MMORPG.com World of Warcraft Correspondent Deborah Dietrich writes this informative overview of the Wintergrasp battleground in Blizzard's hit game.

You’ve heard the cry put out in Dalaran to summon players to Wintergrasp. You’ve seen the nice Essence of Wintergrasp XP buff appear on your buff bar and picked up Stone Keeper’s shards when your faction controls this PvP zone. But what is this new battleground all about?

An hour before the battle is to ensue, criers in Dalaran will announce the imminent start of the battle. Portals to Wintergrasp will appear in the Silver Enclave (A) and the Sunreaver’s Sanctuary (H) when the battle begins. If the portal is not available, players can also fly into the zone or wait until portals reappear as each faction’s Battle-Mages open portals and call out for reinforcements. You’ll also see calls in the Trade channel to group up. Being part of a raid group is integral to success in this new battleground. You will flag for PvP and be attackable by the opposing faction once you enter the Wintergrasp zone.

Read Battle for Wintergrasp

Wintergrasp is indeed a great PvP zone, and is very fun regardless of being attacker or defender. One small correction to this article though:

"There are also Jewelcrafting patterns that can be purchased with honor points."

No, there are 15 recipes sold by vendors inside the fortress. Unless it's changed, price of one is 12 or 24 Stone Keeper's Shards, not honor.

Deb, your friends are correct. The battle lasts for 30 mins, not 45. It should also be mentioned that the faction controlling the fortress, also have access to a raid instance.

Doesnt seem to mention it usually lags alot near the end of the battle. But otherwise, it is good fun.

i ve found the lag in wintersgrasp makes it virtually unplayable at the moment . in fact the pvp side of wow is in pretty poor shape at present . theres very little interest in the battle grounds and the class imbalances are the worst i ve ever seen them . the pve side of wow is still a lot of fun but its not what i want to do all the time . i ve decided to have a break from wow for a few months due to this and try some other mmos  . i m currently playing warhammer while it does have its faults the pvp there is infinatly superior to warcraft at this time . i think two months after the lich king was released people are starting to notice the poor implimentation of player vs player . my guild have certainly been very vocal about it . theres something very wrong in a game where a rogue can bring down someone of the same level as them within mere seconds and where its can take 4 players of the same level to bring down a paladin or where the lag sometimes mean it takes you 5-10 seconds ( maybe more ) to perform an action in battle . were this not the most popular mmo around i m sure a lot of people would be calling it a broken game .

I have to agree with googa.  WoW is just no fun to play right now.  I find myself logging in and checking the AH and talking with people for a couple minutes and then logging off.  I'm not into dungeons and raids and the pvp right now is PATHETIC.  Wintergrasp can be fun but it's not as well done as the keeps in Warhammer Online.  I also agree that I dont see myself playing much until they make pvp WORTH playing (ala gear NOT obtained by arena).

Guess it's all moot anyways as WoW is just a time waster until TOR comes out!!!

Originally posted by googajoob7

i ve found the lag in wintersgrasp makes it virtually unplayable at the moment . in fact the pvp side of wow is in pretty poor shape at present . theres very little interest in the battle grounds and the class imbalances are the worst i ve ever seen them . the pve side of wow is still a lot of fun but its not what i want to do all the time . i ve decided to have a break from wow for a few months due to this and try some other mmos  . i m currently playing warhammer while it does have its faults the pvp there is infinatly superior to warcraft at this time . i think two months after the lich king was released people are starting to notice the poor implimentation of player vs player . my guild have certainly been very vocal about it . theres something very wrong in a game where a rogue can bring down someone of the same level as them within mere seconds and where its can take 4 players of the same level to bring down a paladin or where the lag sometimes mean it takes you 5-10 seconds ( maybe more ) to perform an action in battle . were this not the most popular mmo around i m sure a lot of people would be calling it a broken game .

Could you please tell me why you're always downright LYING about wow? Please? It's ok to hate wow, but this is simply pathetic. Just like your thread about the imaginary server population problems in Europe, where you wouldn't even tell which servers you talked about.

Little interest in BGs, that's another of your "facts"? Is that why the queue times on Nightfall battlegroup (I'm on Anachronos, EU) are shorter than pre-WotLK, even though we have more brackets, and one more BG now?

Ppl starting to notice the poor PvP? Is that why we this very afternoon had a great Wintergrasp battle, with 2 full raid groups on ally side, and at least as many hordes?

Wintergrasp is a popular zone/feature, and the popularity is increasing. At least on my server. And I really doubt Anachronos is unique in any way compared to other servers, at least in Europe.

I understand you're lonely in Warhammer and want WoW players to join you. Bashing WoW isn't convincing anyone to do that, WoW players already know what kind of game they're playing, and doesn't need anyone to "teach" them anything about it. WoW players will most likely see you as a troll, since you post a lot about WoW, and always about how bad or broken something is.

Wintergrasp was supposed to be a world PVP zone its nothing but a shitty little battleground for scrub pve noobs to leech honor

PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO BLIZZARD

YOU F****NG SUCK

For the people who dont experience lag its because your on a unpopular server or on at a off peak time at times there is over 200 people at Wintergrasp keep the lag is pathetic.

Watch this video to see what i mean: uk.youtube.com/watch

It's 100% true PVP sucks in Warcraft it's never going to be balanced even a developer Ghostcrawler said it isnt balanced for 1v1 combat.

That says to me if it isnt balanced for 1v1 why would it be balanced for anything else? what is the point in playing a game where you have either a huge advantage or disadvantage ie (Wolf vs Sheep) its nice to be a wolf but sucks for those sheep!

