Huh. Wow. I didn’t see this one coming.
In patch 4.3, normal battleground victories will reward Conquest points – even those run after the daily random or Call To Arms reward. 100 CP for the first win, 50 CP for subsequent ones.
Bashiok writes:
In patch 4.3 we’re changing the daily battleground (BG) to reward 100 conquest for a win (up from 25). In addition, every non-rated BG that you win will also give you 50 conquest. There is no limit to how many BGs you can run this way, up to the normal conquest cap.
Our intent is to start acting even more on our Mists of Pandaria philosophies of encouraging players to approach the content they want to, how they want to, and be able to work toward meaningful player progression. Arenas and rated battlegrounds will still earn Conquest faster, but with this change you can now work your way up by running normal BGs, if you so choose.
This isn’t a lot of Conquest Points, but it is enough so that a dedicated battleground enthusiast will be able to actually afford Conquest pieces, which is a very nice change. The previous award of 25 CP for the random daily could get you, at best, two non-set pieces per season if you did them every day.
If nothing else changes, Arenas will still remain the easiest way to gain Conquest Points, though to cap you will still need to do Battlegrounds, too. It remains to be seen if this will be faster than points gained in Rated Battlegrounds; I’m inclined to think it will not, but the dynamics of taking 5 coordinated, geared people into a regular BG might result in a higher win rate that would put them on par with Rated BGs. You’d lose out on the other benefits of competing in rated battlegrounds (like MMR and achievements,) but that might not be a bad tradeoff. I do think that if we see that happening the rewards for Rated BGs will get buffed.
Honor gear will still be very necessary, especially in the early parts of each PvP season. The Conquest Point cap is still in place and you will not be able to circumvent it; all this changes is how you can earn CP.
It would be nice to see this philosophy extend to Arenas and let them award Honor Points after the Conquest cap has been reached for the week. That would complete the circle and really let all PvP players participate in the activities they like and still get rewarded for it.
Please note that this change does not affect gearing advice for preparing for the next season; you will still start out with zero Conquest Points.
This is a very positive change for Battleground PvP, and will encourage players of all skill levels to continue participating in regular battlegrounds after the initial rush for Honor gear is over. Waiting for your Arena partner to log on? Warm up by pugging a BG and get rewarded for it. Not enough online for your Rated BG tonight? Split up into smaller teams and still work on your Conquest Points for the week.
There are a lot of benefits here, and not just for the casual PvPer or solo battleground enthusiast. This is a quality of life improvement for PvPers of all calibers.
Don’t believe the hype that this is just for casuals.
(Thanks to Narci from Flavor Text Lore for the tip.)
Cynwise's Warcraft Manual 
I’m in two minds about it. The number of bots I’m encountering as it is, is pretty horrific. This will give more people than ever an incentive to bot so I’m hoping that Blizzard do manage to keep the bot numbers down, not just for the first weeks post patch but for the whole of the season.
However it’s come at the perfect time for me, my arena partner / husband has a new job with a 130 mile round trip commute so arenaing was definitely going on the back-burner but I can battleground solo and still get the gear.
Hopefully though, it means that the quality of randoms will improve as well as the majority of people will continue battle grounding after they get all their honour gear.
Gevlon over at the Greedy Goblin has been talking a lot lately about non-rated battlegrounds and Preform Enabler. This change will only increase the rewards for using it.
That was my first thought when I saw this change. If Blizz goes thru with it and doesn’t thwart AV Enabler… randoms are gonna be massacres for real random players.
I suspect that there will be even more nerd ragers/bots in the PvP areas of the game than before, and this is from a person who would ordinarily welcome a shot at Conquest gear.
If there’s one truism in online play, it’s that people will take any change and immediately ratchet things up to 11, and then proceed to blame everything that happens on the casuals. I don’t see this as anything different, especially now that there will be a distinct difference between regular BGs and Rateds in that you don’t earn Conquest points for losing a Rated. Some players will interpret that as open season on the regular BGs, since they can gain Conquest Points no matter how well or poorly they play.
It’d be nice to be proven wrong, but I kind of doubt it.
If they want to break Preform Enabler, they can, by tweaking the queue algorithm so that queuing at the same time no longer gives you a high chance of being in the same battleground.
Will this finish off rated Battlegrounds?
You know, this is a deceptively simple question, and I really don’t know.
My opinion is that Rated BGs were not the success Blizzard hoped they would be, and that by promoting them at the expense of Arenas and regular BGs they created an imbalance between those who could organize and those who couldn’t, which then caused gear imbalances that then exacerbated the organized/disorganized split.
Good idea for a post!
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