Zach loves the Battlegrounds. He loves them so much that he spends nearly all his playing time mucking around in them. He loves them so much he writes a column devoted to them. He loves it so much he makes a comic based on Battlegrounds play. You could say he eats, lives, and breathes Battlegrounds and world PvP. And maybe some Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It's kind of hard to get by without doughnuts.

Alright, so you have some kind of vague idea about what a Battleground is. Basically, Battlegrounds are where players go to consensually bash each others brains out. Or fry them. Or freeze them. These instances are designed for players to enjoy PvP, get a bit of honor and, if you're not already at max level, some experience. In the future, Blizzard has revealed plans to make the Battlegrounds even more like instances or dungeons by hinting at possible actual loot rewards. It's an interesting concept we'll have to revisit sometime in the future.

For now, we'll get back down to the basics. Last week we discussed how to get inside a Battleground. That's easy enough, especially with the new changes to the Battlegrounds queue system. This week we'll take a closer look at the different Battlegrounds available. Think of it as a nice buffet of PvP that you can choose from. What kind of Battleground you choose will depend on what kind of game you want to play (or more realistically, what Marks of Honor you still need. We'll get to that later). Hit the jump to check out this week's featured Battleground, Warsong Gulch.

Zach takes you on a tour of the Battlegrounds and world PvP. Think of it as the casual player's guide to World of Warcraft PvP. This will consist mostly of hopping around from place to place hitting things, spouting all manner of asshattery, and playing heavy metal music. Ok, that's not entirely true. Zach doesn't play heavy metal music when he PvPs. He plays Mika. Because fewer things are more embarrassing than getting pwned by a player who listens to Love Today while PvPing.

This post is for noobs. Now don't get your knickers up in a bunch. It's alright. We were all noobs once. I remember the first time I entered Warsong Gulch and had no idea what to do with the flag after picking it up, eventually dropping it at the flag spawn area it thinking that was the way to capture it. Naturally, the enemy returned it and promptly capped, resulting in a torrent of insults and less savory emotes throughout that game. Ah, the good old days.

Of course, if I'd let the experience intimidate me, I probably wouldn't have entered another Battleground again. But I'm nothing if not stubborn, so I eventually slogged my way through Warsong Gulch (it was the only Battleground back then) and got the hang of things. These days, Battlegrounds are considered to be a "casual" form of PvP, which is easily enjoyed by solo players as well as groups. Since we've gotten more than a few questions regarding how to start playing the Battlegrounds lately -- it turns out that despite having 11 million players pick up the game, a lot of people are only just starting to play World of Warcraft -- so for today we'll take an absolute beginner's look at the Battlegrounds.

The Art of War(craft) strives to bring you anything and everything related to PvP. Well, mostly anything that isn't covered by Arenas, anyway, since that's kind of Colby's territory. And stepping on Colby's territory can get Zach into trouble. I mean, have you seen that guy? Those beady eyes and razor-sharp teeth? Yikes! Oh wait, that might've been a shark. Or it could've been Colby after someone drank from his Chai Tea Latte in the office fridge. He's just kind of a monster that way.

Patch 3.2 introduced a new 40-man raid Battleground, technically the biggest instance since old world Naxxramas. In Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, raid dungeons were cut down to 25-players and the two Battlegrounds since then, the Eye of the Storm and Strand of the Ancients, were limited to 15 players per side. Isle of Conquest sees the return of epic battles not seen since Alterac Valley. Well, okay, epic battles with less lag not seen since Wintergrasp, anyway. If you're just hit Level 80 or are curious about the new Battleground, here's a quick guide to help you out.

What's the deal?

There are essentially two ways to win the Battleground, identical to the new and improved Alterac Valley -- kill the enemy General or deplete the opposing team's Resources. The Horde forces are led by Overlord Agmar, the orc after whom the Horde base in Dragonblight is named, the leader of the Kor'kron Guard who looks like he's wearing Northrend greens or blues, at best. On the other team is High Commander Halford Wyrmbane, the leader of the 7th Legion and whom Alliance players will typically first encounter giving quests in Wintergarde Keep in Dragonblight. He isn't any better off than his rival, as he looks like he's in Sunwell epics. Cool, right? Alright, now let's figure out how to kill them.

The Art of War(craft) takes you through the paces of the myriad faces of World of Warcraft PvP. Zach, who writes this column, is tragically unfunny and has asshat blood running through his Asian veins. If you're looking for humor, head over to the musings of Christian or Allison. If you want some lore or news, Alex and Adam are your guys. If, however, you feel like bashing someone's face in and dropping The Flag of Ownership on their corpse, you, my friend, have come to the right place.

Season 7 started a while back, and we've now got Colby on the team to pick up on the Arena scene with Blood Sport. He covers all the basics of the latest Arena season in his debut column, so head on over and read up on everything you need to know. That's your primer. On today's The Art of War(craft), I'm going to discuss other things not quite covered by the basics.

