WoW Rest Stop

Blizzard's problem right now is that they are now part of a big corporation and all corporations are run by the investors that like more predictability than is usual in the gaming industry.  The gaming industry is a hit or miss proposition as titles these days cost millions of dollars to develop but if the gaming public doesn't like it, the title won't sell.  That's why you see games like Call of Duty, Crysis, Madden, and Diablo getting multiple sequels because it is always safer to produce a sequel of something than new material.  Blizzard perhaps is the king of this if you consider that they haven't introduced a new world since they released Starcraft/Diablo in 1997/8.  They hit a home run in 2004 when they developed Warcraft 3 into the World of Warcraft and that leads us to today.

Blizzard's philosophy with WoW has been made up of 2 simple ideas to keep the subscriptions going.  The development cycle for WoW takes a long time so they plan to release a new expansion every 18 months..  In the interim they do major content patches to keep the player base happy.  In practice their development cycle has run closer to 2 years as seen by the release dates:

11/04: World of Warcraft
01/07: WoW: Burning Crusade
12/08: WoW: Wrath of the Lich King
12/10: WoW: Cataclysm

This development policy has been extremely successful but considering that the game is entering its 7th year and has peaked with 12 million subscribers I think it is safe to say that it has definitely hit market saturation.  (Note: the 12 million number is a bit misleading as about half that number uses a subscription model paying $15/month.  The rest based mostly in Asia pay a per hour/transaction fees).  As I said in the previous article most of Blizzard's income is from monthly subscriptions and not new game purchases but monthly subscriptions are now trending downward.  I am sure this is something that Blizzard has seen coming for a long time and have been planning to make sure they stabilize that income.  One solution is the new property they are developing codenamed Titan but that is 2-3 years away and isn't guaranteed to have WoW's success.  They really need something to fix people to the monthly subscription and in my opinion the answer is Battle.Net.

Last year, Blizzard made a big push to include a revamped version of Battle.Net in Starcraft 2 and integrated it into WoW so that people playing either game could communicate.  They also updated their forums and did a lot of other behind the scenes things to create a system that could plug seamlessly into any property they developed.  Most players thought this was a cool feature but there's no way Blizzard did this just so WoW players could talk to their friends who happened to be playing Starcraft.  My feeling is Blizzard has much bigger plans for Battle.Net.

Before I talk more about that I want to mention the other Battle.Net like services in the industry.

• Steam  Steam is basically an online hub that knows all the games you have purchased from them and even lets you run games from them.  You don't need to have software because all you need is your Steam account to download/play anything in your catalog.  Steam was originally developed for the Half Life/Valve and was controversial at first but over time many other developers have been utilized the Steam platform.  Steam makes money for Valve two ways 1) Digital distribution is a lot cheaper than retail and 2) companies that use the Steam service have to pay Valve a %.  These companies gladly will do this because its a lot cheaper to distribute games this way.
• App Store - Apple's platform for Ipad/Iphone programs.  Programs are purchased through the App Store for a small fee and downloadable to your device.
• PSN/XBox Gold - Playstation and XBox both offer online services that cost a set amount that give users the ability to play each other in online games and also offers other downloadable services on their consoles.

Since I posted last night I've seen a few arguments that the 5% drop is meaningless because revenues are up 27%.  What these people are missing is the 5% drop is measured from January 1st to March 31st while the 27% increase in revenue is comparing Q1 2010 vs Q1 2011.  The 5% drop is concerning because this is the first time Blizzard has acknowledged that their subscription base has declined.  The 27% increase is about what I'd expect considering they have 3 things in Q1 2011 they didn't have in 2010, 1) Cataclysm box purchases at $40 each, 2) a surge in players coming back to the game @ $15/month to experience Cataclysm, and 3) Starcraft 2 sales.  The revenue bump of $51mm could be attributed to new box sales alone assuming they sold a little over a  million copies of Cataclysm in Q1 (not totally unreasonable considering a 12 million player base).  The problem is all three of the things that grew revenue in Q1 are in a decline with no new revenue sources in the near term.