Well, I think Wintergrasp is a failed attempt to include more or different PVP in WoW. Wintergrasp is OK as Battleground, and it's very close to Strand of the Ancients, btw. What was supposed to be different with Wintergrasp was the fact that it was not instanced, and OK, it's not, but battles take place at fixed schedules, you hop into a portal to join, the place is extremely isolated (high mountains all around), if you happen to inadvertently fly over the zone, you're dismounted, etc... All in all it really looks and feels like a Battleground... I would have enjoyed a full-featured world area, with roads leading in and out, quests all aroud, plus, the great World-PVP thing.

Moreover, there's something extremely annoying with Wintergrasp : if the opposite side is outnumbered they will receive a buff to make things more balanced. Well it might be balanced for Alliance VS Horde, but it makes one-on-one combat a complete joke. How about players with 3 times the normal amount of health ? The only PVP skill you can display in such situation is your zerging ability. How fun :(

Well on Frostmane EU (FULL) the lag is so intense it usally takes 10-20seconds for abilities to register ingame. And it's already from start. It's totally unplayable. Wow have never been good at big pvp battles outside the instanced bg's. Remember when raids to ogrimmar made the server go down ;) Long time ago though. But been seeing same things again, this time when the WG battle is ongoing.

Originally posted by Netspook

Originally posted by googajoob7

i ve found the lag in wintersgrasp makes it virtually unplayable at the moment . in fact the pvp side of wow is in pretty poor shape at present . theres very little interest in the battle grounds and the class imbalances are the worst i ve ever seen them . the pve side of wow is still a lot of fun but its not what i want to do all the time . i ve decided to have a break from wow for a few months due to this and try some other mmos  . i m currently playing warhammer while it does have its faults the pvp there is infinatly superior to warcraft at this time . i think two months after the lich king was released people are starting to notice the poor implimentation of player vs player . my guild have certainly been very vocal about it . theres something very wrong in a game where a rogue can bring down someone of the same level as them within mere seconds and where its can take 4 players of the same level to bring down a paladin or where the lag sometimes mean it takes you 5-10 seconds ( maybe more ) to perform an action in battle . were this not the most popular mmo around i m sure a lot of people would be calling it a broken game .

Could you please tell me why you're always downright LYING about wow? Please? It's ok to hate wow, but this is simply pathetic. Just like your thread about the imaginary server population problems in Europe, where you wouldn't even tell which servers you talked about.

Little interest in BGs, that's another of your "facts"? Is that why the queue times on Nightfall battlegroup (I'm on Anachronos, EU) are shorter than pre-WotLK, even though we have more brackets, and one more BG now?

Ppl starting to notice the poor PvP? Is that why we this very afternoon had a great Wintergrasp battle, with 2 full raid groups on ally side, and at least as many hordes?

Wintergrasp is a popular zone/feature, and the popularity is increasing. At least on my server. And I really doubt Anachronos is unique in any way compared to other servers, at least in Europe.

I understand you're lonely in Warhammer and want WoW players to join you. Bashing WoW isn't convincing anyone to do that, WoW players already know what kind of game they're playing, and doesn't need anyone to "teach" them anything about it. WoW players will most likely see you as a troll, since you post a lot about WoW, and always about how bad or broken something is.

I am not entirely sure if this person lies about other things, but what he says is complete truth on my server and many other servers in america. 

Yes BG has very little interest. My server went from 10-20 instances up for any given BG, to now only 1-3 for any bg. Yes even my queue times are less, but fewer instances shows that fewer are actually playing in BGs. Queue times are based on how many are pvping on both sides, it sounds more like your server got more balanced in how many on each side play.

2 full raid groups in wintergrasp? my server takes 5-10 seconds to use a skill when we hit around 80 people total (counting both sides). For the past month, i have yet to get into a wintergrasp where the final attack wasn't anything but pure luck of trying to get through. So maybe your server is a top end server, but i know many people complain. Everyone in my guild has stopped going due to the massive lag issues.

Also, not sure if his wow basing is just to get people to play WAR or spellborn (both are good games anyway), but there are some people who read these articles wondering if they should pick up wow. Me and him are merely informing the public that haven't bought wow yet that although this Wintergrasp sounds very cool, blizzard pulled another blizzard and released it before it was fully tested. 

Also, your highlighted section of hte person you quoted points out two very strong truths. Go look up like

sk-gaming and look at the top arena teams. You will notice that like the top 10 teams for 2v2 all have a dk on them, and the top like 100 are completely dominated by DK and Paladin. The pvp in this game is very unbalanced and to say that after 2 months is when people noticed is a fairly good observation if you patrol the boards at all. That is about the time that people hit 80 and learned their class enough to fight with them.

I'm really starting to wonder blizzard and their rep of never releasing someone until it is done. I have been with MMO's that can release patches more frequently and with fewer bugs than wow has ever accomplished. That said, i still play wow as i think it is the best game out there until spellborn hits the US.

I personally have mixed feelings about wintergrasp. when I first heard about it, I invisioned an area with an on-going battle like a PvP server, and was disapointed when I first entered the area. having said that, once I got in, I found it amazingly thrilling getting into a cannon turret and blowing up anything I saw with a horde flag. I think the buff you get is more designed to give you a better chance against the seige weapons than against other players. most of the time, if you are running around a wintergrasp battle on your own with no siege engines of your faction about, you are asking to get ganked and killed, buff or not.