I played around with one of the battlegrounds last night, the Warsong Gulch Capture-the-Flag one. My main character is only lvl 42, so I don’t really have much of a chance in the Alterac Valley battleground, though I’m really looking forward to it.
My opinion is that it was an absolute blast. I played for about an hour, which wasn’t enough but I had things I needed to do. I’m planning on playing more later this week (maybe tonight, even) and on the weekend. The addition of focus to the PvP effort really made the time more enjoyable, IMO, and it certainly turned out to be an efficient use of my time for gaining contribution points for Honor ranks.
The good:
1) Limited numbers of players keeps the battles small and manageable. You can actually effectively coordinate with other players on your side, and you don’t have to worry about being caught outside the main PvP group and targetted by 52,000,000 spellcasters.
2) Objectives give you something to do. You can’t just sit outside of bowshot range and stare at each other, because the smart people are going to be trying to get your flag while you’re sitting on your ass.
3) Bonus contribution points from achieving goals give you a boost in the honor system. This may or may not be a selling point for some people, but I think it helps if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t want to spend hours PvPing in TM/SS or Crossroads to gain points.
4) With smaller numbers, everyone can have something to do. As a warrior, I was always feeling like I was pretty marginal in the huge PvP battles. If I got out in front, I died to the aforementioned horde of spellcasters and hunters. Here, I was able to get involved in the combat and hold my own, even against higher level people.
5) Level grouping. In Warsong Gulch, each CTF game is held between characters of similar levels. 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60. Lower level characters can still have a chance to PvP with this system without having to worry about getting one-shotted by people twice their level.
The not-so-good:
1) Coordination is really needed to have a chance of winning, and it takes time to figure out how that coordination is going to work. A random group of 10 people can be hell to organize. I think this will get easier as more people get some experience in the game and know what needs to be done.
2) Random grouping, which is the fastest way to get into a game, can leave you missing some essential skills. You might end up in a game where your side has no healers, or a game where you’ve got no heavy hitters. You can form a full 10 man raid and you’ll get put into a new instance of the game, but then you have to wait for the other side to fill up with people.
3) Some lag issues, which I expect was mostly due to the sheer number of people trying the new stuff out. It’ll probably ease up in the next week or so.
4) It takes time away from levelling. :>
Overall, I had a lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to playing more.
In the games I’ve played, a good defensive group has been a necessity, but it won’t win by itself. The longest game I played lasted near an hour, with our defensive group keeping the flag from travelling very far at all. But eventually, the other team got away from us. And our offense sucked. We never got the flag back to our base at all.