First of all, what does a new Arena season mean to the Battleground enthusiast? I mean, who gives a shmoo? Arenas shmarenas, right? Well... not exactly. The sad fact is that Arena players are going to be playing the Battlegrounds, anyway, since the non-set pieces are purchasable with Honor points. While these items also drop off Koralon, the Flame Watcher, the fastest, most efficient way to obtain non-set Relentless Gladiator pieces is through Honor farming in the Battlegrounds.

That means successful Arena play, or at least the most conscientious preparation, requires Battleground participation. The converse isn't necessarily true. The gear disparity in the Battlegrounds is extreme, and it isn't uncommon to find players fresh from hitting Level 80 hitting the maps to grind Honor for gear upgrades. Gear isn't as critical, but it's a definite advantage. My view on the matter is that Arenas are a necessary, but fun, evil.

Every week, Zach brings you the World of War(craft), which talks about PvP in all its myriad shapes and forms. It will be humorless and dry and deathly boring because Christian Belt already has the monopoly on funny and because cracking jokes in a PvP column just doesn't work since PvP people are supposed to be asshats, anyway.

BlizzCon came and went and nothing is going to be the same again. At least not after Cataclysm, the third expansion for the World of Warcraft. Cataclysm is set to change the face of the game more than anything we've ever seen, it'll almost be like WoW 2.0. The classes are the same, but there'll be new races, new abilities, new mechanics, and a new, revamped world with a renewed faction conflict that will have deep implications for PvP.

Gameplay will change significantly, particularly for Warlocks and Hunters, and there will be changes to talents, talent tree passive benefits, racial abilities, as well as entire systems to rate Battleground play. There will likely be an overhaul to the Arena ratings system, as well, perhaps as soon as Arena Season 7 kicks in. Blizzard isn't content to sit idle on its success, but has in fact taken the opposite direction by overhauling the entire game. They're turning Azeroth on its ear, and it's going to be insane. After the jump, we'll take a look at how the Cataclysm is going to shape World of Warcraft PvP.

So you've got your computer, your input device, and maybe some specialized keyboard. The only thing you'll need now is some sound system. In the conclusion of this series, we'll take a look at what you use for game sounds. For general gaming purposes, your computer's default sound system, if any, should really do fine. On the other hand, if you're serious about your PvP, you might want to invest in a good headset. If you normally play at home and have the luxury of playing indiscreetly, a great sound system is an awesome thing to have.

Personally, I don't play external background music (e.g., through iTunes) whenever I PvP. It's cool for PvP videos, but it's generally a bad idea. For one thing, music, even the one found in-game, tends to obscure important PvP sounds. In particular, the stealth sound is one of the most important sound effects in World of Warcraft PvP. That sound will often, but not always, precede visual confirmation of a stealthed unit nearby. If only for this reason, I turn up game sounds and lower in-game music to an ambient level.

My wife recently won a Facebook contest run by those Razer guys to win a Sphex "gaming grade desktop skin", which is actually just a fancy name for a mousepad. That was great timing, too, because she'd been confined to using a ratty Manila envelope as her mouse surface for the past couple of months. She'd been able to raid just fine (apparently Manila paper works better than some conventional mousepads), although a new mousepad might help.

Once you've gotten your mouse, you'll want to pair it off with a proper gaming surface. My wife, who doesn't PvP, uses a generic two button optical mouse which she bought simply "because it's pink". She did drool at SteelSeries' Iron Lady gear (also colored pink), but all the fancy tech and extra dollars would be lost on her. On the other hand, if you've splurged on a mouse for your PvP, make sure to get a mousepad that at least takes care of your mouse. At its most basic, a mousepad is easier to clean and keep clean than, say, your desk.

Let's face it, not everyone can afford an HP Blackbird 002, which was used for several MLG pro gaming tournaments and was awarded 4.5 stars (out of 5) by CNET. The Editors' bottom line at the time was "If you can afford it, and you want a high-end gaming PC, buy this one. End of story." The end of that story was a $5,600 hole in your wallet, which is not a very happy ending for most of us mortals (Wired gave its $2,100 successor, the HP Firebird, a 9 out of 10). The actual happy compromise is in your peripherals, which you can splurge on (within reason) without having to win the Lotto.

I'll start with the mouse. More than your keyboard, your mouse is your most important gaming peripheral. For laptop users, who will more often than not use the default keyboard built-in to their machine, dedicated gaming keyboards are a luxury rather than a necessity. Furthermore, PvP enthusiasts necessarily learn to move with a mouse, which makes it a worthy investment.

One of the most important things in World of Warcraft PvP, obviously -- as with all endeavors in a loot-driven game -- is gear. Epic items with Stamina and Resilience, PvP set bonuses and all that. Well, that's not what we're going to talk about today. Today we'll take a look at the metagame. What you do outside the World of Warcraft and how you can improve your PvP skills with so-called gaming gear and other factors out of the game.

Over the past few months, my brother built a custom trail bike that he weighed down to the gram (it's about 10.12kg compared to the 15kg bike I currently use). It cost him something in the atmosphere of $3,000, and when I chided him about spending so much for it, he explained that since he doesn't have as much skill as other competitive bikers, he tries to make up for it with a better tool. It makes sense. Obviously, a superior athlete with a mediocre bicycle could and does outperform him in competitions, but he beats bikers of identical skill and athleticism with his new, lightweight, high-end bike.

