny on gems via PvP: -All gems are bought from the jewelcrafting vendor at your local Hall of Champions or whatever the Alliance calls their place for honor items. -It costs 10,000 for one uncut, epic gem. -This is equal to 500 Arena Points (Commendation of Bravery). -This is equal to 150 Stone Keeper's Shards (WG Commendation). -This is equal to 45 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor (Wintergrasp Commendation). Play to Win This section is about winning. It is for future winners, you see. I can't make a guide called "Play for Fun" as your definition of the concept is going vary wildly from other people's. But I can find tips and advice from people way better than I at PvP. The reason I say this is because people will defend blatantly bad play habits as being "fun". The following may not be fun, but it's been proven time and again by Gladiators across all servers. 1. Always be using the GCD. GCD or "global cooldown" is the 1 to 1.5 second period between most skills. Some vital skills, such as interrupts are kept off the GCD and can be used at any time. These are rare, however. Since your actions are measured out in GCDs, you should aim to be doing as many skills as possible. If you are not on GCD, you are wasting actions that could be spent doing something meaningful. Most rules have an exceptions, and there WILL be times when going on global is a waste. Maybe you need to save your resources to counter something or perhaps being on global will make you vulnerable. This knowledge, however, will come with experience. For startings off, you should be trying to use skills whenever possible. Note that you should be using them SMARTLY. As a priest, don't overheal. Smite or mana burn. As a DK, don't blow cooldowns like Death Grip for no reason. 2. Do not backpeddle. Backpeddling is the act of pressing your S key so that you move in the opposite direction you are facing while never turning. This is bad and yet a common sight all the same. Backpeddling is slower than any other normal movement, so by backpeddling you do your opponent a favor and snare yourself. This is commonly done when a person is unsure of what to do, but they cannot commit themselves to retreating. At the same time, they don't want to be near the thing hurting them. So they backpeddle. If you find yourself doing this, ask yourself "what is my goal here?" If you need to get away, then commit to it and turn the other way. Otherwise, stay your ground. Naturally, there are reasons to backpeddle. No, yours probably isn't a good one. The only example that comes to my mind is a rogue backpeddling to stay in a warrior's charge deadzone while he bleed kites. 3. Hot your keys, damn it. "Clicking" is the act of using your cursor to hit skills on your action bars. While this is bad just about everywhere, it is especially profane in PvP. To show a good example, let me describe the "jump shot". Let's say you are a mage being chased by a warrior (and let's say the warrior cannot charge nor intercept). You do not want him to catch up, so you will not backpeddle but run away. At the same time, you have instants that can be used on the move. If we are to maximize our GCDs, it would make sense to get off a fire blast or, better yet, a slow while on the move. To do this with as a clicker, you have to turn around slowly with your keys. This allows the warrior several seconds to catch up and do horrible things to you. However, jumping allows one to maintain forward momentum and, at the same time, allows your character to change the direction they are facing without changing that straight line you are on. This is almost impossible to pull off as a clicker: it's far too slow and you will most likely end your jump running TOWARDS the warrior. If you use your hotkeys, however, the mouse enables very swift camera movement, enabling you to face the warrior at the apex of your jump, attack, and practically retain your previous position when you land. That is the "jump shot". So do not delay: hotkey all your skills today! Add-Ons While we have a mod thread, these are mods specifically for PvPing. Gladius: The only choice in Arena Enemy Unitframes, Gladius offers tons of options to track enemy health, important buffs/debuffs, trinket cooldown and more! CC the easy way by setting up Gladius to cast spells