I can haz moar daily quests??!?!?1

SWEEPING CHANGES.

Ok, not really, but there are some very large changes in regards to battlegrounds in patch 2.3

Daily quests have been added targeting a random battleground for that day

Hmm... this could go either way. On the one hand, it provides hard-core PvP'ers a way to earn gold doing what they love to do best. Will this also serve to increase reputation with those said factions? Could it be that I won't have to cap the flag in Warsong 1133 times to hit Exalted? Perhaps that title of 'Conqueror' isn't as far away as it used to be...
On the other hand, this means that the gold farmer type people are going to be clogging up my battlegrounds... this, again, is a mix. I could end up in an Arathi with 7 people horde side only there for the cash... or maybe most of alliance side is only there for the cash. Each daily quest seems simple enough “Win the battleground, get 12 gold!”
Either way you look at it, every battleground could be full of the nubs you see running around AV, freaking out when Alliance caps snowfall.
Will I get essentially free kills from a druid in 65 greens? Or will I be hampered when my whole team decides to zerg mines, and /dance because that was the daily quest?
Gonna have to delve into the PTR's to test this one out... Speaking of which, Dr. Boom data is ridiculously hard to get off the PTR’s. We’re talking competition from 6 or 7 other people. AT FOUR IN THE MORNING.

Player's will now be able to cast spells for free for a few seconds after being resurrected, and before a battleground begins.

I cannot believe how awesome that is. Typically, after rezzing, I'd just pop Molten and hop right back into the fray. With this, I could hit every self-buff I have. You get about 5 seconds of free casting. And that pre-BG free spellcast is nothing short of awesome. I think I'll go spam Ritual of Refreshment because I can.

ALTERAC VALLEY

Hoo boy, some major changes here.

1. Additional Warmasters no longer report for duty upon destroying an enemy tower. However, enemy warmasters still despawn on destroying the associated tower. Easier boss pulls ftw?
2. All Warmasters are linked to each other and their respective generals, and can no longer be pulled individually. No more Vanndar only pulls? Aww... *single tear*
3. Honor from capturing towers has been increased. Presumably, this is to counter the following change:
4. No more Commanders and Lieutenants. While the patch notes state this much more delicately, the fact is simple. Mancuso, Randolph, Murp, all those wonderful elite honor farms are hereby removed. Such a pity, considering solo'ing one of those was an excellent way for a young mage to test his kiting skills. This, I think, will prove to be a general decrease in the amount of honor gained from an AV. I dont care what this says:
5. Bonus honor is only given in battle for destroying enemy towers and killing the captain (Read, That Orc Dude / Annoying Blonde Mage). Upon conclusion of the battle, bonus honor is given fro surviving towers and surviving captain. Now would be a good time to mention the new mechanics of AV.
6. Horde and Alliance have a limited number of reinforcements avaliable. This number is reduced by player death, loss of towers, captain deaths. If the reinforcements reach zero, that team loses. If the General dies, reinforcements default to zero. Basically, this is going to turn AV into a prolonged battle of attrition. The constant Zerg rush of the current AV will pretty much die off completely. Alliance could win the whole game by turtling at that damn bridge. A fear-bomb, causing the opposing team to wipe on Drek'Thar could hugely swing the game in Horde's favor.

Look at it this way. With these changes, AV is going to return to the old days, where AV could go on for hours. The difference is, with the reinforcement cap, it will have the same kind of "time limit" that EotS and Arathi have (Warsong, sadly, still lacks this time limit). We're going to get a feel for the new AV in Patch 2.3 here, and report back our findings. Should be interesting to see if the new AV turns into a bottle-necked war of attrition (think First World War) or game that requires some serious coordination and tactics (think a Starcraft 2v2 team match). The way the patch notes are making it look, we're going to get honor based on what we have left at the end. So, the longer the battle goes, the more stuff gets asploded, the less honor we get.

Goodbye Honor Cow.

Additional bonus honor is now awarded upon completion of Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm and Warsong Gulch.
So does this mean that AV will not be the honor-cow it is now? Will we see Arathi and the rest of them be competitive from an honor/hour perspective? We'll have to give this a run on the PTRs as well. Could be, we're going to look at a lot more PvP gear making the rounds.

Hmm... PvP epix. We need a discussion on that too. Look for it later this week : Welfare Epix.