What does this have to do with the World of Warcraft, you ask? Well, my brother's reasoning applies to gaming, as well. While natural talent and skill for video games isn't something you can achieve or obtain overnight (if at all), it's easy enough to take steps to improve your metagame. Just as characters get an advantage through in-game gear, players can get an advantage using real life gear.

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 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.

I know, I know, most of you hate Arenas. I've been writing for WoW Insider -- ahem, I mean WoW.com -- long enough to know that you guys probably aren't the most avid of PvP players. But the fun thing about it is that at least I'm not preaching to the choir, right? Anyway, I have to admit that I've gotten pretty tired of Arenas myself. Aside from two to three weeks worth of games in Season 5, I skipped the season altogether, unhappy with the balance then and the constantly changing rating and matchmaking system.

That wasn't even the heart of it, really. In the past seasons where I'd had the most success, I played with particular classes and specs that were viable in that season's environment. More importantly, I teamed up with players who were focused on PvP and were expectedly competent at it. The downside was that our success as a team was proportional to my loathing of the players on my team, particularly our team leader who was prone to excessive nerd rage and finger pointing. It sometimes happens that the best PvP players aren't necessarily your friends, and working together towards high ratings is sometimes a marriage of convenience. At a certain point when the stakes were extremely high, where wins would net us measly gains and losses would tank us badly enough for us to lose titles, Arenas became more stressful than fun.

Zarhym recently took to the forums defending Blizzard's recent tinkering with Wintergrasp on the test realms when one a poster threw the accusation that rather than optimize the servers to handle Wintergrasp lag, Blizzard instead chose to make the zone and games less rewarding to play. Although that's not exactly how Zarhym would describe it, the changes are clearly designed to reduce the number of people in the zone.

Crygil's post about the change from Daily quests to Weekly ones -- conceivably a first for the game -- note that the changes were being explored "In an effort to better balance the amount of players that are in Wintergrasp at any given time". No matter how Blizzard tries to spin it, they're trying to dissuade players from participating in Wintergrasp. This is a bad idea. There's something epic about Wintergrasp, and it's not (just) the lag. Considering it's obviously one of their most popular game features in Wrath, it's ironic they're taking steps to curtail its success.

This is long overdue, but with the Strand of the Ancients weekend upon us, it's a fine time to take a look at the Battleground introduced to us in Wrath of the Lich King. Strand of the Ancients is presumably located off the Southern coast of Dragonblight, and works differently than any other Battleground before it. It is the first timed Battleground and guarantees that the game will end in about twenty minutes or less.

The 15-player Battleground has an attack and defend scenario, where the objective is to capture the Titan Relic housed inside a keep at the southern end of the map. It is very similar to Wintergrasp, and is a fast-paced Battleground where players literally race against time. Attackers, split into two groups, arrive on two boats on the Northeast and Northwest portions of the map. When they land on the beach, four siege vehicles are initially available to attackers, who must break down gates to get to their goal.

These siege vehicles are identical to the demolishers found in Wintergrasp, with about 80,000 hp and the same offensive capabilites. Players on foot can pick up Massive Seaforium Charges in Seaforium Barrels throughout the map. These explosives can be placed near gates to deal damage to them. Players on defense, meanwhile, can man cannons that flank each gate. These cannons have 60,000 hp and have very long range.

Patch 3.0.8 brought in quite a number of changes to the game, many of which affect PvP directly. I wrote about most of the changes in the other day's column, but as you can imagine, trying to cover all the bases with all the classes can get quite hefty. So before I reach Blizzard levels of 'soon', I'm cheating and appending the rest of the class balance changes here and pretend the whole Wintergrasp fiasco never happened. Oh, and yes, that button should work now.

CLASS BALANCE
Mages
Despite all the calls for nerfs for many classes, for some reason Mages have tiptoed past the madding crowd and continued to Pyroblast unsuspecting enemies for 10k damage without anyone batting an eyelash. Maybe it's their Invisibility, I don't know, but Mages are incredibly powerful opponents in PvP but don't elicit calls for nerfs. Christian was right in saying that Frost is no longer the spec for PvP. It now shares the spotlight with Arcane, with the highest ranked Mage in the world sporting a 60/ 0/ 11 build (although a Frost-specced 20/ 0/ 51 gnome isn't far behind).

So you think Mages are strong in PvP? Well, they've just been buffed. Evocation's cooldown was reduced to four minutes, and with Arcane Mages having access to the improved Arcane Flows, they can Evocate every 2 minutes. It was never a viable tactic to try and drain a Mage, but even with the spark of hope given by the change to mana drain mechanics, Mages will never run out of mana. The extremely RNG behavior of Mirror Images Polymorphing the most unlikely targets has been curtailed somewhat with the range of the copy's Polymorph down to a mere 8 yards. This is pretty good.