Fixing Warsong Gulch

Warsong Gulch is my least favourite Battleground. It ranks as the least favourite amonst the general WoW community. In theory it's a very fun enterprise. A 10 vs 10 Capture the Flag. It's small scale, fast paced and tactical.

Where it falls down, and has for 4 years since it's inception, is the constant slide into 35min stalemates where both teams are in possesion of each others flags. Apart from being very frustrating - it deters players from the BG itself and makes obtaining reputation with Silverwing Sentinels, an already slow and painful journey, even more annoying.

Fortunately, tokens aren't needed nearly as much as they used to be but it doesn't soften the blow on stupidly long games which will often result in ONE token and not much honour for your time committed. Tokens are still handed in for nice honour gains and are needed for the Silverwing Tabard (often needed for the Tabard achievement) and the PVP mounts (often required for that respective acheivement (and because a lot of people want one).

In patch 2.4 Blizzard attempted to counter the problem of 30min+ turtle matches by adding a debuff which is applied to the flag carriers if there has been no capture after 15min. The debuff is doubled after another 15min. The change did absolutely nothing to fix the problem. Games still went for 30min+ and reaped little benefit for the time invested.

My solution to the problem is a simple one, yet I believe it to be effective. Allow flags to be capped even when yours is missing.

What would this do? It would make games VERY fast paced. At the same time it would force teams to actually apprehend the other faction in the process of tearing back to the base with their flag. The focus would be on applying all class abilities to protect your flag carrier and eliminate any attackers, whether by force or crowd control. Yes, crowd control would finally make a comback rather than sheer burst in numbers.

Some may think that this would just lead to druids or rogues getting Blessing of Freedom spammed until they made it over the line. While this may work sometimes - your enemy may be doing the exact same thing. The team is then required to snipe the enemy whilst protecting their own runners. Something which I believe will be exciting and fun. It will require the same, if not more, teamwork and games will cease to become long, tedious, frustrating and worthless.

The potential problem of just zerging a flag home is self countered by NEEDING to slow down an enemy presumably doing the same.

You can argue that this tactic is essentially what should be used now in WSG - it's generally true however by allowing the flag to be capped at will you remove any chance of an infuriating turtle game and increase the match pace tenfold.

Here's hoping. I want to enjoy WSG!