Here are some of the major changes

- Battlegroups got merged for battlegrounds. You will now find yourself in a Warsong Gulch with players from Ruin, Bloodlust, Shadowburn, and any of the other battlegroups, all in the same battleground.
- Queuing for more than one battleground at a time currently does not work. Stay with one.
- Arena skirmishes got removed. They were replaced by “Wargames”, but wargames are currently bugged for XP-off players, so they take some work to get going.
- Blizzard replaced almost all of the quests in Azeroth with patch 4.0.3. Therefore, you can no longer get a lot of quest gear there that was previously available. Likewise, some new quest gear appeared that didn’t exist before. In addition, level ranges changed for a lot of Azeroth instances, which also changed old gear levels and stats.
- Blizzard also subdivided brackets. Whereas before we had 10-19, 20-29, etc., we now have 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, 25-29, etc. Upper brackets got combined and normalized to stay consistent. 54-59, 60-64, 65-69, 70-74, 75-79, etc. No more bracket requirement differences between AV and other battlegrounds.
- Players on capped accounts (Vanilla/60, TBC/70, WotLK/80) now play in the XP-off battlegrounds.
- Mid-brackets gained access to some new battlegrounds: 39s and 49s can now play Eye of the Storm, and 49s can now play Alterac Valley (though they don’t have the numbers for that yet). Moreover, once they get the numbers, 49s can queue for random battlegrounds. Most brackets do not have enough numbers yet to play daily, so check a bracket’s schedule before queuing up.
- Two players from 49s created to help XP-off players organize and get games. It’s safe to say that the qlist site helped bring the 49, 39, and 29 brackets back to life much earlier than expected.

Bracket Schedule – US only

10-14: Dormant (mustering numbers to start games)
15-19: Daily
20-24: (trial account bracket/capped 20s)
25-29: Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Sunday starting 9pm EST/6pm PST
30-34: (new bracket: no games)
35-39: Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday starting 9pm EST/6pm PST
40-44: (new bracket: no games)
45-49: Monday/Thursday/Saturday starting at 10pm EST/7pm PST
50-54: (new bracket: no games)
55-59: Dormant (mustering numbers to start games)
60-64: Three games a day (awaiting a serious bug fix from Blizzard).
65-69: Dormant
70-74: Daily
75-79: (new bracket: no games)
80-84: (new bracket: no games)

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?XP-off mini FAQ:

What’s all the buzz against hunters and paladins?
Hunters are extremely powerful in the 19-39 brackets, and Paladins are extremely powerful in brackets 29 and above. Because of their strength, playing a hunter is looked down upon in the 29 and 39 brackets.

I heard that some things are “banned” — what does that even mean?
When the no-XP patch landed in November of 2009, the remaining twinkers who migrated to specific battlegroups to get games realized something important: getting games to happen was way more fun than following Blizzard’s rules. So, the community behind certain brackets will ban certain things. Bans remain very, very rare, and only exist in the smaller brackets. Currently, 29s and 39s ban Aimed Shot for Hunters, and 39s and 49s ban the use of bandages that require greater than 300 first aid (i.e. no frostweave and no embersilk bandages). Also, the 29 bracket is close to banning two OP grandfathered weapons (Skullbreaker and Nailsplitter).
While no one can actually “enforce” the ban, most players adhere to the ban once they realize that games are a lot more fun when they don’t get ruined by breaking the ban.

Why is the 70 bracket suddenly the most popular?
Three reasons: TBC-capped accounts got moved into the XP-off 70-74 bracket, the bracket is by far the easiest to gear for (complete sets of PvP epic gear i.e. the Brutal Gladiator sets and Guardian off-sets available for a total of 2500 honor, and all share BiS status for most classes), and Rated Arenas (and Rated Battlegrounds).

What’s the buzz about engineering in the upper brackets?
It’s about 450 engineering. Some 60s have it grandfathered, the dormant 69 bracket would have access, and the 70-74 bracket has access. At 450, you can use some powerful cataclysm items: the High-Power Bolt gun, cataclysm tinkers, and especially the Big Daddy. These are disproportionately powerful, especially the Big Daddy.

What’s all the concern about grandfathered stuff?
It varies by bracket. 29s had a lot of gear grandfathered due to quest replacements. Thanks [wow gold] (www.bookwowgold.com) to some current quest updates, new 29s remain competitive with their grandfathered teammates. 39s only have a couple of pieces of grandfathered gear. A handful of 49s obtained WotLK enchants on ilevel 60+ gear before the ilevel dropped to 49 and below in 4.0.3a, though the reduced stats of the gear itself somewhat counterbalanced the extra power of these enchants. Regardless, the 49 bracket banned WotLK enchants, and it looks like 4.1 will place level 50 requirements on these enchants anyway. The 60 bracket has a few players with grandfathered 450 engineering.

What happened to games in the 60-64 bracket?
We don’t know. Unlike other brackets, queuing for specific battlegrounds isn’t popping games. Since queuing for random battlegrounds actually rotates through available battlegrounds, games stop when the next random battleground is AV, as 60s don’t currently have the numbers to pop AV.

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Glad to have you back! Check the forums here on Twinkinfo and the official WoW battleground forum for more information about your favorite bracket!

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If you need anything just ask in the forums. You should also check back to ?the original blog post by Bwappo from time to time since he will be updating it more frequently than it will be on the front page.