So Cata gave us that horrid island and MoP had nothing like it but I remember some of my best memories of WoW PvP happened in Wintergrasp. I agree, when it came out, there were tons of problems like causing the entire server to lag and servers with faction imbalance had major issues but now Blizzard has shared realms to hopefully fix that.
Wintergrasp was just an amazing concept that blizz gave up on because just like almost everything in cata their version of cata wintergrasp also sucked. I still think Wintergrasp was a great addition and that Blizz should do zones along the same lines.
One of my my fondest memory of WoW PvP is a particular fight of wintergrasp, where my team lost! The game was so intense, we had lead changing every few minutes, everyone gave it their best and at the end, we had almost 100-200 odd people fighting it out in the main courtyard. The beauty of Wintergrasp was that it attracted PvP and PvE players alike and encouraged them to work together. I want to write more about that particular game but it's one of those things that you just have to be there to experience it.
But like most good ideas blizz have, this idea was also abandoned under a pile of excuses. Primetime wintergrasp was a heavily contested zone on almost every server with a reasonable faction balance and I do not think this concept should be abandoned. For one, Wintergrasp made me join my first ever arena team because a PvP guy I was in raid with liked how I played and said, I should get more resil and join his team. Wintergrasp actually kinda sorta bridged the divide between PvP and PvE crowds.
Now that realm merge is going live, I think the next expansion should bring back a battle ground like Wintergrasp which encourages massive 200 people battles and offers cool rewards as well.
How do you feel about wintergrasp and having a refined version of it in the next expac? Why or why not? Feel free to share your awesome wtg moments!