Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. Today we gingerly step back into battlegrounds and discover that the world can be a very unfriendly place.

I love writing this column, but there's one thing that bugs me about it -- the druid class is tailor-made to defeat a sole writer's efforts to cover everything she can. No matter how hard I try, I'm never going to cover each spec and playstyle with up-to-the-minute and in-depth experience, because it would require the simultaneous mastery of ranged DPS PvE, ranged DPS PvP, tanking, off-tanking, melee DPS PvE, melee DPS PvP, healing PvE, and healing PvP. Even with all that, I'd be leaving out all the hybrid and kooky specs people dream up. This has been getting to me lately.

Consequently I thought that, before we get to some end-of-year and patch 3.3 business, it might be a good idea to spend some time on topics that -- to be frank -- I haven't been that great about covering. Balance as a whole needs some love and so do our kitties, but before I do that, I'd like to address a topic that, in contrast to Balance and Cat, I've been willfully ignoring -- PvP. It occurred to me that roughly a year after Wrath's launch, it might be a good idea to pop back into battlegrounds and see how the class' most common PvP spec (Restoration) is faring in combat these days, so I dumped badges and gold into a PvP set and went for broke.

And, well...a lot's changed.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's (almost) daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Embedded video has absolutely not relevance to anything in this edition of The Queue. Why did I use it? Because I like the music. Do I really need more of a reason than that? Nope! Now let's jump into the questions. Some of them came from right here on WoW.com, and others came from Twitter.

Lavoz asked...

"With Cataclysm, the blood elves will finally have access to the warrior class. Is there any information as to what order they will belong to? Will they be a part of the Blood Knights, or will we refer to them as Spellbreakers?"

I'm still running AV.

Before you alert my local mental health professional (I saw him this weekend, actually, he was pretty jazzed about a Wintergrasp string of wins he'd pulled off this week) let me explain: I like AV because I like the total mass chaos potential. Sure, a lot of times we end up with both Horde and Alliance zerging to their objectives and very little PvP, but that's not what I enjoy. What I enjoy is sitting in a tower with a buddy and waiting for the enemy and then seeing them come running in the door, six against two, and doing my level best to Bladestorm their faces off before they manage to cap the bloody thing back. Or going prot and becoming the most annoying man alive, zipping around with Warbringer and popping Shockwave in the middle of a pack before throwing every defensive cooldown I have up to annoy them even more.

I enjoy Flame Shocking a DK from behind just as he's about to take Dun Baldar North back from us. Orcs just look cool shocking people.

Patch 3.2.2 has gone live and it has made a significant impact on World of Warcraft PvP. Most of the changes affect class balance, which greatly affect PvP, but there are some important changes to Battlegrounds, as well. One Battlegrounds-specific item in the patch notes is the way lower level characters can see daily Battlegrounds quests independent of quests for characters in different brackets. This means that players will always have a daily Battleground quest available, only that they will range from whatever Battlegrounds they are eligible to enter.

This is great news for leveling players or even twinks who can gain Honor and a bit of gold. The change also moderately offsets the undocumented change to Alterac Valley Battleground experience gain. Zarhym explains it with a little more detail, saying that the bracket changes were responsible for the unexpected shift in experience gain. He also adds that overall, Battlegrounds experience gain should be improved across the board so playing, say, Warsong Gulch will be as rewarding as playing Alterac Valley.

We've gotten a bunch of tips recently that claim some very e-famous PvPers are botting in BGs. If you aren't familiar with the term "botting," Dictionary.com provides us with the following definitions of bot:

1. Bot:
   –noun
   the larva of a botfly.
2. Bot:
   –noun (Australian Slang)
   a person who cadges; scrounger.
3. Bot:
   –noun
   a device or piece of software that can execute commands, reply to messages, or perform routine tasks, as online searches, either automatically or with minimal human intervention (often used in combination): intelligent infobots; shopping bots that help consumers find the best prices.

I'm really impressed with BG Hero. We take a look at these stats sites pretty often, but I have never seen a site targeted strictly at PvP data like this one, and with such a clean and interesting view. Unfortunately, it's still getting off the ground, so we're probably going to give the server a run for its money with this link, but give it a few days and head back there when they've smoothed things out.

It'll track your plays and wins in each BG, obviously, but you can also get a whole bunch of graphs and numbers about how you're doing each time you play, including HKs per BG, and killing blows per battleground that you play. The app also tracks your totals daily and weekly, so if you get your character in there and let it update over a period of time, you can see just how you're doing. Pretty amazing stuff if you've been playing a lot of battlegrounds lately (and with the extra XP in there, why wouldn't you?). We're told the site is still being worked on, so expect more updates soon (and Phood is keeping info flowing on his blog), but in the meantime, it looks like a great way to look at your BG progress in more detail.

Since we didn't have a WRUP this weekend, I'll go ahead and tell you what I did: leveled alts using Alterac Valley. Just a few hours of play, and the levels were flying past without a care, even with only about a 50% win rate. And those times we won fast? Hoo Boy. 100-150k experience for about 10 minutes of work is nothing to sneeze at.

It might be possible that I could have leveled up quicker by loading up a few questing addons and buckling down, but I found PvPing a lot more fun and relaxing for some reason, and I don't think questing would have been all that much quicker.

