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The Art of War(craft): Examining the Isle of Conquest
Wow. Can I just say that again? Wow. When Blizzard announced that they were introducing a new Battleground with Patch 3.2, I personally thought it was going to be some mid-scale map similar to Strand of the Ancients or Arathi Basin. Being a Battlegrounds nut, I was completely stoked. When Zarhym hinted that the new map would be "Wintergrasp combined with Alterac Valley," it became clear to me that Blizzard was thinking on a much bigger scale. If we look at their development patch for Battlegrounds and world PvP, it's no stretch to say that the Isle of Conquest is their most ambitious PvP project yet. More ambitious than Wintergrasp, in fact.How can anything be more ambitious than Wintergrasp, which proved to be so tremendously popular that it tends to break realms? Well, the only real limitation to Wintergrasp was because it had no limits with the number of participants. That was the only thing that brought servers down to their knees. The Isle of Conquest takes care of that problem by limiting participation to a (mere) eighty people. This then leaves Blizzard free to implement all sorts of cooler stuff like parachuting into enemy territory. The new Battleground brings the much anticipated aerial combat element into World of Warcraft PvP.
