Yesterday was patch day and, as usual, it was not without controversy.  Among the many changes that were documented there was one change that was not mentioned.  Before we get to that though let’s hit the jump to take a look at the patch notes and what they had to say about Battlegrounds.

Battlegrounds

<> Players level 11 and higher will now always see a daily Battleground quest, as the quest giver will only offer daily quests for a Battleground in which a player is eligible to participate according to level bracket (i.e. players levels 11-20 will always be offered a Warsong Gulch daily quest, while players levels 11-50 will be offered either an Arathi Basin or a Warsong Gulch daily quest, etc.).

Battleground Queuing

• Players may now only queue for no more than two Battlegrounds at a time.

• The dialog box for entering a Battleground match has been changed to reflect the following options: “Enter Battle,” “Leave Queue,” and “Minimize.”

• The time a player has to enter a battle when selected has been reduced to 40 seconds when not already in a Battleground and 20 seconds when in a Battleground.

• Players already in a Battleground can now choose “Enter Battle” for a new Battleground under any circumstance (i.e. while dead, in combat, falling, etc.).

• A new Battleground will not launch until the maximum number of players on each side are in the queue (i.e. 40 players per side for Alterac Valley).

Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way let’s take a look at a post by Blizzard Poster Bornakk from the official forums:

“With the launch of patch 3.2.2 today there have been some changes to the Alterac Valley battleground and we wanted to clarify what exactly has been done.

“Level 80 characters now have their own bracket and there is a separate bracket for characters that are levels 70 to 79. This change was originally planned for patch 3.3 but it was accidently applied to the current patch 3.2.2. As we had already intended to make this change so that players who are leveling play together and players who are at the level cap play together, we will be keeping the bracket setup this way, but the level of the bosses in the brackets below level 80 will be reduced to compensate.”

But wait – that’s what the post looks like now.  When it initially went up yesterday it also contained the following line.

“We have also made it so the experience bonus from heirloom items works properly in battlegrounds but the overall experience gained from competing in Alterac Valley has been intentionally reduced as we felt it was too rewarding compared to the other battlegrounds.”

Prior to patch 3.2.2, Alterac Valley farming was the most efficient way to level from 71-80 as completing any of the objectives in the Battleground awarded players 18,ooo experience points as well as honor.  If your faction managed to win the BG players could earn 100,000+ experience plus honor, if all of the objectives were captured.  This seemed like a pretty sweet deal to a lot of players, especially those of us who were leveling our 3rd or 4th characters through the Northrend content.

The upside to all of this was a renewed interest in Alterac Valley, which meant more people were queuing up for it and hence more matches were being launched.  The downside was that some unscrupulous players were going AFK in the BG and leeching experience off of the players who were doing all the work.  The other problem was that with such a wide range of levels playing in the same BG,  lower level players weren’t always contributing even if they weren’t AFK.

So Blizzard apparently decided to fix the problem.  Except it’s not really fixed.  Currently, over at the World of Warcraft Forums you can find numerous posts that outline the sad state of Alterac Valley.  Increased queue times for level 80 players that in some cases are nearly an hour long, and a lack of games in the 70-79 bracket have made Alterac a dead Battleground once again.

Whether or not the changes to Alterac Valley are working as intended or if Blizzard will revert them to their former glory remains to be seen, but it does seem odd that Bornakk would delete a line from his post a day are he put it up.  If the situation changes CFD! will be back to update this post.