Wintergrasp

Rank 5 = PROFIT!

This is the oft-mentioned full PvP zone. There is (supposed) to be siege weapons and a "spirit shard" like token exchange system for PvP gear.

The zone will always be PvP even on PvE realms. (That is, you will be marked for PvP upon entering)

Taken from WoWWiki:

Lake Wintergrasp is WoW's first non-battleground zone solely devoted to PvP action.
According to a fixed, rolling schedule, one faction will defend the keep/mine, and the other faction will assault it. Both sides will fight over towers and siege workshops scattered around the zone.
If the attacking force succeeds in capturing the keep/mine, that faction will defend it during the next rotation. If that attacking force fails to capture the final objective before the next rotation, that faction will be given more resources (unknown to what those might be for now)" to balance out the fight, and give every faction a chance to hold Lake Wintergrasp.
Lake Wintergrasp will feature a variety of new daily quests. These quests include (but are not limited to): quests where you have to ride a mount with an NPC, holding attackers at bay; flying aircraft quests; flying mount quests where you have to lower ropes to evacuate NPCs; in these quests, mounts can hold multiple players!
Before capturing the keep, the walls must be destroyed by weapons

inc huge wall of text, lol... now that my precious beta is gone i figure i'll take the time to sum up my wintergrasp experiences.

wintergrasp is vastly different from any pvp zone seen pre-LK. the faction that won the previous game has control of the base/keep (which is huge, all things considered) and has to defend it, the other team attempts to bust down the walls and take over.

the *EASY* way to get in at lower levels -- wait for your faction to control wintergrasp. in the little room in dalaran containing the battlemasters, there will be a portal into the wintergrasp base. it's almost always available while you control the zone, though it seems to disappear at some point before the battle starts (sadly i didn't pay enough attention to how this worked, might be when the "one hour" shout goes out?). not sure what the min level is to take the portal (if there is one) but you can go through at 70.

a dalaran npc does a zone-wide announcement at various intervals when it's getting to be time to fight for wintergrasp, iirc it's at 1 hour, 30 mins, 15 mins and 5 mins. when it's really close to time, they'll announce that reinforcements are needed and shout that they've opened a portal (this is just for the faction in control of the base). i think i may've seen it disappear right as the battle was beginning... but i've also taken the portal into the zone while the battle was in progress... i really just don't remember. in retrospect i wish i'd taken the time to learn the triggers for the portal appearing/disappearing.

both teams can create various vehicles. you need a certain # of kills to request each rank of vehicle - 10 i believe. however, you do NOT need any rank to *use* them. *edit: seems like the first rank only takes 2... second still takes 10. this means the person with the highest rank can make and abandon high quality vehicles and folks with low/no ranks could then commandeer them. a "kill" can be an enemy player but can also be destroying one of the cannons on a turret of the base (which is nice, if no players show up on the defending side you'll still have a way to get the vehicles needed to destroy the walls).

the ranks are temporary, they are specific to wintergrasp and are erased when the battle ends. they persist through death.

the defending team can create vehicles inside the base. there are also two vehicle workshops outside the base in the main battlefield that can be used by whichever faction controls them. to capture a workshop you just stand there for a bit, the way you'd cap any base/tower that doesn't have a flag... they cap quite quickly even with just one person.

vehicles can be attacked and killed by a player on foot (ie not using a vehicle/cannon). they can NOT be healed and neither can cannons. rank 1 vehicles are pretty much defenseless against an attacker staying in melee range since you can't aim that close to the vehicle. in general, their aim tends to be a little off, making them mediocre at best for trying to hit moving players, however they're passable for taking down cannons. because of the vehicle limit, it's better to let your vehicle get killed and eject you than to hop out when it gets low and leave an "active" vehicle sitting on the battlefield.

if you pull up the map you can see the position of enemy vehicles that are approaching so you know what area to run to to man a cannon. there are "blind spots" esp around the corners that stick out where catapult vehicles can hit the cannons but those cannons can not aim downward enough to fire back. the only way to hit them with a cannon is go to one further down one of the walls... but the catapult can easily duck around the corner to escape you if there isn't someone on the other wall's cannon too. if possible, it'll be a lot faster/easier to jump down and kill the vehicle yourself (and then the player inside) before porting back into the base... depends on your level compared to theirs as well as if they have many stacks of the tenacity buff.

if you are low 70's you can still be very helpful against 80's if you know how to make good use of the mechanical tools, especially if you coordinate with others to eliminate the safe spots catapult drivers like to hide in. a group of 70-73's can defend against a group of 80's in many situations. strategy and an understanding of what's going on can *really* compensate for level differences and even for the other faction having the tenacity buff (which i'll explain below).

if your team is defending and you're outside the base, you can get back in by using teleporters located on the outside that are only usable by the defenders. i recommend care when using these, esp if trying to make a frantic escape... i didn't do any wintergrasp fighting after the last beta patch and one would *hope* the bug would be fixed before it went live if it wasn't fixed in that patch but with blizzard you never know... anyway, if you were moving when you clicked on a teleporter you would fall through the world and die. as long as you came to a *complete* stop before you clicked you would make it through safely.

edit: i was wrong about the tenacity buff being related to consecutive losses, guess my experiences on beta were too limited. apparently, it actually goes to the outnumbered team. the buff stacks and i don't think there's a limit to how high it can stack. each stack grants 25% to health, healing done and healing taken + 18% to damage done. i've seen lvl 80 players who would normally have 20-25k health running around with 50k and 1-shotting people left and right. normal pvp combat is futile under these circumstances, it becomes very important to stay inside the keep and use the turret cannons and vehicles to fight. vehicles driven by the faction with the tenacity buff will also benefit from the buff, which is the really bad part. not sure what determines the number of stacks but it is absolutely brutal when small groups are involved... was 8 vs 5 the other day and the horde (side w/5) had three stacks (so 75% to health/healing and 54% bonus to damage).

imo the tenacity buff isn't too bad when the attacking team has it since you can defend from inside the keep using the wall cannons and such... however, it was impossibly bad when the defending team had it, we couldn't even get close to the keep, much less actually attack the walls (which is a slow process if you don't have a HUGE group).