The most interesting comment from their press conference to me is them mentioning the player base leaving and that is typical after a release.  Why would they say this if they didn't have to as Blizzard certainly had a great quarter?  The reason is investors aren't dumb and for the reasons mentioned above that revenue vs prior is going to have a sharp downturn the rest of the year.  They are throwing this out there to hold off investor questions and also so they can point to this again when the Q2, Q3, etc numbers come out.  Keep in mind that Starcraft 2 came out in the 3rd quarter of 2010 so there is very little chance that Blizzard will be able to duplicate their performance in that quarter.  Cataclysm hit in the 4th quarter so you can bet there will be a lot of pressure to get Diablo out the door by Thanksgiving but I doubt even that will be able to stem the tide if WoW subscriptions continue to decline.  The number that keeps banging in my head is that 87% of Blizzard's 2010 profit came from WoW.  That means that basically WoW was 87% and Starcraft2 was 13% or put another way ... you need 7 Starcraft 2s to equal WoW.  The bottom line is if WoWs subscriptions continue to decline there is no way Blizzard can meet last year's profit even with Diablo.

All this news does is make me a bit sad for the executives at Blizzard because they've always prided themselves on releasing content when it is done but I wonder if investor pressure will allow them that luxury in the future.  That's why I ended my previous comment with the line that Blizzard and Activision's relationship should be interesting to watch in the next year.  If Diablo is released in December as a buggy mess that gets patched to playability in 2012 we will know that the investors are now running the release schedule and that is only bad news for fans of Blizzard games.

*** I do have an idea of where I think they are headed to stem the tide but I will leave that for Part III.

http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=575495

Blizzard/Activision has a big problem on their hands and despite the rosy predictions you better believe they know it.  The issue isn't the 5% drop but the fact that the playerbase is tired of the game.  This happens to all MMOs eventually and companies have two options -- release a totally new game or try to make your game an everchanging world.  Everquest did the former option which gave the market to Blizzard.  Blizzard is doing the latter and spent a majority of their development time redesigning the old world but it appears this isn't working as most players aren't doing anything other than the content from level 81-85.  This wouldn't be bad if they were attracting new players but it isn't happening and most low level areas are ghost towns.

Keep in mind that last year 87% of Blizzard's income came from WoW and that was in a year where they released Starcraft 2.  They do have Diablo3 and the Starcraft2 Zerg expansion on the horizon but given past history it will be a while before these games are released.  Combine that with the 5% drop in playerbase and Blizzard/Activision is facing a Cataclysm of a different sort.  Raising revenue is probably not an option so the only way Blizzard can duplicate their 2010 profit numbers is to cut costs.  Considering that most of their costs are fixed I doubt this is possible either.  Perhaps Activision's other divisions can make up the difference but it will be interesting to watch Blizzard and Activision's interaction over the next year (don't expect to get anything free this year that we haven't gotten previously).

Why do I raid?  It's a pretty simple question but lately one I've struggled to answer.  I started playing the game because it sounded fun and upon entry I found that Blizzard had created an amazing world.  I wandered aimlessly in the game for about a year until I found the Requiem guild and for the next 3 years I spent 3-4 nights a week with these people as we progressed from a casual family guild to a elite raiders that dominated the server.  It was very special and every night was a lot of fun.

Raiding is very intense and after 3 years I took a break.

WoW burnout is common but I decided that once the Cataclysm expansion came out that I was going to get back into raiding.  Over the past 3 months I've spent quite a bit of time getting ready to raid to the point that my gear is definitely ready for raiding and my experience in dungeons has my confidence at a pretty high level.  Tonight a guild group needed help in a 10 man and I decided to help.  As I entered an instance for a guild run for the first time in about 30 months, I experienced something I never considered during my comeback preparations.

