Now that we are all about peace and working together, there is really no lore reason as to why we get any new battlegrounds.
Every time we get a new battleground, there is usually a lore reason such as the Alliance (good) is trying to stop the Horde (evil) from claiming a certain area and we send our generals from both sides to secure it.
But now that we are both working together and no more war, there is no longer any reason to slay one another in new battlegrounds.
Maybe we can get new arenas because gladiator battles in arenas is still widely accepted for both factions to prove our faction strength and prestige through a “battle” but a new battleground will mean more than just a “battle”, that means war.
I don’t know that the one where you’re holding a random lighthouse in Gilneas has a whole lot of plot development behind it.
Hell, Ashran existed in game and I don’t know that any story ever really addressed the fact that we were apparently just constantly battling back and forth over artifact fragments between our two cities while also fighting off the alt-Horde.
Gilneas was a weird one cause unless you followed a lot of external media & read all the quest text, the line between Alliance fighting in Gilneas & Gilneas being abandoned 100% is super blurry.
During Cataclysm when the battleground was released the bulk of Worgen evacuated with some left behind, and Genn Greymane convinced Varian to send troops back to Gilneas to fight on the battlefront, as the Horde had been pushed back at some point near the gate.
For the three capturable points: the lighthouse is necessary for naval navigation, the mines for physical resources, and waterworks for agriculture.
Ashran
Ashran is hard to say cause WoD development was an absolute mess due to shareholders & overall mismanagement.
If I recall correctly, I believe Ashran was always supposed to be a thing but our main hubs weren’t supposed to be there (as they were supposed to be Bladespire and Karabor).
Ashran was kind of like an Azerite situation in BFA. The initial fighting force that came through the Dark Portal was bi-faction, however once the ley lines were discovered the Horde & Alliance began pouring troops into Draenor.
Ashran was full of resources and artifacts that both factions feared could be utilized to create powerful weapons, with the most prominant being the Solar Sphere (the same Solar Sphere underground in Ashran that you can capture to give your entire team permanant 10% haste buff).
It’s kind of like how in Legion we as the player character fought alongside other faction-neutral heroes, but in the background there was a faction war occuring. Ashran was more like the faction-war backdrop while the faction-neutral heroes were keeping their priorities straight.
Historically, fighting on external lands for resources is met with less retaliation as opposed to direct invasion of a nation’s lands. It’s the reason so many countries right now IRL fight eachother (mostly through proxy armies) for resources. The second those proxy armies start to touch the mainland of the enemy however, nukes will start flying.
100% tho Ashran, just like all of WoD, was very sloppy. Breaks my heart too cause you could tell Chris Metzen had so much planned for that expansion, just for a bunch of MBA’s to burn it all.
Sorry for writing a book, i’m literally snowed in right now.
These probably won’t come back tbh cause of Cross-Realm Zones. Tol’barad during Cataclysm was messy, Wintergrasp in WOTLK Classic was just depressing, and Ashran was inconsistent.
It wasn’t like back in actual WOTLK where the server would rally and players would manually create their own raid group to fight for Wintergrasp.
I noticed you’re on Moonguard; I think you guys don’t experience realm zoning/sharding like we do. It really makes any outdoor events just impossible at this point.
I’m honest to God considering server transfering to Moonguard or Emerald Dream. I don’t roleplay, but i’m so envious about how sharding works for you guys.