Each week Arcane Brilliance celebrates Independence Day in its own special way. Most people celebrate the 4th of July by setting off explosive devices of varying sizes. In similar fashion, Arcane Brilliance also enjoys blowing things up. The difference is that whereas most people tend to set off pretty fireworks, Arcane Brilliance prefers to cause Warlocks to explode. The result isn't nearly as pretty, but to Arcane Brilliance, it has its own very unique charm.

I don't know if you're trying out the patch 3.2 PTR or not, but if you are, you should go out and mess with Living Bomb. Like, right now. Go cast it on some things. That's right, I said things with an "s" on the end. As in plural. As in more than one thing. Watch those things burn to death simultaneously. Rejoice.

Yes, Blizzard's present to Mages on this day when the United States celebrates its Declaration of Independence from foreign rule is apparently the ability to blow up multiple targets with Living Bomb. On the PTR, you can now have Living Bomb up on as many targets as you can feasibly cast it on before its duration or your mana pool expires. The tooltip doesn't yet reflect the change, but Ghostcrawler has confirmed that this is not a bug, and that Blizzard is intentionally testing the idea.

How awesome would this change be? Read on after the break to hear my take on it, but let me just say that on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being not very awesome and 10 being more awesome than anything, this change would make the scale explode on a molecular level and then reform over billions of years into a new planet of awesome.

So patch 3.2 will be bringing some pretty significant changes to PvP Battlegrounds to say the least. Not only will Wintergrasp be morphing into a weird quasi-battleground with queue, but Warsong Gulch is getting a time limit, Eye of the Storm and Arathi's resource goal is being slashed, and we're getting a whole new battleground in the Isle of Conquest. In short, we're going to have some soul searching to do while we decide where to get our non-arena organized PvP fix on.

I hope everybody's been having fun on the PTR. I know Matt's been having a grand time in Patch 3.2's new Battleground, the Isle of Conquest. Thanks to all the players who have been airship-dropping, flag-capturing, glaive-thrower-riding, and general-killing, Blizzard has announced that they will be making some changes to the Isle of Conquest in the next iteration of the PTR build. The changes are as follows:

• Increased all the gates' health from 300,000 to 600,000.
• Increased the reinforcement count from 200 to 400.
• Significantly increased the health and damage of the keep generals.
• Reduced effect range of the siege damage caused by Seaforium. Both the player damage and the siege damage caused should be 10 yards now.
• The Huge Seaforium piles will now despawn for 20 seconds once looted.
• Glaive Thrower - Reduced the cooldown of Blade Salvo from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.
• Glaive Thrower - Reduced movement speed.
• Demolisher - The Hurl Boulder and Ram effects no longer share a cooldown.
• Keep Cannons - Fixed a bug that was causing them to do much more damage than intended.
• Keep Cannons - Can now be repaired once they are destroyed by clicking on them. This repair process takes 8 seconds and can be interrupted, similar to capturing a PvP objective.
• Siege Engine - Significantly Increased health.

Zarhym thanks all the players for their invaluable input and encourage further testing and continued feedback on the PTR. The Battleground looks like a whole lot of fun, and the changes should lengthen the considerably short matches. See you guys on the battlefield... as soon as I get this blasted client patch to download, that is...

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Here's a change that will probably be by turns amusing, exasperating, or a relief, depending on who you are and how you play: In a new section recently slipped into the official 3.2 PTR patch notes, Blizzard revealed that they plan to add a queue to Wintergrasp in Patch 3.2.

In short, you can queue up by visiting a Battlemaster or entering the zone within 15 minutes of the game start. Only 100 people will be allowed to fight on each side of the battle, to be chosen randomly from the battlemaster and from the zone, with level 80s receiving highest priority.

When Wintergrasp was first introduced, even people who otherwise disliked PvP found it fun, and some old-timers found it be about the closest thing to the fabled world PvP battles of old in Hillsbrad, Ashenvale, and other such places.

