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World of Warcraft released its battlegrounds feature on Tuesday after months of promises. Reaction has been mixed; some people regard as the latest example of Blizzard screwing with the design of their beloved (or well-hated) game, and other people (myself included) love the heck out of it. There's basically two gameplay types -- a 10v10 capture the flag match, and a 40v40 "Battlefield 1942"-style capture the choke points epic battle. The bigger map also includes various quests you can do to trigger effects which help your side out.
The crux of the complaints seems to be "I could be doing this in other games, but these WOW toons have so many powers that it's impossible to balance CTF fairly." It's an interesting point, but I don't really buy it. While there are some notably weirdly balanced classes (the Horde Shaman comes immediately to mind), usually when people say "this class is overbalanced," what they really mean is "I, by myself, with my uber epic'd character, cannot solo this bad boy." And, generally, when I get into a CTF match filled with a bunch of jokers who like to run off by themselves for glory, we lose horribly.
(Penny Arcade talks about the "hour wait, 5 minute match" phenomenon; I've had that happen, usually again when the team was completely uncoordinated. I've also gotten right back in after just a minute of waiting, and proceeded to play for an hour in a tense, evenly matched game. That's what makes it worth it.)
On the other hand, even small three man teams working together can get a lot of leverage. For example, I play a druid, which is a jack-of-all-trades class, but mostly effective as a healer. One of my abilities is to turn into a cat, which functions play-wise, as a sort of watered-down rogue. What I do, then, is to wait stealthed outside the enemy base, for one of our guys to come running out like a bat out of hell. The Horde have been wailing on him or her, and the old health bar is down to 10%. BAM! I pop up -- as if out of nowhere -- fire off my queued up instant-cast heal spell, and then proceed to chase our flag down the map, continuing to heal our flag-bearer until she hits our base.
What I find fascinating about the whole thing is that there are so many different abilities and different counters. Playing it well kind of feels like playing a musical instrument well -- challenging, but also extremely rewarding.
I'm hoping to try out the big 40v40 fight this weekend :D. 10:42:49 AM () 
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