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Levels/Brackets: 20-29; 30-39; 40-49; 50-59; 60-69; 70.
Horde Entrance: Hammerfall (in Arathi Highlands). (You can purchase AB-specific PvP rewards here).
Team sizes: max=15 (min=7)
Associated Faction: The Defilers.
Join the Battle: talk to the AB Battle Master in a major city (ask a guard for directions) or go to the main entrance (see above). If you are in a raid/group, your leader can sign the raid/group up as a team. Remember, after joining the queue, you are free to do other things. A dialog will popup letting you know when it’s time to fight.
There are five resource nodes/flags: Farm, Lumber Mill (LM), Blacksmith (BS), Mine, and Stables (ST). Your team earns points per time depending on how many nodes you control. The first team to accumulate 2000 points wins. To control a node, interact with the flag. There is a delay (of 1 minute?) after you take the flag before it is under your control.
Most important: HAVE FUN!
Use Battleground chat! You are automatically added to the chat channel when you enter the BG. To chat, enter ‘/bg’. Switch to BG chat as soon as you enter the BG. Keep your messages short and sweet. And watch for messages from your teammates.
Defense! After a flag has been capped, make sure someone stays behind to guard it. Even if the defender is a squishy mage or priest. They can call out for help and alert the forces of incomings. Even with the farm (the node right by the horde entrance), keep someone on D! An undefended farm is an easy target for Alliance rogues.
More defense: focus defensive efforts near the flag. Don’t get drawn off down the road. Fighting for the flag means fighting NEAR the flag.
Call out incomings: when you see enemies approaching a node, call it out. Keep your messages short but informative. ‘inc lm 2’ lets everyone know that 2 soon-to-be dead alliance are inbound to lumber mill.
Report status: if you call an incoming and the problem gets “solved”, then give an all clear signal: ‘farm clear’. This folks who are riding/running in to help know that it’s under control.
Intelligence: a good place to see almost the entire BG is at the LM. From here you can help call incomings to every node (with the possible exception of the mine). Hopping on top of the mine entrance is also a nice way to see the entire “pit” the mine is in.
Prioritize: it’s nice to 5-cap (take all nodes). But that’s not necessary to win. I’ve been in too many BG’s where all offense focused on the stables and rouges ninja’d the other bases! Before you 5-cap, make sure the other 4 are properly defended.
Even more important: HAVE FUN!
AIE guild teams have had good luck in the past with a few different strategies. You want to control more nodes so that your resources are coming in faster than the Alliance’s, even if this only means you have three and they have two.
Let one team mate head to take the farm (it is closest to your default rez point,) two or three to the blacksmith and the rest zerg the lumbermill. Generally the Alliance send the most players there as well, so you will need to be organized. Once you have LM under control, send the extras from the lumbermill group to reinforce the other two nodes. If you have five players at each node, it is pretty hard for the Alliance to clear through all 5 of you (if you are working together) and cap your flag!
Usually the opposing team won’t get organized quickly enough to foil your plan before you have won the game. If they do catch on and decide to zerg don’t worry! A zerg means that the large majority of their players are in one group fighting for one base. This leaves some of their other bases wide open for you to steal thus giving you three nodes again. If you can convince your whole team to be patient and hold those three nodes then you will easily win!
This is usually possible when your team has far better skill, organization, or luck than the other team. The most important thing to remember is to gauge the other team’s skill and reaction time (organization) before trying this one. If they are one step ahead of you, attempting a five cap can lose the game for you. Start slowly and try to take the three bases as mentioned above. If this goes smoothly with little resistence, get together a team to push for another base (usually the mine.) Never leave a node undefended just to create an offensive team. Patience is key!
If you are able to capture the mine, LM, farm, and BS then the Alliance will only be able to come at you from one direction. Their default rez point and their stable are very close to each other on the far end of the field and as long as you have at least one defender at each of your 4 nodes, you can use all of your other team mates in an organized offensive push. Just be sure not to let any of them sneak past you at the stable!
When you capture the stable, the team is forced to rez at their default location up the hill. It is hard for them to make a comeback at this point because their whole team has to fight through a bottleneck to attack any other nodes, and the speed at which you gain resources rises exponentially.
