Ever feel like the only one on your team?

Well, if you type in /bg, you can use the battleground chat and communicate with your team. Handy feature, right? Unfortunately, most PvPers tend to use this as a glorified Trade chat, throwing open the floodgates from thought to fingertips and letting their all-too-honest-and-useless opinions run rampant. Rather than letting you know that a group of Horde are retaking Iceblood tower, they’re content to make disparaging comments about your mother and accusing everyone around them of AFKing. While your first instinct may be to kill precious time telling off these wastes of battleground slots, there’s a better way.

Now, believe it or not, there are a good number of sane people hidden amongst the loudmouths. These quiet people are usually there to play hard, have fun, and get some honor and emblems. Whilst I’m not saying they’ll be good little Pikmin that throw themselves into the fangs of hell when you blow a whistle, there are ways of getting the silent masses to listen to you and communicate.

1. Grammar Ranger, Away! (lol, wut?)
If you’re playing World of Warcraft, I’m assuming you’ve probably passed grade school and you know how proper sentence structure is formed. As much as the Internet would like to steal all vowels from most words, you need to buck this trend and learn to spell properly. Players will listen to an intelligent-sounding person more often than not, so if you need to chose between “Belf w/ flg guyz, omg /afk noob go rad hoger” and “BE pally at the end of the tunnel, has flag”, ask yourself this question: “Will this phrase make me sound like a caffeinated preschooler?”

As the old knight in The Last Crusade said, choose wisely.

2. Don’t Take Charge
Most experienced players will immediately ignore you, if not do the complete opposite of what you say, if you start bossing them around. You’re not a raid leader, don’t try to act like you’re one. Trying to take charge is likely kill the fragile spirit of teamwork, turning this team effort into a free-for-all.

3. If You Can’t Say Something Nice…
Unless it’s something that really needs to be addressed, don’t clog up battleground chat with useless chidings and rebuking remarks. You’re just going to cover up something actually important with your leeter-than-thou attitude, and even more cries for help will be squashed under a pile of grammatical crap generated by your “peacekeeping”.

4. Odd Groups Go Left, Even Groups Go Right
Inform people of what you’re about to do. Don’t just catapult yourself into the middle of the fray, flaying willy-nilly and generally making a grand old target of yourself. Think before you say, say before you act.

5. For The Greater Good
Going hand in hand with communicating with your team, don’t be afraid to make sacrifices for your teammates. Are you a mage? Team up with another mage and spam Frost Nova in the tunnel to buy your flag carrier some time. Are you a druid? Put your bear form to good use and become a bullet shield for someone capping the flag. Are you a gnome? You’re awesome cannon fodder, run out there and see who you can distract. People that see you doing this are far more likely to listen when you mention some info or advice.

6. Game!? THIS! IS! BATTLEGROUNDS!
Above all, remember that your battleground chatter should be tempered with the fact that this is just a game. No lives are at stake, your house will not be razed upon a Wintergrasp loss, and your children will not be sold into slavery to Russian Mafia crimelords. Don’t take stuff personally when someone yells at you for not turtling, not using a certain ability at a certain time, etc. If you’re losing, quickly discuss what’s going on with the rest of the group instead of dwelling on what moron is ruining the entire BG with his utter uselessness. Keep a positive attitude until the end, and when it ends, it ends. Let it go and learn what you can from it.

I find it fascinating that we have no trouble talking up a storm when we’re raiding an AI-controlled boss, yet when faced with the always-changing mind of human opponents, we have all the cohesion of Kool-Aid in midair. Whether in Battlegrounds, Arenas, or Wintergrasp, winning teams communicate coherently, quickly, and clearly.

Now get out there and start a war. Grammatically correct, of course.