It wasn't fun.

After the 4th wipe I actually looked at the clock and realized that it had only been 30 minutes and was thinking to myself, "I wonder how long we are going to raid?"

The reason this is a big realization is true raiding takes 3-4 hours a night meeting 2-4 times a week.  Wipes are part of the process but here I was thinking ... "How much longer?" after 30 minutes.  It got me to thinking.  "Am I have fun?" and truthfully the answer was no.

I think one the reasons I loved raiding was I really enjoyed my guild mates but that isn't the main reason.  For me, it all comes back to the realization I had at the end of Burning Crusade that Blizzard's virtual world isn't permanent and what is considered an amazing achievement today will be meaningless in 6 months.  Nothing in a virtual world can compare to the real world in terms of meaning which leads to the question -- Is it worth the time investment?

Right now I'm not sure that I want to spend time to even find out.

First let me state that without question, Cataclysm is the most polished, deep, and technologically advanced MMO on the market.  It far surpass what Blizzard has put out in the past from our original battles in Azeroth, through the portal to the Outland in Burning Crusade, and finally our journey to Northrend in Wrath of the Lich King.  The revisioning of the world is amazing and the writing is tighter than ever before.  There are so many great things that I can't list them all but here are my favorites:

- The Zen'Kiki quests in Western Plaguelands
- The imagery of Thrall holding back the implosion of the world in the Maelstrom
- The Black Dragon Quests in the Badlands
- The Caravan Quests in Eastern Plaguelands
- The Dragonmaw questline for the Horde in Twilight Highlands
- The Wildhammer questline for the Alliance in Twilight Highlands
- Uldum

That's off the top of my head but notice that for me everything is quest related.  That's because I haven't hit a single heroic.  I just don't feel the need to face the frustration of heroics anymore and that's the problem Blizzard faces.  They are facing a Cataclysm of a different sort whether they realize it or not.

The seeds of the current situation were sown in Vanilla WoW.  99% of the players then weren't in a raiding guild so very few ever saw Naxxramas or even Neferion/Ragnoros.  I was lucky in that I got into my current guild about halfway through Burning Crusade so we were just entering Naxx when Burning Crusade hit.  Burning Crusade crushed most 40 man raiding guilds.  The reason was 40 man raiding went away and was replaced for most people by 10 man raiding in Karazhan.  This killed just about every raiding guild on every server.  My guild was hit hard and went from about 50 members to about 10 before we were able to right the ship and rebuild.  One positive is the best players stayed and most were anxious to be an end game so we quickly found many other like minded players to fill our ranks.  A few months later we were knocking out boss after boss and quicker than anyone imagined we were the best raiding guild on our server.  One thing we didn't notice is that most other guilds on our server were still stuck in Karazhan.  The reason for this is simple. Unlike me, most people didn't start playing this game until well into Vanilla or Burning Crusade and the World of Warcraft has a steep learning curve.  I know I spent my first year just doing quests and travelling the world before I got the itch to raid.  At that point I had exhausted all the existing content and decided it was time to try to get some of the leet purple gear I enviously inspected on other players.  I'm sure my process was similar to most other players.  WoW rose from 2-3 million players in its first year to about 10 million players in the beginning half of Burning Crusade.  Considering that the game now has about 12 million subscribers today it is pretty safe to say that even with defections, a majority of players in the game are BC babies.  By BC babies I mean that they went through their noob phase in Burning Crusade.  These BC babies loved that expansion and especially Karazhan as it was tailor made for beginning raiders.  At the end of Burning Crusade these BC  babies were no longer noobs but veterans ready to tackle bigger challenges.  Blizzard decided to meet this challenge by focusing on making raiding more accessible to the masses in Wrath of the Lich King.