with specific mouse clicks on the frame! And don't leave your friends in the dark: Gladius will announce key events via raid warning! Power Auras: The buff frame is all well and good, but sometimes you need to know things NOW. Power Auras will flash an image when a certain trigger is satisfied. Need to refresh Inner Fire? Do you have a Backdraft proc? Track the important stuff with Power Auras. Recount:: Not vital for Arena and, in fact, can be detrimental given the memory usage. But new gladiators may want to check out their stats post-game. It can be a useful learning tool. DRTracker: Just how long will that stun last? DRTracker shows the current diminishing returns of nearby enemies and shows how long until DR resets. Better for Arena as it tends to get spammed in Battlegrounds. Can also show self/friendly DRs. Season 8, the last of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, has begun! A few notes before we get into gear... -Personal Rating is the rating YOU have for your arena teams. You cannot just join a 2000 rated team and start buying whatever you want. You must grind your own personal rating first. If you have a high-rated team, winning will quickly boost your PR to match your team's rating. You do not have to maintain personal rating to continue using items. It's simply a requirement for purchase. -Personal Rating requirements are ONLY for stuff purchased via arena points. Drops from bosses or items purchased with emblems have no personal rating requirements. -Vault bosses do not drop all set pieces. Generally they drop gloves, pants and chests. There's also a chance for off-pieces to drop. -Each season now has a tabard available. These tabards are for bragging rights and do not have any stats or effects. They should be the last thing you buy. -Weapons are only available via arena points. The previous season's weapons are removed from the game once the new season starts. -On that note, weapons and the current season's shoulders require personal rating from 3v3 or 5v5 teams. -Just to clarify, when I say "set" piece, I mean gear from the five-piece set that has the set bonuses. An "off-piece" is your boots, rings, trinkets and so on. -As of 3.2.2, Resilience has been doubled for damage reduction (NOT for crit damage reduction nor crit chance). -As of 3.2.2, all healing in Battlegrounds, Arena and Lake Wintergrasp has been reduced by 10%. This also includes damage absorption from Sacred Shield and Power Word: Shield. Skills that SPECIFICALLY drain life are not affected (Death Coil, Devouring Plague, etc.) but healing that procs from damage is affected (Vampiric Embrace, Death Strike etc.) Ye Olde Shite Savage, Hateful and Deadly are older sets from earlier in the expansion. At this point, they aren't worth the time and effort to earn. Oh, and for me to explain how to obtain them. If you stumble across them in VoA or something, go ahead and roll. Otherwise, save your resources for better stuff. Furious Item Level 226-232 Set: Honor, VoA, Emblem of Triumph Off-Pieces: VoA The baseline set for the season. A good option for new characters with no PvP gear. Run a lot of heroics and you won't even have to bother suffering steamrolls in BGs. Relentless Item Level 245-251 Set: Honor + Arena Points, Emblem of Frost, VoA Off-Pieces: Honor, VoA Last season's stuff. Normally, the previous season simply reduced the arena rating required to obtain. But this season, Relentless requires NO RATING which makes it a fantastic option for struggling players. If you are dedicated enough you can even snag a set piece each month via the Battleground Daily. Wrathful Item Level 264-277 Weapon: 264 at PR 1800, 277 at PR 2200 Set: Gloves (PR 1400), Legs (PR 1500), Chest (PR 1600), Relic (1700), Helm (PR 1950), Shoulders (PR 2000) Tabard (PR 2300), VoA (25-Man Only) Off-Piece: Honor (Bracers, Trinket, Cape, Neck, Ring), Belt (PR 1300), Boots (PR 1400), VoA Ooooooo, pretty. The new stuff has a few tweaks to the system. The most significant is the complete lack of rating requirement for the majority of the off-piece items. The downside is that these items require a couple thousand more honor to obtain, but it does ease the barrier-to-entry for arena. You should definitely focus on this set and only obtain the other pieces if you are very far from obtaining them.

