ConfigSys.Boy, whose experince is greater than my own in these matters, would like to append the following.
One additional note in regards to Battlegrounds since you seem to be at least marginally onboard with what the hip kids are playing nowadays. Alterac Valley is not 51-60. I know they say it is, and yes they'll let you in at 51, but it's sort of like how we let people drive when they're sixteen but we don't put them behind the wheels of semi trucks or bulldozers or any other form of vehicle that actually does something USEFUL until they're 25. You can get in there and motor around, but if you actually want to help the team, carry some weight, and not get fed to the Horde's Frostwolf mounts you'll need to be 55. All those accessory quests that advance your team's position and what not tend to involve killing crowds of 52-55 Elite mobs in the process of say capturing that mine, or smiting those trolls, and thats usually not something a lvl51 enjoys all that much, even if he is a (fucking) Hunter.
Also - be prepared to remember why you both loved and hated pick up games in Tribes 2. All the standard frustrations of pick up servers for strategy oriented FPSes are alive and well in Alterac Valley. That doesn't make it any less cool that they managed to transplant that sort of experience into an MMO, but it does remind you why you played till 5 AM some nights and hung it up early on others.
He brings up Tribes because that's sort of our thing - but the frustrations he's talking about are real, and they aren't any less real in CTF. We got into a couple rounds last night where the teams were virtually identical because we got in the queue immediately after our crushing defeat. They had no less than three extremely devious shadow priests who enabled their Tauren allies in the achievement of legendary exploits. I've had a couple trancendent experiences that are a comfort to recall during more grim encounters.
(CW)TB
