MMORPG.com World of Warcraft Correspondent Robert Duckworth writes this new guide for WoW's Arathi Basin battleground.

In my last article, I gave an overview of WSG. This article follows the same outline, giving readers a quick introduction to the battleground as well as some basic strategies players can use to help them understand what's going on. While in WSG everything was very straight forward, Arathi Basin seems to confuse many players. Whether they don't understand or just don't care is an arguable point of course. Sometimes it's fun to just destroy people in PvP and forget about the objectives.

A Guide to Arathi Basin

Arathi Basin(AB) is situated in the Arathi Highlands. Supposedly nestled in a fertile valley, hidden from the recent wars because the only access is through two cave, the basin is rich in resources that the Horde and Alliance both want to control for themselves. Blizzard designated these "resources" as a farm, mine, stables, blacksmith and lumber mill. All common features from the original Warcraft RTS games. The five resource are spread out across the map. The blacksmith is set in the center and surrounded by a lake, while the other four are spread out around the edges. The map is basically a mirror, though the lumber mill is on high ground and the mine is buried at a lower level then the rest of the map. While it's not a big deal, it's worth mentioning that the lumber mill is able to see and helps provide communication to the rest of the map while the mine can't see anything. The mine also can't be seen though, so it has its positives and negatives.

Read it all here.

AB is my all time fav Battleground. It just works so well and you get such a buzz when you win or lose with just a few points in it like 1900/2000 which happens more often than you think.

 Arathi Basin is the most enjoyable battleground Blizzard has come up with, but like WSG & AV, it's become a bit stale.  I wish they'd take the time to use the same triggers & build a couple of different layouts for all of the older BG's.  We're talking about a rather small time investment for maximum enjoyment in an otherwise limited PVP game.  Why not a map like Arathi Basin with islands rather than the rolling fields, or a map with zones in a mine like the crystal cave in Un'Goro Crater?  I think it would be a ton of fun to come around a corner in a tunnel & never know what to expect.

I realize WoW is insanely popular & for the most part the playerbase is content with what we have, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be adding more than one battleground every year!

I just hate the looser that fight on the roads ... fight at the freaking flag, 2-3 def at each and gg you win.

Question is not how to win but why even bother play a WoW BG, you'll get to grind points to buy new equipments. For what? to be more powerful on BGs and grind more points of course! oki and then what? then you'll get a better equipment to... oki you get the drift.

... But what about storydriven objectives, what about fighting really the opposite faction because you are at war with it, you hate it, in a dramatic setting and changing the world when you defeat your opponents? Man even a server faction ranking or town criers shouting your victory or defeat would be cool. But those BGs don't affect anything, you just slammed a bunch of jerky guys jumping around, camping cimeteries, and thinking they're cool, wanting their 15 minutes quick junk fun and worried about doing their daily BG chores to get their blue/purple übershining stuff in 2 days. "Oki so now i need 3 WS and 5 Alterac more to get my new pink "death-that-kills-panties" with 3000 resilience", that's the way WoW is done. So cool...

The only nice BG was Alterac before they destroyed it. You got plenty of quests to arm your side, get reinforcements, summon powerful allies, cavalries. This BG was reasonably wide to have skirmishes everywhere, they had semi-bosses, towers, cimeteries. It felt like two armies battling savagely and having to develop strategy. Now, you got only two bunch of rushers on the left/right side of the BG, sometimes you won't even see a foe during the BG and trying to kill the ultimate boss as quick as possible to go to the next BG to grind more points. You got those dudes pasting countdowns till towers are down or ultimate boss is killed. I'm note even talking about bot players who join automatically, i can remember that for a LONG time you got every night like 25 non players idling in horde faction only in Alterac and Blizzard never did anything about that. You can't get any lamer in multiplayer pvp history as playing on WoW BGs.

Imagine if someone told you wars in human history were all waged to get shiny armours and 3 meter high swords...

Epic fail on this one Blizzard.

 People aren't familiar enough with the ancient and stale BGs that they need articles about them?

Ugh.

AB Alliance PUGs = torturous FAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So much so that I've sworn off that hell hole.

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Arathi Basin is the most enjoyable battleground Blizzard has come up with, but like WSG & AV, it's become a bit stale. I wish they'd take the time to use the same triggers & build a couple of different layouts for all of the older BG's. We're talking about a rather small time investment for maximum enjoyment in an otherwise limited PVP game. Why not a map like Arathi Basin with islands rather than the rolling fields, or a map with zones in a mine like the crystal cave in Un'Goro Crater? I think it would be a ton of fun to come around a corner in a tunnel & never know what to expect.

I realize WoW is insanely popular & for the most part the playerbase is content with what we have, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be adding more than one battleground every year!

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Totally agree. Only drawback would be thinning the players amongst BGs, and then you got the uneven system. Think they could have a much better system there.

Oops.