If SSvTM was stupid, what is STV? To be more on topic, I feel the need to inquire: Anyone running WG on the PTR? How is it going vs the usual clusterfuck?

Something tells me 100 v 100 is still going to be a clusterfuck.

Isn't it up to 120 vs 120 now?

Good thread timing, I've just been sucked into pvp again on my dk. Been doing arena with my brother (who's a disc priest) and doing BG's for honour. Yesterday I saw a Dk on low life called "nerfdks" and crit him with a single IT and killed him.

On large servers, it probably means no more 20+ stacks of tenacity. There's something particularly hilarious about seeing how matchups can scale: An orc warrior with near 100k health, unkillable due to second wind and blood craze, desperately trying to take a point but unable to kill his opponents before they respawn, both sides mechanically incapable of defeating the other. I'm disappointed to see a new BG in 3.2 PvP needs alot of things right now, another honor farm to queue for is not one of them.

I will return to this game when they create arena-type teams for battlegrounds. Organized 10 on 10 wsg sounds so hot. With fabulous prizes

Given the dwindling arena numbers, rated BGs is a ways off.

Given that given that Blizzard wants to have (at least) one viable PvP spec and role per class, what are they? I'll start off the list with a couple of guesses: Death Knight: Druid: Restoration (HoTs, Decursing/Abolish Poison, CC) Hunter: Mage: Paladin: Holy (Direct heals, Cleansing) Retribution (DPS, CC) Priest: Rogue: Shaman: Warlock: Warrior:

I will return to this game when they create arena-type teams for battlegrounds. Organized 10 on 10 wsg sounds so hot. With fabulous prizes That would be cool if they weren't, you know, ruining WSG.

Given that given that Blizzard wants to have (at least) one viable PvP spec and role per class, what are they? I'll start off the list with a couple of guesses: Mage: Mages get frost, and arcane can also work because of its mobility, 2 minute evo, instant invis

Given the dwindling arena numbers, rated BGs is a ways off. If you look at PvP participation, both for arenas and BGs, you can see a pattern between what I guess I'd call "quality of life" issues and PvP participation. How hard is it to get gear? How badly does the system punish you for not meeting certain requirements? How much are you able to do without being "hardcore?" I don't think arenas per se are a bad feature, but their implementation is terrible. How is an undergeared player supposed to enjoy arenas? Lose 7-9 games a week and hope to slowly gain tiny bits of gear until you compete? Randomly queue for BGs and wander around farming HKs, with no incentive for group play? Rated BGs could work really really well, but Blizzard needs to have a PvP-come-to-Jesus and reconsider what they want the honor system to do and what it does currently. The system, set up as-is, discourages a majority of WoW's population from playing at all.

Given that given that Blizzard wants to have (at least) one viable PvP spec and role per class, what are they? I'll start off the list with a couple of guesses: Death Knight: Druid: Restoration (HoTs, Decursing/Abolish Poison, CC) Hunter: Mage: Paladin: Holy (Direct heals, Cleansing) Retribution (DPS, CC) Priest: Rogue: Shaman: Warlock: Warrior: Most warriors are using a PvP-oriented Arms build, usually 57/14 or 60/11 or something very close to one of those two. There are some prot warriors but the lack of MS makes the spec a novelty, although the longer fights 3.2 offers might make their staying power more attractive. Fury warriors aren't unheard of but don't appear to be as common as Arms, usually using an 18 or 20 / 5X build. I've seen several paladins using a holy / ret build with both holy shock and repentance.

If you look at PvP participation, both for arenas and BGs, you can see a pattern between what I guess I'd call "quality of life" issues and PvP participation. How hard is it to get gear? How badly does the system punish you for not meeting certain requirements? How much are you able to do without being "hardcore?" I'm surprised Blizzard has not taken the time to look at these type of issues more closely, with the amount of insight they have brought with WOTLK into PVE it surprises me that PVP has not been noticeably improved. There are fundamental issues that need to be addressed like what happened with PVE. The same way they had to reconsider, for example, hybrids and buffs in PVE they need to take a look at PVP from a broader perspective that just class balance. Healing, burst and organized bg's in particular really need to be looked at.

Given that given that Blizzard wants to have (at least) one viable PvP spec and role per class, what are they? I'll start off the list with a couple of guesses: Death Knight: Druid: Restoration (HoTs, Decursing/Abolish Poison, CC) Hunter: Mage: Paladin: Holy (Direct heals, Cleansing) Retribution (DPS, CC) Priest: Rogue: Shaman: Warlock: Warrior: Most warriors are using a PvP-oriented Arms build, usually 57/14 or 60/11 or something very close to one of those two. There are some prot warriors but the lack of MS makes the spec a novelty, although the longer fights 3.2 offers might make their staying power more attractive. Fury warriors aren't unheard of but don't appear to be as common as Arms, usually using an 18 or 20 / 5X build. I've seen several paladins using a holy / ret build with both holy shock and repentance. Apparently there's a prot build used in PVP for paladins that is just a brick house healer. I haven't been able to locate the actual build yet but I have a couple of thoughts on it.

