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At the 1-35 levels there are only 2 bg’s that you can get into: Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch. The first bg that low level characters can jump into is Warsong Gulch. You can make access starting at level 10 and continue to battle through the rest of the game. This will most likely be your first experience in WOW battlegrounds.

To enter a bg you can do it one of three ways. The easiest is right clicking on the horde or alliance shield down in your micromenu and choose which bg you wish to fight in. You may have to wait in the queue depending on how busy the battleground is the day, but you can continue questing or whatever else you are doing in game while you wait. In fact, many players queue up for multiple bg’s with the intent to jump into the first one that becomes available. With the patch 3.1 addition of being able to enter the bg’s from your micromenu, there is no real need to make use of the other two methods, which are talking to the battlemaster outside the battleground instance or talking to the battleground representative in one of the capital cities. All three work equally well, but the ease of using the micromenu has made the bg’s even easier and more popular amongst the WOW player base.

Now that you know how to get into your first bg, we can return to what will most likely be your first actual bg fight; Warsong Gulch. Warsong can be a very fun fight if you go into it with the right intentions. The goal of Warsong is that you have 25 minutes to capture the opposing faction’s flag three times or at the end of 25 minutes the faction with the most flag captures wins. The reality for most players is that this battle is not about capturing the flag so much as it is about keeping your flag from being captured, killing the toon that has captured your flag and not letting them get it home to their base or just killing other toons in the bg.

There are basically two types of toons that stand the best chance of capturing the flag: speedy/stealth toons and tank toons. Many times the best toons for capturing the flag are the toons that have the speed bonuses such as the Hunter aspect of the cheetah, the druid travel form, rogue sprint and shaman ghost wolf. The other options, the tanks, can take the most beating or heal their way through the long flight back to their factions base carrying the flag. There are also some potions and gear that will assist, such as making you faster for a time, in your desire to be the flag carrier.

Many players however come in just to play the PVP aspect. You can choose to just hunt the opposing faction and battle it out. It can also be very fun to not concern yourself with the flags per se and just trying to limit the number of opposing toons whose goal is to stop your flag carrier.

A good example of the types of toons not meant to carry the flag is my warlock. He is not a good choice because he is a cloth wearer and he does not have any class based speed or healing bonuses. Usually, I am dead within a minute of capturing the flag. Instead, I try to be AOE in the bg and attack as many of the opposing faction as possible. I do end up being the toon who dies the most, but it is still a bundle of fun.

Arathi Basin (AB) is the other low level battleground. AB is one of my favorite battlegrounds in WOW. In AB the goal is to get 1600 points for your side. You get points by holding any of the 5 resource nodes: the Farm, the Lumber Mill, the Blacksmith, the Mine or the Stables. The more nodes you hold, the faster you accumulate points. If you can capture all five your side wins quickly as you accumulate points at the fastest possible rate.

The best overall strategy is to attack and take at least 3 of the nodes and hold onto them. Once you have 3 nodes under you factions control, you will most likely win the 1600 point battle as long as you can hold all 3 nodes. Most often what happends is the horde takes the farm which is the closest one to the horde starting point and the alliance takes the stables. The battle then is holding onto those points and taking control of the 3 middle of the map nodes. And that can be a serious challenge.

So, why should you start fighting in the battlegrounds? Well, first and foremost is the number of experience points. This is a good source of experience when compared to just questing. I use it as a break from questing and to have some good PVP fights on my PVE server.

The next reason, which is almost as important, is that you can get some good gear from the bg vendors. At the highest levels the gear is not as useful because there is far better gear available to you. But, in the lower levels however you can get gear that is better than anything that is dropped or can be bought in the AH. For example, my warlock has a belt with an armor rating of 88, when everything in the AH is in the 30′s.

To get his gear you need to get a combined number of honor points, which you get for performing certain tasks in the BG such as getting a kill, an honorable kill, capturing a flag, returning a flag, etc. At the end of each battle you can see a summary of how many kills, honorable kills, deaths, etc. as well as the number of honor points you were awarded. Also, you get marks from fighting in the battleground. You receive one mark for a loss and three for a win. Plus, on bg holiday’s you receive extra honor points for fighting in that holiday’s bg.

So, for my warlock to get his staff from the Warsong Gulch vendor he had to spend 40 Warsong Gulch marks and 496 honor points. Some of the gear available from vendors require multiple battleground marks to buy the gear such as some of the mounts that are available. These mounts such as the Black War Elekk require marks from different bg’s. The Elekk costs 30 Warsong marks, 30 Alterac Valley marks and 30 Arathi Basin marks to buy.

The battlegrounds are fun and I suggest you try it. So, tell your guild, your wife or your mom, the Inquisitor made me do it.

Inquisitor