I dunno that I agree with this. I think more lowbies in AV has been a good thing on whole. AV isn't so much about l33t skillz and gear as keeping a group in a tower until it's capped. I don't care if you have a group of 5 74's in a tower, cause chances are if they stay there, stay together and have a healer they'll cap the tower unless there's a zerg coming in. That wins AV.

That said, if you're upset about it I'd suggest putting together a 4-5 member tiger team and going and taking the other side's towers yourself. Rated BGs aren't that far off that you can't start putting together a group to specialize in Tower Patrol.

^This

I'd rejoice the day Blizz creates a seperate 70-77 AV bracket. While I enjoy running a lvl80 alt through AV, I don't enjoy half the level of half those composing the raid group be under lvl75.

It is a tough balance, Overall I think AV is done as a real source of pvp fun, because like u said so many lowbie use it for xp.

In fact I got my most recent, And only second char ever finally to 80 using AV it took me about 20 hrs of AV (paritially afk'n for laundry food and movies) I did 0 quests. which now means Im sitting on over 7k gold from doing all of those quests as a lvl 80.

Its rediculously too rewarding as far as xp is concerned.

They should either, or something like,

put 80s above everyone else in Q priority,
never let more than half of the popluation of either team be non 80s.
decrease the xp.
or take AV badges out of the pvp (all 6 badges) turn in repeatable quests.

I agree with Gari. As long as people are cooperating and working together, you can easily win an AV match no matter the levels. I leveled my Priest from 70 to 80 through AV. I did some quests out in Borean Tundra, but I honestly could not take it. Despite what the achievement claims, there IS something boring about Borean.

I made sure I contributed as best as I could. I defended what I capped and even defended what I didn't cap. The only time Alliance would lose would be when Horde would decide to defend Galv, sending us back to our base where no one would push forward, thus creating a turtle. People would then say, "this is because of the lowbies" or even blame it on the people who were AFK in the cave, but the majority of the issue was lack of cooperation.

Great article by the way! I don't consider myself a casual since I spend quite a lot of time playing, but I still love your articles because I'm not a raider (I'm all about the PVP). I just got back into the game when 3.2 came out so I wasn't too sure what changed.

At LV 51, you get a whole bunch of quests that can be achieved inside Alterac Valley: stuff like capturing a GY, completing the Mine quests, etc. Just for winning an AV Match, you can get ahold of some nice gear. I remember both my Hunter and Paladin drooling over that Polearm. Also, at LV 51 those quests give a nice chunk of XPs.

What a shame that to do these quests at 51, you have to play against LV 60s.

Capture a GY? The NPCs are LV 57 (iirc) which puts them just under 'skull' level.

etc.

BG brackets should be no larger then 5 levels. Having 71-80 brackets, etc is just plain stupid, and ruins the experience for all concerned.

Remember too that the other side has just as many lowbies; your team isn't at any great disadvantage.

I've been leveling a mage through the 71-80 BGs and I've not really noticed any changes for the worse in the pace or anything else. One thing I have noticed is that PvE objectives (like killing Bal, Galv, Vann or Drek) simply cannot be done effectively by anyone other than the max level characters. It's a bit easier for Alliance to take towers than Horde to take bunkers because of NPC LoS but that's still not a huge deal.

There simply needs to be an "End game" bracket for 80s only. (or whatever the current max-level is.) The fact that there isn't is just retarded. A top geared 80 can one-shot a lvl 71.

All these low level 70's certainly make achievements like the Sickly Gazelle a heel of a lot easier though :)