So I played Warlords back in the day but had to quit early in 2015, and never got to experience the “real” Ashran. Nowadays when I queue for a random epic BG, Ashran feels of the most fun ones (for both factions), and has some great artwork/dialogue etc. Not to mention the epic soundtrack…
It’s crazy to imagine this was released almost 10 years ago
I wonder how was it during it’s “prime”?
I enjoyed it but there were also plenty of people who lovingly called it Trashran.
I got to experience it during Legion. There were these well known BG leaders that’d come in and we’d follow them around building up to a big fight.
Honor just rolled in like a freight train. I miss it
It was known as Trashran and Holinka’s baby nobody wanted.
But it did give a lot of conquest, so it had that going for it.
Ashran wasn’t a BG back them. It was an open world event more like (old) Wintergrasp and Tol Barad.
It was also utter garbage. People called it Trashran for a reason.
I didn’t play back then, so this is the first I’ve heard of this nickname for it. I have heard one that is not compliant with the social agreement though. 
It was fun if you had hours and hours to spend; was a truly epic battleground. However, after a few months the strategies and meta were found and it became a game of tug-of-war except one side would win then allow the other to win just to reset and win after; rinse and repeat.
It was a lot of fun for the first while then it just became annoying.
It was awesome. Used to lead Horde events to victory throughout. Tons of honor, it is too bad the Honor System that we are using today didn’t arrive until Legion, or I would have gotten to PvP 500 much, much faster. Ashran was a great place for gearing up alts as well.
You could zone right in, at any time, and would automatically be put into a 40v40 raid group in progress. Sometimes it would be a losing game at the start, but eventually a debuff on the other faction would straighten things out. No matter which game you were in, if you had a good leader, you would win, and sometimes for most of the day if not longer before the debuff or a good enemy faction leader caused losses.
The ancient artifact spawned at different locations, like Ampitheater of Annihilation, Brute’s Rise, Molten Quarry, and Ashmaul Burial Grounds, and would often be a game changer depending on who carried it. I went out of the way to make sure Horde secured the AA at all times every game I played.
When the Legion pre-patch arrived, old Ashran was destroyed, gutted, and wiped out. It was a terrible time to log in because something I had enjoyed for such a long time was taken out of the game. It hurt just as much as when Blizzard removed 40-man raids in The Burning Crusade, forcing guilds that had been together since 2004 to split down the middle due to the 25-man limit.
I felt like it ran a lot smoother than it does now. I am not certain what they did to the data flow since the days of WoD but my god, even on the lowest of lowest settings I still hit like 3 fps on the battle zones with all the players.
It was a fun little zone just to wander over into whenever you felt like it. Was like AV and WG mixed together.
I hated it, and I did dabble a good bit in pvp that xpac at the start. It’s what really turned me off of pvp actually.
I don’t remember it being as laggy as it is today though, or as lopsided. It’s a very confusing mini game if you’re new to it (as most people are today). Much smoother when 60-80% of the participants know what to do and where to go.
Easy honor. Get druid legendary book (flight form) and collect artifacts. No one could touch you and you got maxed out / quests done really quick.
It was very popular among forumgoers to call it “Trashran”. However, it was extremely popular. I did raiding as both Horde and Alliance, sometimes in merc mode. I recall leading a Horde raid on my gnome rogue. You could stay indefinitely and keep farming until you capped conquest, then switch to a different character.
When they closed it without advance notice in the prepatch, they had to reopen it unfinished. So many people now had nothing to do and unsubbed. Level 100’s were fighting level 110 mobs there. A lot of us went to Wintergrasp or Tol Barad instead.
As someone who never BGs or PVPs on purpose, i actually enjoyed Ashran when it was new. It was more than just a killfest, which made it fun.
Unless you joined a pre-made, it was a cluster-F. The ancient artifact made some specs absolute gods. I remember joining many of the HYDRA pre-mades on the Horde-side and how the rule was basically MM Hunters and Boomkins got top priority for the artifact and everyone else had to carry them. And if you played any melee spec? Yeah, your sole job is completing the event objectives or bodyguarding the healers and the artifact carrier.
Was a good way to farm loads of conquest if you got into the pre-mades. Think I was able to get a full set of Honor gear and a couple pieces of Conquest in a single evening.
I remember the lag mostly
It was good in the sense that the thought of balance. You can’t win forever.
It was about as perfect “world” pvp got so far