When Wrath of the Lich king was released, my guild was hit hard by defections.  Actually the defections begin a lot earlier than the release of WotLK they started partway through BC when we beat Illidan.  All MMO's have a simple strategy that is similar to what you'd see at a dog track with its participants chasing a rabbit that is always just out of reach.  Instead of a rabbit, MMO's use player itemization (gear, pets, mounts, titles) to entice its members to continue to play.  Hardcore raiding is almost like a part time job in that you have to devote a consistent least 12-20 hours a week to be good at it.  The time demands/schedule are more that most people can do and many just stay around so they don't let their teammates down.  All this ends when a goal is reached and many ask themselves, "Do I want to continue playing at the same level?"  This leads to many players demoting themselves to a more casual status but my observation is that most quit after a short while because it is hard to see others scaling the mountain while you sit in base camp watching them ascend.  For most former raiders it is easier to just leave the game entirely and tackle a different game with (hopefully) less time demands.  Some return but the fire is never the same as it was when you first tackled raid content.

In many ways, Wrath of the Lich King could be called the People's WoW.  Gear was pretty easy to acquire as a result of Blizzard's new philosophy to make raiding more open to the masses.  People that had never even come close to end game before were now in pick up groups and beating the 10 and 25 versions of bosses.  Of course they weren't doing the heroic versions of the bosses but that fact didn't matter to most.  The time demands weren't as drastic as needed in a heroic guild but it still required a consistent 10 hours every week if you wanted the best gear.  By the end of the expansion the number of people in tier gear were many orders of magnitude greater than what had happened in Burning Crusade.  It didn't matter that they didn't beat the heroic version of the boss.  In their mind they were an end game raider.

Then Cataclysm hit and all that gear was suddenly worthless.

I remember when that happened to me back in Burning Crusade.  At first I was angry that I was replacing gear I had spent months working to get replaced by the first quest I did in Outland.  My general dissatisfaction continued for a long while until I accepted it and the hunger to be an end game raider returned.  This dissatisfaction is occurring all over Azeroth right now.  Despite general agreement that the content is better than ever many people aren't happy with the game.  Most everyone playing has a level 80 character and has already leveled them or is working towards getting them to 85.  The thing is that well over 50% of the new content is in the 1-60 zones.  Starting a new character is easier than ever and the quest are fun but its a bit hollow.  I think the reason is once you've done the level 80 quests it really doesn't have the same impact to be beating a level 25 gnoll with visions of world domination.  We just beat the Lich King for pete's sake!

I remember back when the game first started a reporter asked one of the lead designers how long they thought the game would last and would they do a sequel at that point.  The response was telling in that he said that they were a bit lucky in that they released their game at the same time that Everquest decided to abandon EQ1 and release EQ2.  That enabled players to rethink their loyalties to Everquest and many of them ended up playing World of Warcraft instead.  He said that Blizzard would never make the same mistake as they'd just let the world evolve.

That is exactly what Blizzard did with Cataclysm but there is a bit of a flaw in their thinking.  People are tired of the game.  People are tired of the world.  People have been to the mountaintop and don't want to slog through the marshes anymore.  They want a new challenge and I am beginning to wonder if that challenge can be found in Azeroth.  Rift was recently released and has well over a million subscribers already making it the most successful game launch after WoW.  Later this year The Old Republic is going to be launched and will easily match those numbers.  As people only have so much money to spend on online entertainment does this mean it is the beginning of the end for WoW?  No one can answer that with certainty.  Blizzard has done better with WoW than anyone ever predicted so it is hard to bet against them.  The thing is the World of Warcraft has always reminded me of an overdemanding girlfriend at times.  You stay for the benefits but after a while you have to ask yourself if the benefits are greater than the cost.  Now there's some new girls in town  so WoW player base is asking themselves, "Do I want old and busted or the new hotness?"

My money is on the new hotness.