Well, readers, BlizzCon 2009 is over and done, and our staff is slowly but surely beginning to make its way home in celebrated zombie-like fashion. In the meantime, we've outsourced article production to our household pets, so be gentle with your criticism of Toonces' efforts today (stupid cat can't even spell QQ correctly). Anyway, here's what happened on Day 2 of BlizzCon:

• SATURDAY'S PANELS: We liveblogged the panels on Breaking Into the Industry, the general World of Warcraft Q&A, WoW Game Systems, the Dungeons and Raids panel (which included information on both Icecrown Citadel and Cataclysm content) and the second WoW Class Discussion panel.
• NEW FEATURES ANNOUNCED: Blizzard announced a long-awaited feature in the form of cross-server instances, which should dramatically increase the pool of people available to run a 5-man at any given time. We won't have to wait for the expansion; they believe it should be ready to go live in patch 3.3. Another long-awaited feature will make its debut in the form of rated battlegrounds and arena points from wins. A beloved feature of the old honor system -- ranked (and faction-specific) PvP titles! -- will also return.
  
• WORLD OF WARCRAFT: WE'RE ALL &$#*%*^ED NOW: Cataclysm continued its storm through the con, and we've got in-depth looks at an array of the announced features. Read on for a look at the Cataclysm narrative, tanks and the removal of +defense, an explanation of the Mastery system and new talent functionality, what we know about the Path of the Titans, the introduction of guild leveling and talents, the known dungeons of Cataclysm, and what we can expect to see in patch 3.3's Icecrown Citadel raid and 5-mans.
  
• PATCH 3.2.2: On the subject of Wrath game patches, Matt Rossi takes a look at the most eagerly-anticipated part of patch 3.2.2, the return of Onyxia.
• LIVE RAID: The top-ranked U.S. guild, Premonition, did a live raid against a series of selected bosses, falling eventually to...Hogger? No one saw that coming.
• CLASS AND ROLE COMMENTARY: Zach Yonzon and Eddie Carrington respectively have you covered on Warlock and Hunter information from at the Class Q&A panels, Christian Belt's written his column on Cataclysm and Mages, and Matticus examines the information released on stat changes and their likely repercussions for healers.
• VIDEOS: We have additional video of the new Worgen and Goblin starting areas, the finalists and winner of the costume contest, and the Dance and Soundalike contest.
  

One of the most widely-cheered announcements during the Game Systems panel was the introduction of rated battlegrounds and the reappearance of old PvP titles from the now-defunct ranking system. It's a question we've seen asked a lot -- plenty of people out there aren't fond of arena but love battlegrounds, and many of them chafed under the inability to get up-to-date PvP gear. It looks like Blizzard will be trying to reward better battleground play without punishing people who have the bad luck to land on an indifferent PuG. Here's what we know so far:

• Whichever battleground is currently on its holiday weekend will also be a rated battleground for that week.
• Battleground wins will award both rating and arena points. Battleground losses won't punish you with a ratings loss, but also won't award any points. I would assume that you can continue to accrue honor and a single BG token per loss. Points earned will be capped at a certain number (not yet known) per week to keep rated battlegrounds from feeling too "grindy."
  
• Your battleground ratings will, like the current arena system, encompass two ratings: a personal and a match-making rating.
• Old PvP rankings will make their reappearance as end-of-season titles (e.g., "Scout," "Commander," "Centurion"). No word yet on whether these are permanent or if, like the non-Gladiator arena titles, you have to earn them each season to continue displaying them.
• "Special epic ground mounts" will be made available to people playing the rated battlegrounds.
• Rated battleground wins will also contribute to the new guild talent system.

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

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WoW.com has covered patch 3.2 extensively. Everything from the surprising changes to flying mounts, to the latest and greatest loot, and all the changes in between. In our patch 3.2 class, raiding, and PvP guides we take a look at exactly what changes and how the changes will affect your playing.

Patch 3.2 is finally here, and is anyone else kind of surprised by how fast things are coming these days? To be fair, as most of my co-workers here at WoW.com have assessed, this newest patch is one of the more lackluster patches in a while considering it merely appends to much of existing content (the Argent Tournament). There's a smattering of stuff for raiders, soloists, hardcores and casuals, but what's in store for PvP enthusiasts?

There are a lot of major changes in this patch that will impact PvP greatly, one being the blanket change to Resilience which now affects all damage taken, rather than just critical hits. Another is the effective neutering of the 2v2 Arena bracket with the change blocking access to the best weapons and end-of-season rewards. A third big change coming is the introduction of a brand new Battleground, the Isle of Conquest, which is the technically the first 40-man raid instance since the original Naxxramas. There's also the whopping introduction of experience gain in Battlegrounds, too. Caught your breath yet? There are a lot of other things in between, and we'll take a closer look at everything after the jump.

Ghostcrawler has posted a little paragraph on the forums, reaffirming something we've already heard from Blizzard: that in the past, they've spent more time on Arenas to the detriment of battlegrounds, and that battlegrounds are going to be gaining a little more focus in the future. They've already started, actually, with the Isle of Conquest in 3.2, but GC says there's even more on the table, and that future plans will be revealed at BlizzCon.

He also brings up another good point, however: in terms of class balance, Arenas are a much more striking example of imbalances than battlegrounds are. Battlegrounds have all sorts of things going on, and so you don't get as good a picture of just how the different classes work with and against each other as you do in Arenas. And so, if you're a dev trying to figure out class balances, of course you'll spend more time looking at the Arena gameplay than the BGs. GC also says that the majority of issues in BGs tend to be map-based rather than class imbalances, which is really a whole other science. Not that BGs aren't relevant to how the classes work, just that there are many more variables in there than the relative vacuum chamber of Arenas.

All good points. I'm a fan of battlegrounds much more than Arenas, but I don't particularly feel that Blizzard has ignored them necessarily. The real problem, to my mind, with BGs is simply how faction imbalanced they are: it seems like on every realm in every given BG, one side always seems to have the upper hand, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's a population problem, sometimes it's a map issue. But GC is right: those problems are more pressing than class balance in the BGs.

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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