We know you don’t care, F delete it. Like half of Draenor content that never came out
Farallon was in the alpha… Kinda, sorta, I used some trickery to get in and was teleported out to my displeasure.
Cata is a buggy turd not even worth playing, its clear blizz doesn’t care, thus I do not waste my time on it.
Come play Era, 99.9% of the game works and its really fun.
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Isn’t it just optional content that one has to queue for on purpose to get into? Just don’t do it, imo.
Not trying to say it’s a wonderfully enjoyable BG, but I just don’t do it, personally (I don’t queue for BGs for pleasure normally though).
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It’s been a long time since I played Cata in any meaningful capacity but I seem to recall that the optional part is kinda a little loose. I remember not liking TB very much but still having to run it with my PvE guild every week for the extra chance at drops. I did some research just now and it looks like it drops a few PvE pieces that you can buy for currency, so if you were to get them in Baradin Hold you’d save yourself a good chunk of time.
While it’s still a choice whether or not you want to engage with this content, that is true for any and all raids in all versions of WoW. Calling it optional shouldn’t really excuse bad design.
To add some extra clarity here though, I’m not saying TB is bad design. It might be, I definitely remember hating it and hating that I felt compelled to participate in it, but I don’t think it was universally despised back in OG Cata and I’m not sure how people feel about it now. I just wanted to respond directly to your stance of “if you don’t like it, don’t play it because its optional” and explore my opinion on whether or not that’s valid 
You are probably referring to Baradin Hold, a raid inside of TB.
I don’t think everyone has the same definition of bad design. I also l that TB was a really cool concept, and I really enjoyed it during OG Cata. Indeed, it’s one of very few times and areas where I did really enjoy these sorts of walled PvP zones.
But yeah, the current player base, faction imbalance and way they have updated it for Classic doesn’t really fit its original intent. I think they could just make it function as it did originally, and say, “that’s Classic. Deal with it,” but that isn’t what they’ve done.
BH is the raid. Of course that’s optional too, and we quickly outgear it. I haven’t done it in months, but that’s also instanced raid content and not what this thread is about.
AFAIK, it is about the TB Battleground. It is possible that the OP is referring to the entire peninsula and daily quests, which I have been greatly enjoying as Alliance on Faerlina. Indeed, it has been possibly the best part of post 2019 Classic for me, personally, so far.
To be clear, I’m not a fan of the “don’t like it, just don’t do it,” line of reasoning when it’s clearly not something you’re reasonably going to be able to avoid. This is not that, imo.
No I was speaking specifically of Tol Barad, the PvP event you have to engage in, and win, so that you could unlock Baradin Hold for your faction. Similar to Wintergrasp and Vault of Archavon in WotLK. The actual raid itself is fine, the pain was just getting access to it. We tried to help win it for our faction so that we could make sure we did it in that week. Horde tended to have control of it most of the time on our server back in OG Cata.
I wouldn’t call BH optional when it offers you a chance at a tier set piece, which can save you a significant amount of currency grind. You can certainly avoid it, but if you’re in a PvE focused guild who is trying to get up for a tier and progress, you’re going to feel a good amount of pressure to run this content. You can certainly stick to your guns and avoid it, but it’s reasonably clear why people don’t and labeling it optional outright dismisses any discussion about what might be valid concerns about TB.
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Oh right! Yeah, that’s how it worked in OG Cata. Now it is just a BG that you must opt in to. You can access TB dailies, quests, and the BH raid on either faction when the BG is not active.
In OG Cata, I suppose sure. That’s not what this thread is about though. This is about Cata Classic, and that’s just not how it works anymore, at all.
Oh, they changed it for Cata Classic? Is it a specific BG that you queue into or is it more like retail where you queue for “Epic Battlegounds” and it’s one that can come up?
I knew someone would say this - but this version of TB seems different than the original. 90-20 every time is pretty redic.
Yes, that’s right. They made it so that when the BG is not active, both factions can complete all the quests within the zone (there are both Horde and Alliance NPCs for the opposite faction kill quests, etc.).
And yes, it’s a cross server BG now, rather than a server specific event where one faction will own the zone if they win.
The original was very one-sided also. You basically had one faction win, and defend. If you got lucky on the other faction, often late at night you could take it for your faction, and then just defend it all day.
But yes, it’s ridiculous. It’s lame. But it’s 100% optional, so if you’re queuing into it, that’s by choice.
Help me understand it a bit more here, please 
Is the raid always accessible to you, regardless of whether or not your faction has control of the zone?
In WotLK it was cross server, but I believe someone still had to win it in order to open it up for you faction. It meant that at least some folks still had to play it in order to allow their faction to get into it. Has this changed in Cata and it’s just always available now?
This matters because if it’s like WotLK, you’re still kinda forced to play it if you want to ensure your group has access to it, therefore it’s not really optional. If your entire faction can just completely opt out of TB and still access the raid, then I would be more inclined to agree. The time to fix TB was during Cata so now, if people don’t like it, just not joining the queue for it seems appropriate. Normally I’d advocate for fixes, but I dunno where the Cata Classic community lands on changes these days, tbh.
The BG happens once every 3 hours for like 30 minutes. When it is not happening, everyone, regardless of faction, has access to the raid and all the quests.
There is no concept of “owning the zone.”
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Thanks for the clarifications, it sounds like they iterated on it since WotLK and this is definitely different than it was in OG Cata
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Yeah. I think they made some changes to it by the end of OG Cata, and afaik, they never ended up going back to it as a design pattern for other PVP interaction. Likely, it was something that failed at the time and just wasn’t ever really given much consideration.
Fast forward 14 years to now… and it’s back! They’ve made some changes/updates for Cata Classic that were probably pretty quick and easy (relatively), and more-or-less “just work” for the 2024 crowd - though to be fair to the other posters, from the 10 or so times I’ve queued into it, there are a lot of times it is completely one sided. Alliance players seem to LOVE this (or at least, they seem to continue queuing specifically into this BG, and tend to be the dominant side, so…). Anyway, 10-ish times queuing into it is hardly enough data to go on, so that’s my purely anecdotal pov.
But yes, it’s totally optional, and for the most part, I don’t queue into it.
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Depended tons of your server; there were a few balanced servers and I was lucky enough to be on one of them.
The map itself. It was practically impossible to win on offense, iirc, when it first opened up. And I think they changed it so that it was almost impossible to defend, a couple of patches later. idk how anyone knew what “balanced” meant then or now, but I was also on a server.
I was talking about imbalance in players on the map.
Wasn’t it 1 single 80vs80 battle per server at the time? If they had kept the original system in place, even servers like Faerlina would also likely be lucky enough to be on one of the few balanced servers (which would simply be every server that had at least 80 people per faction queuing into TB when it happens.)
Back then, it often didn’t fill during the wee hours, so queuing into it then, and holding it was a strategy if you could get enough people to do that, at least as I recall.
Yeah it was a single battle per server per / time.
If your faction didn’t have players in the BG, they allegedly gave some sorta buff, but I never saw that in action. I heard WG also did similar, but again never experienced the buff from either side.