If you run BGs as alliance you will eventually see someone rage quit with the parting words of "Alliance sucks!".  As I've played Alliance for pretty much my whole WoW career I usually just ignore the comments and requeue hoping for a better result from the next one.  I've always thought that the complaints had no merit as my win/loss ration is usually close to 50% on all my alliance toons.  As an experiment I decided to level an 80 Horde hunter I had on another realm and it was a real eyeopener.

I've only played about a 100 games at level 85 but I was amazed at the difference.  First there is much less talking than occurs on the Alliance side.  In one of my first Alterac Valley's no one was talking so I put up the comment, "D Galv?".  The only response I got was, "Uh yeah obviously" and then we proceeded to roll over the Alliance.  At this point my overall winning percentage as a horde player is around 60% but many of those losses were during the leveling process where the competition is much tighter.  Given my experience so far I think there are only a few things that affect the winning percentage - BG Design, Racials, and Playerbase.

[b]BG Design[/b] - One of the issues with BGs is the sides aren't set up as mirror images so despite Blizzards efforts some of the instances do have advantages.  The funny thing is advantages change as strategies morph over time.  For instance, the Horde historically have considered the Alterac Valley setup as unfair to them since the Alliance can get to their base much quicker.  This has caused the Horde into the more defensive "D Galv / recap towers" strategy that will win almost every time if a majority of players help.  I know when I play alliance that my only worry is when the Horde stack on Galv.  The downside is can result in a turtle but most Horde will take the 200+ honor in 30-40 minutes rather than a 15 minute loss that results in 50 honor.  No other battleground is as extreme as AV but the water surrounding the Horde base on Twin Peaks and the differences between BET/MT in EotS are other examples.  Do these give one side a huge advantage?  Not enough in my opinion to cause the variations we see in winning percentage.

[b]Racials[/b] - Another possible explanation is racial abilities.  Just looking at the hunter class someone on EJ calculated the following dps differences by race using an orc hunter as the baseline (non-dps abilities in parenthesis):

+66 - Troll w/ Bow (Da Voodoo Shuffle - Snare Resistance)
+0 - Orc: 0 (Hardiness)
-80 - Troll w/o Bow (Da Voodoo Shuffle for snare resistance, Regeneration)
-154 - Worgen (Darkflight for speed burst, Aberration for decreased curse durations)
-163 - Goblins (Rocket Jump for short burst movements)
-187 - Blood Elf (Arcane Torrent - silence and 15 focus every 2 mins, +resistance to magic)
-263 - Draenei: (Shadow Resistance and Gift of the Naaru for a heal)
-180 - Dwarf w/ Gun (Frost Resistance and Stoneform to remove some ailments)
-409 - Night Elf (Shadowmeld, Nature Resistance, Quickness to avoid damage)
-429 - Human (Every Man for Himself to shake off speed reduction and traps)
-435 - Forsaken (WotF to remove certain status effects and Shadow Resistance)
-444 - Dwarf w/o Gun (Frost Resistance and Stoneform to remove some ailments)
-444 - Taurens (War Stomp stun, Nature Resistance, and Endurance for extra health)
 N/A - Gnome - Cannot be a hunter (Thank god!)
Source: http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t112408-[cataclysm]_marksmanship/#2_1_The_Spec

Looking at this list it certainly seems like the horde have a definite advantage and some quick math puts it between 1-2% dps.  The thing is it is hard to put a number on the non-dps abilities.  For instance the racial Every Man for Himself allows humans to take another dps trinket instead of the PVP trinket that is pretty much a requirement for every other class.  That would more than make up for the loss.  Still, it appears the horde do have a distinct advantage in this area.

Playerbase: This is a tricky subject but my experience is that I win 50% of my games as alliance and 60% as horde.  I realize that I haven't played enough games to be statistically relevant but my experience mirrors what many say on the forums.  You'd think that with millions of players playing the game that it would be impossible for one side to consistently have better players than the other side but I think the answer is pretty simple.

