I Still Miss Wintergrasp

Wintergrasp even with all the QQ'ers QQ'n about imbalance in numbers or buff was always a grand time throughout the duration or Wrath. Take over a workshop, man a canon in the fort or a tower, bulldoze that workshop in that demolisher you just built (until they took that out). Defend/attack, go as ground support for the vehicles... There was a lot of options in how you played WG. We won some and we lost some, but it was always great. Even when the battle wasn't going on it was an actual world pvp zone filled with activity. It was there! On the Map! You could fly to it, you could fly around it, YOU DIDN'T ZONE INTO IT! Many players would stick around scrapping it out for so long after a battle that the next one would start. The rich ore, herb and later fishing resources available made sure even the timid players would be hanging around. I'd often stick around so long farming it up after the fight that the next one would begin. The music in WG between battles was somber, peaceful almost mournful like something you'd expect to hear after a truly grand battle. It really set the tone for this beautiful zone between the bloodshed. The battle itself was fun enough that people always got into it regardless of wanting to run a VoA or farm the elites after their victory. I loved WG from the first time to the last time and all throughout Wrath, regardless of what toon I was on, whether he had any pvp gear at all or not, if I was online and it was going on I was there.

Tol Barad really failed to capture anything that I loved about WG. TB was just a mindless zergfest until the clock ran out. Win or lose you most likely hit your hearth and got the hell out of there unless you stuck around to do the dailys. The actual zone was all but a ghost town 99% of the time outside of the battle. With WG when you won you saved that hour long hearth cd and headed to the fortress for the portal back to Dalaran and flew by or saw your fellow combatants and in most cases hung out for awhile! Players celebrated their victory in WG by shooting the shit. They kicked it on their epic mounts, dueled around with each other, pug'd VoAs, etc... The WG courtyard after a victory was just as populated as Dal or the Org AH. Even if you lost and that last wall was down you'd fly by a crowd of the opposing faction and their elite npc's just to use that portal! It was a little, but significant something. TB was instanced like so many other parts of Cata so it didn't really feel like it was an actual place. The lore sucked and was all but completely unexplained. You don't need grand lore to sustain something. That little journal of Archavon's was all you needed! That was hilarious, and with each patch we met another of his brothers. You weren't flagged upon entering TB so basically it was just another questing zone on pve servers. If you weren't grinding for some vendor item or maximizing your daily quests for guild rep there was really no purpose in going there at all.

TLDR: WG ruled, TB sucks. I will continue to wax nostalgic about WG for years. As for TB I can't really say I'm going to miss something that I never cared about or rarely spent any time doing.