When it comes to PvP, Arathi Basin aside, some of my biggest frustrations have been felt in the Eye of the Storm battleground. A large part of the frustration stems from the apparent confusion from team mates over what it takes to win the battleground. According to Blizzard, Eye of the Storm "combines capture-and-hold style gameplay with capture-the-flag", and I'm guessing this is where much of the confusion lies.

Like Arathi Basin, the overall objective of Eye of the Storm is simple - accumulate 1,600 points before the opposition does. A team can accumulate these points in two ways, controlling and holding towers (of which there are four in total), and capturing and returning the flag to one of the towers in your teams control.

Capturing a tower is simply a matter of occupying and controlling the area around the tower. There's no need to click on anything, you just need to be there. Like Blizzard point out the "greater the advantage your team holds in the immediate area of a tower, the faster a tower is captured (up to a maximum of a 5 player advantage)". If you want to take control of a tower from the enemy you need to attack and steal it by clearing the area of enemy resistance and then occupying it.

Points are generated on a per second basis. The more towers you control, the more points you generate per second.

Points from tower control

1 tower controlled = 1 point per second
2 towers controlled = 2 points per second
3 towers controlled = 5 points per second
4 towers controlled = 10 points per second

Obviously then, the more towers in your control, the more likely you are to win. It's not that hard. Just to reinforce the fact that holding towers win matches, Blizzard made the point even more obvious, by introducing the Honorable Defender buff. That's right, Blizzard will increase your honor gained from kills by 50% for doing the right thing, and defending your towers.

But here's the catch, and the part that trips up most people new to the Eye of the Storm - the damn flag. The flag is there, it's in the middle, surely we must capture it?

The answer is yes and no, depending on your viewpoint. I like to view the flag as the icing on the cake. It's a nice little bonus to help kick the score along if, and only if, your side is in control of three or more towers. Why? The points allocated for a flag capture are scaled based on the number of towers in your teams control.

Points from flag captures

1 tower controlled = 75 points
2 towers controlled = 85 points
3 towers controlled = 100 points
4 towers controlled = 500 points

On first glance, 75 points, even for a 1 tower flag capture, seems like a lot. When you sit down and think it through a little, you'll soon see that, in most instances, the flag is little more than a distraction. What do I mean? Here's an example.

The Alliance hold one tower for the whole battle. The Horde hold three towers for the whole battle. The Alliance are fixated on the flag, picking it up and capping it at every opportunity. The Horde don't care about the flag, don't go near it, and stick to their three towers. Let's say that the Alliance take 20 seconds to pick up the flag and run it back to base, also allowing for the flag to respawn.

So, to summarise, Alliance control one tower, and cap the flag every 20 seconds. The Horde control three towers and don't cap the flag once.

Based on this scenario, the Horde will accumulate 1,600 points in 320 seconds. In 320 seconds, the Alliance will accumulate 320 points from controlling the one tower, and will have captured the flag 16 times (based on 20 second flag captures), for 1,200 points, and a combined total of 1,520.

In other words, the Horde will win 1,600 to 1,520 in in a little over 5 minutes, without capturing the flag once.

So what does this mean? You can really view the flag as fluff, cream, icing on the cake. On it's own the flag won't win you the game, however, if you team develops too much of a fixation on the flag, to the point where they disregard the towers, the flag will lose you the game.

In summary

If you want to guarantee yourself a win in Eye of the Storm, the strategy is really quite simple. Grab three towers at the very beginning, hold them start to finish, and you can't lose. Assign a couple of enterprising types to cause general nuisance at the flag point, and maybe cap a couple along the way, and the win is yours. If you look at your mini-map and there are five or more of your team mates hanging around at the flag spawn point, there's a good chance that a) you are already losing or b) you soon will be.

Bottom line, execute Eye of the Storm correctly and you don't even need to touch the flag to win. Cap three, hold/defend and win.

To make it simple, here's a diagram I slapped together.