Apparently there's a prot build used in PVP for paladins that is just a brick house healer. I haven't been able to locate the actual build yet but I have a couple of thoughts on it. Yeah, its worth mentioning, the build is mainly for 2v2 or sometimes 3v3 IIRC, you give up significant healing power and utility to essentially be 100% immune to anything melee ever bothering you again.

Given that given that Blizzard wants to have (at least) one viable PvP spec and role per class, what are they? I'll start off the list with a couple of guesses: Death Knight: Druid: Restoration (HoTs, Decursing/Abolish Poison, CC) Hunter: Mage: Paladin: Holy (Direct heals, Cleansing) Retribution (DPS, CC) Priest: Rogue: Shaman: Warlock: Warrior: For rogues, 41/5/25 Mutilate spec is the cookie-cutter PvP build. I don't have experience with Combat or Subtlety PvP specs, but they're definitely not very common.

Combat is MUCH more common now thanks for Fan of Knives bullshit. AoE interrupt with no cooldown? Grrrr.

Combat is MUCH more common now thanks for Fan of Knives bullshit. AoE interrupt with no cooldown? Grrrr. Well it's a bullshit gimmick build that seemed to spring up out of nowhere. I also think it goes against what Rogues are about, so I didn't mention it. I guess it could be added, but I really would not like to give any credit to it.

For Noc: I haven't played as much 80 PvP as I'd like, so part of this is direct observations of 80 PvP and part is what I remember from 70 PvP. My rogue isn't 80, so I can't speak definitively of the matchup, only give you some general pointers on rogue vs. warrior. First, fuck duels we're not going to discuss 1v1. Not relevant. Your generic opening is to cheapshot --> kidney --> dismantle. Dismantle is a big cooldown for you, it removes their weapon and their shield, so you can use it offensively or defensively. You can't do jack to them during bladestorm. That opening buys your team about 13 seconds of helpless damaged warrior, assuming they don't trinket (if they do: blind!) Blind is a big part of your arsenal, and I'd recommend using it early. If the warrior trinkets a stun, you can blind them and chase down their partner. If they trinket a blind, you have 2 minutes in which they have no way to break your stunlocks without a paladin to cover them. You'll probably want to save evasion for a bladestorm. You can use it offensively after a stunlock to keep a warrior helpless, but eating a full bladestorm is painful and scary and evasion is one of the few protections you have against it. Sap and gouge can both be broken with berserker rage, a 30 second cooldown. Your big concerns, outside of bladestorm, are intercept and intimidating shout (if you aren't undead). Intercept is an 8 - 25 yard closer that's a 3 second undodge-able physical stun, intimidating shout is an 8 second AoE physical fear (no dispels, no cloak). Generally, you want to avoid being in one of two scenarios against a warrior: 1: Trading hits face to face. 2: Beating on a near-full health warrior who is fighting defensively (sword and board) Example 1 will likely end with your healer going OOM as the warrior eats you alive. Scenario 2 will likely result in you wasting your time on a hard target. Generally don't try to run away from a warrior in a straight line, even with sprint. You'll just eat an intercept. Your sprint is probably best used to follow a warrior who uses charge, intercept, or intervene to escape you and recover. You can also use it if you're on the offense and want to run silly circles around the warrior, making you difficult to target. I find this a suspect use of the cooldown, YMMV. Sprint can help you avoid a bladestorm if you aren't snared, if you need to use evasion for some other purpose at least try to save sprint for the spinning top of doom. Never use vanish defensively (to escape or avoid attacks). A warrior has a dozen ways to bring you out of stealth, no reason to find out which they want to use. If you use vanish, use it offensively: vanish, immediately cheap shot. Where you fight is a big deal, warriors are very mobile and you want to limit their mobility as much as possible. Generally speaking, you want to force the warrior to either play defense so you don't kill them or rush to save their partner from your partner's CC-chain / mana burns / whatever. If you're trying to "blow up" a warrior, save dismantle for the inevitable shield wall. It removes it, and prevents spell reflect to boot. Be careful fighting a warrior near your partner, that's almost begging for sweeping strikes + bladestorm to mess you both up. Your job as a rogue isn't just burst damage, its to provide enough cover and control for your partners to do their thing while doing some damage on your own. Most strategies against you will revolve around enduring your cooldowns and dragging the fight out, warriors in particular lose to rogues in 20 second fights and beat them senseless in 5 minute battles. Others should chime in if their experiences differ. Hope that's slightly useful.