Blizzard's Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton answered quite a lot of questions about the upcoming PvP changes in Patch 3.2. There are a lot, particularly the experience gains in Battlegrounds which also has deep implications in PvE as players can simply toggle experience gains off (any Level 60s up for Molten Core?). It's a pretty lengthy interview and Stockton goes into detail with the new Isle of Conquest Battleground. Some highlights from the chat:

• Experience gain in Battlegrounds is slightly slower than questing or grinding
• Players can toggle experience gain on and off with a mere 10 Gold
• There are plans to include greens and "the occasional blue item" at the end of each Battleground match (!) but won't make it to Patch 3.2
• The Isle of Conquest is in the Frozen Sea, North of Icecrown
• Objectives in Isle of Conquest are captured exactly like flags in Arathi Basin -- I totally called this wrong when I said it would probably be a numbers and proximity thing
• Battlemaster Achievement isn't likely to change (whew!) but Blizzard is considering what to do with the Achievements for the Isle of Conquest
  
• Rated Battlegrounds are coming. Not quite soon®, but an announcement will be made during BlizzCon
• Blizzard plans "to deliver more Battlegrounds to the players as often as we can"

Oh, man. That last bit made me want to change my underwear. Blizzard is actually paying attention to Battleground enthusiasts, realizing that while Arenas are nice and all, a lot of players love the BGs, too. New Battlegrounds "as often as we can?" Yes, please! Head on over to the official site to read Stockton's interview in full. Bombs, cannons, parachutes, angry Generals... 3.2 is shaping up to be one explosive patch, indeed.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Brilliant. Just brilliant. If you've been keeping up with the many changes in Patch 3.2, you might get an inkling that PvP is going to change drastically and for the better. Adam has already gone through the whopper announcement that Blizzard hinted at some time back: players can now gain experience from the Battlegrounds. It's something I'd wished for since the days of vanilla WoW and the developers have finally gotten around to implementing it in the next major patch.

Does this mean the death of twinks? Not necessarily. Players can opt to toggle experience gains on and off by going to Behsten in Orgrimmar or Slahtz in Stormwind (best-in-slot, get it?) and ponying up 10 Gold. But wait, there's more! Players who turn off experience gains will only be placed in the same Battleground queues as other players who opt not to gain experience. That's right -- twinks will be facing off against twinks. Twinks who have always contended that it wasn't about the unfair gear advantage will finally get the opportunity to test their mettle against equally geared opponents. Enjoy.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, though. After the jump, we'll take a look at a whole bunch of changes that will impact World of Warcraft PvP from the obvious (Arena and Battleground changes) to the not-so-obvious (item and ability changes). Let's hit it.

We mentioned this issue a while back -- since it was introduced to the game, Strand of the Ancients has started Alliance on attack first, and that's caused problems. Due to the way the map is set up (a back-and-forth attack and defend map), the team that starts attacking has an advantage in terms of farming honor -- they only have to play until the other team loses rather than having to keep up a defense the whole time. That means shorter battlegrounds for the Alliance, which means more honor overall for them.

The problem was that Blizzard couldn't just flip a switch to randomize the battleground's spawn points: they were hard-coded into the moving ships that players appear on, so it took much more coding to use a coin-flip start. However Zarhym now confirms that the coin flip is coming to SotA. And though he didn't say when in the original post, the Patch 3.2 notes tell us that it's coming in that patch.

Hopefully Blizzard will have learned their lesson for the Isle of Conquest -- although since it's closer to Alterac Valley from what we've heard, we probably won't have that asymmetrical issue, and both sides will be able to start with just as many advantages and disadvantages as the other.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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Blizzard just released some screenshots from Patch 3.2's brand new super massive Battleground, the Isle of Conquest. For those unfamiliar with the Isle, it's a large-scale 40v40 Battleground that features siege combat, good old-fashioned melee, capturable resource points, NPC bosses like Alterac Valley, steady Honor ticks from capping certain areas, and more. It's essentially the Battleground with something for everyone. We just recently posted a Q&A with World Designer Cory Stockton, with a lot of questions about the Isle answered.

