Warlords of Draenor - The Savior of PvP?

At Blizzcon this year, it was announced that Blizzard had plans to change a load of things about PvP. I'll summarize these in a brief list:

• New World PvP Zone (Ashran)
• UI Changes
• Rewards from Battlegrounds
• Trial of the Gladiator

Now straight away, I saw this list and thought "Blizzard are making... good PvP changes?" and immediately started doubting how the panel was going to go. However over the course of the next 10-20 minutes, I was in complete awe of what Blizzard wanted to do with Warlords of Draenor regarding PvP content.

Ashran:

So according to what we were told at Blizzcon 2013, Ashran is a new World PvP zone located off of the northeast coast of Tanaan Jungle (Hellfire, roughly). It's going to be a staging area for the Alliance and Horde in the new expansion, and for lore reasons that you probably don't really care about, they want all the goodies that the island has in abundance, of course. It's going to feature a base for either faction, plus a number of "hotspots" similar to Wintergrasp and Tol Barad that both factions are going to want to control.

What sets Ashran apart from these two other "World Battlegrounds" is that Ashran is going to be completely sandbox. The "Timeless Isle of PvP" in the words of Tom Chilton, where there'll be regular PvP Objectives and Goals, similar to the Alterac Valley of Vanilla, where fights could last for days on end before a victor was decided. What really puts the cherry on the cake for this new island though, is the implementation of cross-realm technology.

Blizzard understand that some servers are tilted very heavily in the favour of one faction (Outland, Sylvannas, Stormscale - Looking at you), and so are going to use the XRealm technology to alter the amount of people on the island at any given time to ensure a constant balance of Alliance and Horde forces. On top of this, we'll be building (or stealing) Siege Vehicles to completely destroy the enemy base. BUT THE FUN DOESN'T STOP THERE.

Due to the way the Island works, losing teams will be capturing objectives (such as mines, lumber mills, etc) to rebuild their broken fortress so that they can get back on the offensive, allowing what would be a very stale, one-sided BG to become a shifting island of destruction. Alliance winning one day, Horde winning the next. I'm so excited for this that words can't adequately describe it.

UI Changes:

This is a pretty short topic, but it's just a quality of life change for the most part. Blizzard have acknowledged that the icons and flags in the older BGs are a bit outdated, and we're getting a few updates. Flags in Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin will be changed, allowing the actual flag itself to act like a loading bar. For example, the Horde capture Stonehearth Graveyard (as always) and the flag turns from blue to grey. The flag will then colour itself in with the Horde colours from bottom to top, and when it hits the top, it's fully captured.

This helps when you're near the flag, but what if you're the other end of the map, you might say? No fear, Blizzard is here! The map and objective tracker are similarly being updated to show a countdown circle over the base (on the map) or a DBM-Style timer on the right hand side of your screen to let you know how long you have left to recapture, or defend, a specific base.

Rewards from Battlegrounds:

This is an interesting topic that's been brought up a few times over the years, and has been more prominent since they drastically reduced the amount of money you got from removing Insignias from corpses. What Blizzard's plan is apparently is to allow you to win goodies from Random Battlegrounds, which include pieces of PvP Gear, BoE items, consumables, "and more..." Really hoping this rewards interesting things like BG only consumables or custom PvP Banners similar to the current War Banners and the banners from the Krasarang World PvP Vendors. We'll have to wait until further confirmation or until Beta to see what kind of items Blizz is going to throw our way!

The Big One - Trial of the Gladiator:

Now a lot of PvP enthusiasts around the world saw this announcement and collectively screamed like fanboys/girls. Blizzard plans to implement a bi-weekly event where you:

1. Turn up.
2. Get a free set of top-tier PvP gear.
3. Free enchants/gems to get it all sorted out.
4. Play all the games you want.
5. Get titles and other rewards.
6. ALL ON A WEEKLY BASIS.

This could be one of the best ideas Blizzard has ever had in the PvP Department. No more rage on the forums about "X Class destroyed me because of the gear difference, Blizz pls fix". The game can start to be a tad more balanced and we can leave Chief Holinka to tweak and balance things for the better so that when you jump into the Trial of the Gladiator and come out on top for that week, you can rest assured that it's not because you've cheesed your way there *cough* Blood DKs *cough*, it's because you damned well earned it.

If anyone wants to discuss anything further about any of the changes, throw some new information at me, or even to point out that I've missed something important, feel free to message me on Skype (Veren1994), on PvP-Live (Exhil) or leave a comment below!