World of Warcraft Battlegrounds Articles

Both IGN PC and GameSpy have kicked up articles detailing Blizzard's newly released Battlegrounds update for World of Warcraft. A snip from IGN PC's article:
The quests are actually scattered throughout the northern end of the Valley (for the Alliance), and many of them involve picking up loot from the corpses of fallen Horde members. Now don't worry, nobody can take anything from your inventory--it's just magically generated stuff. Enemy players look like they have basic loot tables--just quest items, sometimes a lockbox...nothing to write home about. Interestingly, each race has a different type of trophy drop you can take back to a specific quest giver. The Taurens have hooves, the undead have "Forsaken Hearts" and the Orcs have teeth you can collect. I got 6600 experience points for turning these in (although that only happens the first time--after that it's just reputation increases). You'll also be picking up armor scraps which you turn into your faction NPC blacksmith, who in turn uses these to upgrade the NPC guards and patrols. And these guys can get pretty tough. I faced off against same-level Horde NPC guards, and they can hit like a ton of bricks, so watch out to make sure you stay out of their range when you're fighting the Horde players. Both factions will use the guards and patrols to protect them.

And a snip from GameSpy's article:
Players outside the Battlegrounds will find some changes, also. Players who have been frustrated looking for groups for instances using the nearly useless meeting stones will appreciate that the world's innkeepers now have a "gossip" option that lets players join meeting stones directly rather than having to hoof it all the way out to the location. The meeting stone rules for creating groups have also been relaxed; meaning players may be able to find groups faster. Level 44-52 PvE players for both sides may want to stop by Thorium Point in the Searing Gorge to take part in a bunch of new quests, and Horde players finally have a reason to visit the Hinterlands as a new quest hub called Revantusk Village has just appeared and they've got all sorts of problems only adventurer's can solve. Both Horde and Alliance players will also find new flight paths to these locations.