That is very useful, thank you.

I will return to this game when they create arena-type teams for battlegrounds. Organized 10 on 10 wsg sounds so hot. With fabulous prizes That and more specifically turning the current BG system into one where you queue for gametype rather than BG and have several maps for each type (CTF, Zones, attack and defend etc) rather than what they've been doing so far, adding new BGs that water down the population, introduce new useless tokens and have bizarre mish mashed gametypes.

Hmm...I'm eagerly waiting for the OP. Seriously tho, I've been thinking about PvPing with my Paladin. I'm currently geared with T7 epics and a Black Ice. Am I better off crafting the blacksmithing PvP set or just farming honor with my gear? I think I have like 60ish Heroism Badges...is there a piece I should get from there?

Do Wintergrasp every time it's up, there are some nice pieces from there. Do VoA every week. Farm BGs. Get your trinket first, then fill out your Hateful and Deadly set. I wouldn't bother crafting the level 78 PvP set, you'll still get gangraped and you could spend that time better farming honor.

If you look at PvP participation, both for arenas and BGs, you can see a pattern between what I guess I'd call "quality of life" issues and PvP participation. How hard is it to get gear? How badly does the system punish you for not meeting certain requirements? How much are you able to do without being "hardcore?" I'm surprised Blizzard has not taken the time to look at these type of issues more closely, with the amount of insight they have brought with WOTLK into PVE it surprises me that PVP has not been noticeably improved. There are fundamental issues that need to be addressed like what happened with PVE. The same way they had to reconsider, for example, hybrids and buffs in PVE they need to take a look at PVP from a broader perspective that just class balance. Healing, burst and organized bg's in particular really need to be looked at. Blizzard has already stated that they're aware of the burst and healing issues and that they'd like to find a way to tune that down. That said, both of those issues are actually MORE of an issue in the small-scale Arenas like 2v2 and 3v3, and (as has been my stance since they announced arenas in Vanilla) they have figured out that they cannot ever HOPE to balance 2v2, so they're limiting the amount of awards it gives. The Second major issue you bring up, and I think this is more important, is how to get into PvP entry-level. Someone said "do WG every time it's up". Which is great, and means you'll get on average 1.5K honor (not counting the weekly quests) and 2 WG marks per an average 2 hour playtime a night... hardly efficient. You'd hae to do that for over a week to get just a BELT. Do VoA every week is a good recommendation, but it's just a very small chance at gear... well, my Paladin has ONE piece of PvP gear from doing VoA almost every week for 2 months... even LESS efficient (unless you're lucky or ninja stuff). There are many avenues to PvP gear. Badges buy PvP gear, WG marks, honor, and arena+honor. You can do pretty well in BGs in non-PVP gear. So BGs are viewed as the entry stage into PvP (though doing SOME arenas a week will net you arena points to make your honor go farther) and this works. Taking advantage of the BG weekend bonus honor, doing the BG daily, and trying to get concerted efforts, you can get quite a bit of honor rather quickly... I personally don't think it's enough. 50K honor for pants is too steep for entry-level (it's much less if you combine arena points). The problem is the disparity in rewards and focus between BGs and Arenas. This is also something they're trying to address with the next patch, and more in the future. Warcraft is not deathmatch, it's WAR. The BGs fit more with the style and the lore of warcraft (AV in particular - especially the ORIGINAL AV), and the current design team seems to have decided this as well (yay). They just need to implement a new BG ladder that awards arena points weekly (or something similar) or make BG tokens actually worth something more than honor (honestly, if concerted efforts awarded arena points instead of honor... this would help alot)... something to even out the rewards.