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Players have historically had a love/hate relationship with the battleground concept across games. As a difficult game feature to implement, few games have hit the mark well enough to stand out against the list of failures which makes EverQuest II's decision to bring battlegrounds to their well established game quite the gamble. Will SOE's gamble pay off giving EQ2 fans a better rounded gaming experience?

Structured PvP is not a new concept to EQ2. For those who played during the Desert of Flames era might recall the much promoted arena located in Maj'dul.  After an extremely brief run, interest dropped rapidly and the few left who actually wanted to utilize the arena were left with no one to engage with. While the arena idea was unique and intriguing, drawing in enough players to make something like this worthwhile is difficult when it depends so heavily on appropriate level server population.

Even a game as populated as World of Warcraft found limited success until cross realm battlegrounds were added.  This is the big tip off that SOE picked up and kept in mind with the invention of their battlegrounds and my favorite reason why these battlegrounds will rock.

Reason #1 Battlegrounds won't suck - Cross server participation. The details on how groups will be formed are still a bit fuzzy, but the bottom line is if more people have access, more people will be available to play.

One instance of a successful battleground can be no doubtfully found in Warhammer Online.  What made it so successful in a game that was at other times arguably boring?  It was readily available to all players at all times.  Whether you were a PvP veteran or a total newbie, you could load up and get your fill of PvP fun without any real commitment.  There are no character flags, no PvP dedicated servers, and no pressure to kill other players when you didn't want to.

Reason #2 Battlegrounds won't suck – The battlegrounds will launch available to level 80+ players but through future updates will scale to allow lower level players.  The battlegrounds are also being included as an update and not part of the expansion making them available to all subscribers.

Motivation in PvPing is a big factor in how successful this aspect of gameplay is in any game. You can have great PvP done in the most amazing way but if players don't get something out of it, there really is no purpose. This is where I see EQ2 struggling.  As a game that clearly is PvE focused containing a large world for exploration, raid content, countless amounts of group content, and what could be considered the best crafting system ever created, why would anyone want to leave all that to go kill other players? Aside from the thrill, the only real reason to participate in PvP is the reward. Armor, weapons, titles, and special items all need to be made available so that players feel like they earned something amazing for all that effort.

Reason #3 Battlegrounds won't suck - SOE is whipping out a new set of armor called Chaos Armor as a battleground reward.  I don't know what it is or what is does, but it has to be cool if called "Chaos", right? You will also be able to earn currency to purchase rewards and the battleground will yield experience so players will be able to eventually level up via battlegounds alone if they choose to.

Right up there in importance is variety. Having all the various features above doesn't make a lot of difference if the battlegrounds are tediously boring.  Using Warhammer Online again as another example, you could run the various PvP instances and just as you were growing tired of one map you'd level up to the next tier and see something new. It is this change in scenery that makes running the same mini-games more interesting.

Reason #4 Battlegrounds won't suck – The Battlegrounds are launching with three maps which doesn't sound like much, however if battlegrounds get a good response the potential is endless. The SOE dev team is already planning future maps and more will be added later this year along with scaling all the way down to level 10!

Will EverQuest II's battlegrounds be a success? It seems to have everything it takes to make it work; all it needs is player interest!  The battlegrounds go live around February 16, 2010 so be sure to check them out. In the meantime, keep an eye out here at Ten Ton Hammer for more EQ2 expansion and game update coverage.