Right after release a majority of players rolled the alliance as most people could relate to them better, especially the under 18 group.  When battlegrounds came out the Horde was outnumbered but as a result they had almost instant queues.  This lead to the generally accepted saying, "If you want to PVE - Roll Alliance, If you want to PVP - Roll Horde".  Over time the population disparities lessened but the thought that Horde was the faction to roll if you wanted to PVP stayed intact.  When new players come into the game, if they are interested in PVP, the more serious players will reroll.  This isn't a huge part of the playerbase but its enough to improve the general quality of the Horde teams you get in PVP.

Every time I lose a BG it is almost always because the other team played better.  Sure they might have had better gear but the key is knowing your class.  In my experience the most frustrating BGs are where you see everyone in the group is around ilvl350 but they spend most of the game in the middle of the field and at the end of the game you have double or triple their dps.  These players had the gear they just don't know what to do with it.  The bottom line in my opinion different battleground design or a 1% difference in dps isn't meaningful in the big picture.  It's all about the playerbase and that is the key difference.  Blizzard can't force players into a specific faction but the Horde's current popularity might fix it over time.  That is because so many people have moved to the Horde to PVP they now have queues instead of the alliance.  This may be enough to move more good players back to the alliance but I doubt many really good players move without the racial issue being addressed.  I know for myself, that I am enjoying Horde despite the 5-10 minute wait for a battleground.

TLDR : If you want to PVP, play Horde.

One things I've been doing lately is leveling a hunter on the Icecrown server in a guild called WHU.  This guild is 100% made up on dwarven hunters and are currently capped at level 30.  I mainly leveled using the random battlegrounds and am having a blast.  I have stopped my leveling so that I can start working on the BIS (best in slot) gear so that I can total own the last 2 levels.

I got this information from Wowhead by filtering on marksman hunter (3/3 in Careful Aim so Int items are included) and a maximum level of 30. I've listed below the items I am looking at in order of my preference. (This list excludes the BOA chest, shoulders, ring, trinket, and weapons as I assume they all will be BIS or very close).

Chest
Dusky Leather Armor - Easy choice at level 30 made by leatherworkers.  Until then use Tunic of Westfall from a questline that starts with Bryan Stoutmantle in Westfall.

Head
Skirmisher's Cover - Long level 30 questline that starts with Inspecting the Ruins from Captain Vimes in Theramore.  You will need friends to complete this but this helm is worth it.
Tusken Helm - Drops from Overlord Ramtusk in Razorfen Kraul.
Pathfinder Cap, Tribal Worg Helm, Enduring Cap, Nightsky Cowl, Dobeki Hat, Insignia Cap - Hard to farm but you can find them on AH at a steep price.
Craftsman's Monocle  - Only for engineers.
Shadow Hood, Enchanter's Cowl, Azure Silk Hood - Tailoring BOE's.  Should find one of these relatively cheap on AH and it's better than nothing.

Cloaks
Tigerstrike Mantle  - Best cloak available.  Limited availability.
Parachute Cloak - Great stats with a parachute as well.  Only for engineers.
Watch Master's Cloak - Good cloak if you didn't get one from your level 19 twinking.  Questline starts with Sven's Revenge though be prepared to do a bit of running (be thankful for mounts at level 20).

Shoulders
Dark Leather Shoulders - Made by Leatherworkers.

Wrist
Barbaric Bracers - Made by Leatherworkers.  Save your small lustrous pearls and large fangs.
Drakewing Bands - BOE for additional hit.

Hands
Toughened Leather Gloves - Leatherworking gloves.  Need 2 Spider Silk and 2 Elixir of Defense to create so it might be a bit tough to find the mats.  I wonder if the guild has any flower picking elf-wannabes?
Prospector Gloves - You need to find items just outside the Uldaman instance for a questline that starts with Ironband Wants you.  A bit tough for level 30s so make sure you bring along some friends.