And now we've got screenshots to give us a feel for the place. They show bits and pieces of the Isle, including the Alliance Keep, part of the Refinery, what appears to be the Airship Hangar, and the Lighthouse. It's all very Northrend and very exciting. After all, in the grim, dark future past World of Warcraft, there is only war. As long as you're in a Battleground, anyway. But only if you're fighting instead of fishing or killing harpies. Regardless, there's definitely war going on somewhere.

Check out the shots in the gallery below. We'll keep you posted with all the new info we get!

There was a big announcement today on upcoming Battleground changes. However there are two critical pieces of PvP information that people everywhere, especially twinks, are going to go crazy over.

• You will be able to level through PvP Battlegrounds
• You will be able to turn off experience gains
  

This means that you'll be able to level your character simply by competing in PvP in battlegrounds and completing objectives, such as capturing the flag in WSG or securing resources in AB. Not from killing other players. This opens up a whole new way of playing the game at the earlier levels, one that will add a significant dynamic to it.

The second major change is the ability to turn off this experience gain in Battlegrounds and the rest of WoW (at a cost of 10g). This means that twinks are a viable and supported option in WoW, and lets those players who want to sit in the 30s bracket enjoy it to their heart's content.

Additionally, if you have turned off experience gains, you'll be placed in separate battlegrounds from those that have them turned on. That means that twinks will play against other twinks, and not against those players who are just interested in the bracket from a more casual perspective.

The floodgates of Patch 3.2 are wide open now. Enjoying it?

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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One thread over at the forums sparked quite a discussion when it asked what the problem was with World of Warcraft PvP. It's a pretty good question and definitely not something with a simple answer, but Ghostcrawler took up the task and addressed several issues in his usual forthcoming fashion. In a nutshell, Blizzard views the following issues as the primary problems of PvP:

• Too much emphasis on Arenas and not enough on Battlegrounds.
• Too much emphasis on 2s and not enough on 3s and 5s.
• Not enough class / spec representation in Arena. Warlock, hunter and shaman numbers in particular are too low, but they're not the only ones.
• Too fast-paced.
  

Ghostcrawler proceeded to explain the last point in detail, talking once again about burst damage and reiterating their intent that PvP should be a balance between damage, healing, and crowd control. He says that Blizzard plans to "add an extra GCD or two" in the small window where a player can either be healed to full or fall to enemy fire, allowing players to better use their full toolbox. Anyone who has ever played Arenas should know that that's a pretty tall order.

Wow. Can I just say that again? Wow. When Blizzard announced that they were introducing a new Battleground with Patch 3.2, I personally thought it was going to be some mid-scale map similar to Strand of the Ancients or Arathi Basin. Being a Battlegrounds nut, I was completely stoked. When Zarhym hinted that the new map would be "Wintergrasp combined with Alterac Valley," it became clear to me that Blizzard was thinking on a much bigger scale. If we look at their development patch for Battlegrounds and world PvP, it's no stretch to say that the Isle of Conquest is their most ambitious PvP project yet. More ambitious than Wintergrasp, in fact.

How can anything be more ambitious than Wintergrasp, which proved to be so tremendously popular that it tends to break realms? Well, the only real limitation to Wintergrasp was because it had no limits with the number of participants. That was the only thing that brought servers down to their knees. The Isle of Conquest takes care of that problem by limiting participation to a (mere) eighty people. This then leaves Blizzard free to implement all sorts of cooler stuff like parachuting into enemy territory. The new Battleground brings the much anticipated aerial combat element into World of Warcraft PvP.

I have to confess something. I'm a sucker for hearing stories about someone playing their Hunter in offbeat ways. What do I mean? Well, take for example that fabled Hunter Tank Gweryc.

Last week I got a great tip from Darth Solo over at WoW Alone about another offbeat Hunter idea. Seems Darth is a fan of solo play. At first I thought as you that this probably isn't completely original. We Hunters tend to just run with our pets anyways. But something kept nagging me to go check out WoW Alone and see just what Darth was doing.

