We've all been there, right? You queue up for a battleground and enter the fray. O-ho! You catch a level 49 orc unaware! You fire blistering spell after blistering spell at him! Unfortunately, because you're only level 41, your spells keep missing, dooming you to a certain and ugly fate. Over and over and over. And so you just give up and don't requeue for a battleground until you're almost level 49 yourself.

Well, there's good news -- Blizzard has announced new battleground groups for Cataclysm that will make such frustrating scenarios much less prevalent. Whereas battlegrounds are currently broken up into 10-level groups (the level 10 to 19 bracket, for example), battlegrounds in Cataclysm will be broken up into five-level groups (there's a new level 10 to 14 bracket). The move should "match up teams more evenly," according to the post on Blizzard's website.

As part of an effort to further ease you into the world of PvP, certain battlegrounds are going to be available for play at earlier levels: Arathi Basin can be played as early as level 10, Eye of the Storm is available at 35, and Alterac Valley is available at 45. For those of us with low-level alts sick of running Warsong Gulch, that's welcome news indeed.

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

---

Tags: alterac-valley, arathi-basin, battlegrounds, cataclysm-game, cataclysm-guide, cataclysm-news, expansion, expansion-three, eye-of-the-storm, next-xpac, pvp, third-expansion, world-of-warcraft-cataclysm, wow-4.0, wow-4.0.2, wow-cataclysm, wow-expansion, wow-guide, wow-third-expansion

Filed under: News items, PvP