^ The game died when they got rid of the old PVP system and made it so any noob could get Marshal/Grandmarshal gear.
I worked my ass off and only made it to rank 12. Rank 13 was doable but my guild was progressing through AQ40 and I got gear that made rank 13/14 pointless. But without pvp like that the game wasn't the same at all. They basically removed dueling and the point system/arena system killed battle grounds completely (not to mention the BC battle ground was a fucking joke). WSG was where it was at.
Being in the top guild on the server (or one of the top guilds) and having 2-4 WSG groups going at a time and fighting top tier Horde guilds every few minutes in 10v10 matches in WSG was the best part of WoW. There were so many strategies, counters, and so many close matches back and forth that it really was the best of times. Everyday we'd run WSG for hours and then raid time would hit and we'd go hit an instance for 3 hours or so and go back to WSG.. ahh the memories.