I think it's a good change. It makes the group strategy decision important again.
Part of the enjoyment of battlegrounds looks to be based around the strategy, ironically quite similar to the April Fool's Day joke. The first choice when you get into a Battlegrounds is similar to the first second in a game of Starcraft. You have three choices. You can rush the enemy gates, hoping to take enough people off-guard. You can try to create an economy, and try to upgrade enough to expand over the enemy. Or you can set up defenses, and try to counter a zerg.
Zerg beats economy beats defenses beats zerg.
Except it didn't work that way so far. It's not that the benefits aren't equal - like in Starcraft, they're supposed to be completely off-balance - but that there's just no incentive whatsoever to take up certain strategies. As it is, there's no reason to defend; you can just take back any losses if your zerg fails. There's no reason to have your people scattered all over looking for resources or doing sidequests; with no incentive to defend, every enemy will zerg and returning the zerg will give the greatest benefit in terms of armor scraps/quest items/honor points.
There's just no reason right now NOT to have almost all your people at the front lines, and while that sounds good in terms of participation, it doesn't really seem very strategic or likely to leave a lot of variation between one fight and the next. With this change, it seems that people will be more willing to build up heavy defenses and counter the first charge, which in turn will make the choice of building up an economy from the secondary enemies a lot more reasonable.
I dunno (and even doubt) that this will be the ultimate fix to that problem, but it's a step in the right direction.
The part where it will appeal to casual gamers (who will find this cuts down on the maximum lifetime of a battlegrounds significantly, and boosts just as significantly the effect one has in a battlegrounds while one is there) is just a nice side effect.
Part of the enjoyment of battlegrounds looks to be based around the strategy, ironically quite similar to the April Fool's Day joke. The first choice when you get into a Battlegrounds is similar to the first second in a game of Starcraft. You have three choices. You can rush the enemy gates, hoping to take enough people off-guard. You can try to create an economy, and try to upgrade enough to expand over the enemy. Or you can set up defenses, and try to counter a zerg.
Zerg beats economy beats defenses beats zerg.
Except it didn't work that way so far. It's not that the benefits aren't equal - like in Starcraft, they're supposed to be completely off-balance - but that there's just no incentive whatsoever to take up certain strategies. As it is, there's no reason to defend; you can just take back any losses if your zerg fails. There's no reason to have your people scattered all over looking for resources or doing sidequests; with no incentive to defend, every enemy will zerg and returning the zerg will give the greatest benefit in terms of armor scraps/quest items/honor points.
There's just no reason right now NOT to have almost all your people at the front lines, and while that sounds good in terms of participation, it doesn't really seem very strategic or likely to leave a lot of variation between one fight and the next. With this change, it seems that people will be more willing to build up heavy defenses and counter the first charge, which in turn will make the choice of building up an economy from the secondary enemies a lot more reasonable.
I dunno (and even doubt) that this will be the ultimate fix to that problem, but it's a step in the right direction.
The part where it will appeal to casual gamers (who will find this cuts down on the maximum lifetime of a battlegrounds significantly, and boosts just as significantly the effect one has in a battlegrounds while one is there) is just a nice side effect.