Forlorn Ridge Battleground

Dracon and I were talking a while ago and we have an idea for a new battleground:

In Azshara, at the Forlorn Ridge, there is the setup for another battleground. Given there is already tension in Azshara between the Night Elves and the Blood Elves, a battle between then would make sense. Because Azshara used to be a high elf city and there are currently quests to retrieve various artifacts from the area it would also make sense that the battle could be over those artifacts.

Specifically there should be some sort of battlefield with Alliance and Horde at the bottom two corners of a rectangle. Artifacts can spawn at any location, but are more likely to spawn farther away from the two bases. These artifacts are similar to silithyst in that you cannot mount while carrying one and it is quite obvious that a character is carrying one. (Optional if you get a buff for carrying.)

When a certain amount of these artifacts has been collected by a side, that side wins. Thus the primary method of winning is to go out and bring artifacts back to the base. However the artifacts don't disappear as soon as they are in a base; you can raid the enemy base and steal their artifacts.

So various strategies would appear about some people going to get new artifacts, some people going to raid the enemy base, and some people defending their own base. Also you could drop the artifacts anywhere, not just your own base. So another viable strategy would be to drop artifacts just outside your base and later mass turnin, to avoid getting raided.

Lore justification for a battleground like this would be pretty simple. Both the Night Elves and the Blood Elves are searching for relics of their past, before the Well of Eternity exploded. The Blood Elves want to use the magical artifacts both against the Night Elves and to feed their magic addiction. The Night Elves want to keep the magic artifacts out of the Blood Elves hands and study them to avoid repeating the mistakes that were made before.

I think that 15 characters per side would be an optimal size. It would allow for easy division of labor: group 1, defend; group 2, raid the enemy; group 3, gather artifacts. 15 people is also enough to deal with the occasional slacker while still meeting multiple objectives.

I also think that 20 to 30 artifacts for winning would be a good amount. The number of artifacts has to be greater than the number of players on a side so that a zerg of artifact gatherers wouldn't immediately win. But more than double the number of players on a side will make for too long a game in the eyes of the players.


This is just my initial writeup of this idea. If any of our Gentle Readers have suggestions please comment. I shall edit this some and then post it to the WoW suggestion forum.