Darkspear Islands — getting fifteen people into WoW: Forever's new battleground

It is easy to assume a brand-new battleground is for level 60s. It is not: you can queue for Darkspear Islands from level 30. Two sources say so, warcraft.wiki.gg and Icy Veins, from the beta.

Fifteen a side, off the coast of Kalimdor. Blizzard's own description is in the next steps.

There are four brackets: 30–39, 40–49, 50–59, and 60. A 38 and a 41 are in different brackets, which is the kind of detail that splits a premade the night it meets.

So when you post a Darkspear Islands run, say the bracket, and check it again on the night: someone who levelled since you asked may have moved up out of it.

Battleground queues in Forever are cross-ruleset: the match itself can mix players from different rulesets. But you cannot group with someone on another ruleset and queue together.

That means a premade is one ruleset, and — since it is a team on one side — one faction. Fifteen people who chose separately are often not fifteen people who can queue together. If you are still deciding, read the PvP ruleset and its faction lock and choosing a ruleset first.

To queue, go to your capital — Stormwind or Orgrimmar — and find the Battleground Battlemasters.

Whether you can also queue from anywhere in the world, and how many of your fifteen can join the queue as one group, are not published. Have everyone in the capital when you start, and you are covered either way.

Blizzard describes it as control points plus Arathi Basin-style flag captures and defence. Icy Veins fills in the shape: four bases to hold, and a flag in the middle that you carry to a base you control to score. No source we can quote names the bases yet.

That rewards a team that has split itself up in advance — who holds which base, who runs the flag, who escorts the runner. A pick-up group works that out during the match; a premade has already done it.

PvP pays in Honor, and battlegrounds also pay marks: Icy Veins gives three for a win and one for a loss. Its example is Warsong Gulch, and it does not name a Darkspear Islands mark, so treat the Darkspear figure as expected rather than confirmed.

• Whether it is open on 4 November or arrives later. Blizzard says it "will introduce" the battleground and gives no date.
• How large a group can queue together.
• Whether you can queue away from a Battlemaster.

Everything above comes from beta, where the level cap only reached 30 on 1 October. Expect details to move before launch.