Eye of the Storm was perhaps the least commented upon of the PvP areas. Jeff Kaplan anecdotally pointed out that there had been a fifth mobile objective that was taken out of the area due to balance concerns. . Eye of the Storm preserved the balanced, symmetrical approach found in Warsong Gulch, and it's world-changing features. In many ways it acts as a worthy transition to Lake Wintergrasp, the non-instanced PvP zone (that is, a zone that flags everyone for PvP on every server) zone featuring siege weapons and destructible buildings.

The New Azeroth
with Northrend at the Top

Jeff Kaplan turned the presentation over to Co-Lead Designer Tom Chilton, who described what Blizzard had in mind for the future of the battlegrounds and PvP areas in WoW. Chilton re-iterated what Kaplan had said about anti-AFK measures and improving honor distribution and also mentioned a few new and exciting things on the horizon. First, queuing as a group will be returning to the game, and Blizzard plans to add guild battlegrounds as well. You would join these BGs as a guild, perhaps to challenge a rival guild (whether you could challenge across faction lines wasn't mentioned),  and the result would be rewards for the guild. Chilton added that the option to pick the size of the battleground map (15v15, 10v10 were mentioned as options) was also something that Blizzard is actively planning.

Next up: Chilton discussed World PvP with a whirlwind tour of lessons learned from various world PvP areas. The overarching theme was making this side of PvP more objective driven and impactful: Silithus needed to be more visually compelling, Eastern Plaguelands needed better rewards, Hellfire Peninsula better pacing, Zangarmarsh better clarity of objectives, (I told ya it was a whirlwind tour!) Bone Wastes more persistence, and Nagrand – better map integration and fewer "map gimmicks."

The Panel fielded
PvP questions afterward

At long last, the subject turned to arena improvements. At least half of the post-presentation questions had to do with balancing the arena systems for different classes and different formats (2v2, 5v5), and Chilton assured the crowd (ad nauseum) during the presentation and afterwards that their goal was to make the arenas viable for all classes. Especially of note were resolving the Warlock issue in 2v2 and Rogue mobility in 5v5. Another issue of fairness - teams getting arena rewards despite low ratings – will be resolved soon with a new rating requirement.

Afterwards, audience member complaints ranged from long queues on Monday nights even when there are plenty of pairings available (it's a technical issue - there's a backlog of instance spinups that prevents matchmaking for a brief time) to a bracketed tournament system (which the Blizz team expressed interest in). Another suggestion – letting players select their opponents – was nixed due to the possibility of an exploitation. Resilience (resistance to Damage over Time spells) was another hot topic, and though the devs won't make retroactive changes to existing armor sets, they hinted at more honor rewards with resistance for new level 70s in the coming months.

Few aspects of the any MMORPG absorb players into the game like PvP, and few games do PvP more accessibly than World of Warcraft. Whether WoW will preserve that honor through the next wave of PvP-intensive MMOGs is anyone's guess, but there's little doubt that PvP is something on the order of an artform to Blizzard developers, who see their take on PvP as a process of continuing refinement. We'll see the results of their efforts with Lake Wintergrasp and siege weapons when Wrath of the Lich King launches sometime… soon.