Turns out he's put a lot of thought into how to get the most out of your World of Warcraft experience without having to worry about the drama associated with PUGs or even some guilds.

Of course I would be the first to admit that this kind of play style isn't for me. But if you want to find ways of enjoying your Hunter, getting loot all the while avoiding the drama associated with PUGs. Go check out his Hunter Solo Guides for gear, glyphs, and suggested specs for the Solo Hunter.

Vaneras has just released the details for the Isle of Conquest, the new battleground that will be appearing in Patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade.

You can read the complete details over on the official forums or check 'em out after the break. There are some key things that everyone should be aware of:

• IoC will be a 40-man battleground. Yes, you read that right. This is the first 40-man content released since Naxx 1.0. That is going to make some old school players very, very happy. I know I'm already giddy with excitement.
• There will be significant use of siege and vehicle combat. This includes going on The Airship Hanger and using parachutes to drop teams onto the enemy keep from above.
• You will need to kill a general held up in the enemy keep, much like Alterac Valley.
• Reinforcements will be used. Capture resources to boost your strength.

This looks like an amazing new battleground, and one that I'm sure many of us cannot wait to try out on the PTR. There has been a ton of new information about Patch 3.2 released in the last few days, so it looks like PTR might be soonish. Keep your fingers crossed.

The complete statement on the new Isle of Conquest after the break!

So one of the things we have coming our way in patch 3.2 will be the new Isle of Conquest battleground. Unfortunately, we don't know much more about it than the name, but that has not stopped everyone from speculating on what it could bring, whether it be a combination of some of the old mechanics from previous battlegrounds (Much like Eye of the Storm was a combination of Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch) or completely new ideas. There's been hints it's more like Alterac Valley than other old battlegrounds, but for now, we're waiting impatiently for the PTR in the hopes of getting a real look.

Zarhym chimed in on one of these threads a couple days ago, and while he mostly told people they'd have to wait and see, one reply he did give suggests a sneak peek into what the battleground could be: "If "conquest" means the ability to catapult or parachute players behind enemy lines, then yes."

Ok, so it's not much, but it's there. There will be Catapults, and we will be flinging players in them! I know one of my favorite things to do in Alterac Valley back when it lasted hours was to sneak behind enemy lines to capture objectives or gather Frostwolf Hides and the like. Of course, I could do this because I played a stealthing Druid. Non-stealthers generally did not have the ability to sneak past all the PCs and NPCs blocking their way. But the idea of sending paratrooping special forces in to complete small objectives or even just flank the enemy is just plain sort of cool, if it ends up working out like that.

Beyond that, Zarhym also hinted that the Battleground revamp is coming along, but of course, once again, he had no information to offer. Will we see it in Patch 3.2? Hopefully, the PTR will come up soon and we'll know more for sure.

I love the Battlegrounds. In my mind, it's the halfway point between general world PvP (no objectives), which is a free-for-all, anything goes brawl and Arenas, which is a tightly controlled deathmatch environment. The former epitomizes war in its absolute sense -- no controls or limits for balance in terms of numbers or levels or gear, there are no match start times, and there is no set ending. Think of old school Hillsbrad PvP or run-of-the-mill gankage. It's pure conflict with no constraints. The flip side is Arenas, which is as close as the game can get to a sport, as much as possible trying to pit evenly matched teams against each other.

Battlegrounds are the compromise. The format tries (admittedly sometimes unsuccessfully) to control numbers as well as limit the instances where organized teams are matched against a rabble of random players. Brackets limit level disparity and map objectives give direction to the encounters. Battleground objectives give a little flavor to the PvP, although players can treat it like a deathmatch, too, sometimes at the expense of prolonging or losing the game. Solo players -- playing any class of any spec -- can have a go at it and come away with a good experience, as Battlegrounds aren't as harsh as Arenas in terms of team composition. In Patch 3.2, Blizzard plans to introduce a new Battleground, which should be pretty exciting. The fun doesn't stop there, either, as it looks like developers are at work on even cooler things for this aspect of the game.