Waist
Highlander's Padded Girdle - PVP belt for 300 Honor at Refugee Pointe in the Arathi Highlands.  It is sold by Samuel Hawke.
Deviate Scale Belt  - Made by Leatherworkers

Legs
Triprunner Dungerees - Reward from The Grand Betrayal in Gnomeregan.  Given by High Tinker Gelbin Mekkatorque.
Dusky Leather Leggins - Leatherworking Legs you can use until you get your Triprunner's.

Feet
Highlander's Mail Greaves - PVP boots for 300 Honor at Refugee Pointe in the Arathi Highlands.  It is sold by Samuel Hawke.

Finger
Ironspine's Eye - Drops from Ironspine in the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard.
Protector's Band - PVP ring at 100 honor.  Sold by Illiyana Moonblaze at the entrance to Warsong Gulch in Ashenvale.
Signet of Argas - Starts with a drop of Diabolical Plans from demons Southeast of Splintertree Post in Ashenvale.
Monkey Ring - Quest in Razorfen Kraul from Willix the Importer
Ring of Precision - Blackfathom deep drop you can find on the Auction house.

Neck
Sentinel's Medallion  - PVP neck at 100 honor.  Sold by Illiyana Moonblaze at the entrance to Warsong Gulch in Ashenvale.
Darkmoon Pendant - As the Darkmoon Faire just ended there might be a few of these on the AH.  While it is possible for a scribe to get mats before the next event I'm guessing this would be quite costly to make.  Not sure the difference between this and the Sentinel's Medallion (+12 AP -2 Agility) is worth the gold/effort.
Amulet of Truesight - A good item if you have the gold since +hit items are hard to find at this level.

Trinket
Rune of Duty - PVP Trinket for 300 Honor at the entrance to Warsong Gulch in Ashenvale.  It is sold by Illiyana Moonblaze.
Talisman of Arathor - PVP Trinket for 300 Honor at Refugee Pointe in the Arathi Highlands.  It is sold by Samuel Hawke.

One Hand Weapon (dual wield @ 20!!!)
Thornspike - Drops from the first boss in Razorfen Kraul (Aggem Thorncurse - 67% drop rate) and allegedly can be solo'ed at 30 if you are an elite skilled hunter. :P
Sentinel's Blade - PVP weapon that costs 400 honor.  Sold by Illiyana Moonblaze at the entrance to Warsong Gulch in Ashenvale.
The Butcher - BOE that drops in the Scarlet Monastery.  Good if you are looking for more Stamina.

Two Hand Weapon
Armor Piercer  - Dropped in Razonfen Kraul from Razorfen Spearhide (50% drop rate) who guard Overlord Ramstuk.
Haunting Blade - 2 Handed Sword that drops from Deathsworn Captain in Shadowfang Keep.

Ranged
Master Hunter's Rifle - Quest reward from the godfather of all hunters (ok now it's his son).  You are going to need lots of friends for this quest line.  Can start it at level 28.
Shrapnel Blaster - Quest line that starts with Sergeant Yohwa.  You will need friends for this.  Starts at level 30.
Glass Shooter - Drop from a Gnomeregan rare mob.
Ironweaver, Chesterfall Musket- BOE drops for those with the money.
Outrunner's Bow -  PVP bow that costs 400 honor.  Sold by Illiyana Moonblaze at the entrance to Warsong Gulch in Ashenvale.

Hopefully I've limited the mistakes and I'm sure I've missed a few items but I think that is a good start to a BIS list. 

My strategy is to level to 28 in the battlegrounds then pay the 10 gold to stop xp so I can farm instances for the other items.  Once I have everything I want I'm turning xp on then heading to the battlegrounds for 2 levels of serious hunter pwnage.

The BIS PVP items cost 1800 honor (waist, feet, neck, ring, one hand, trinkets) so make sure you get that before you hit level 30 as it will be almost impossible to get honor after that point.  I also am considering switching to engineering just for the parachute cloak.