I always felt Vanilla WoW never should have added battlegrounds. They could have kept the rank system, but made it only possible to rank up through World PvP. Solo kills providing vastly more exp.
I mean I know Nostalrius added the battlegrounds to make it more Blizzlike, but rank farming is just as absurd and mindnumbing as it was back in retail.
Apparently, Blizzard added battlegrounds to dissuade players from zerging in Hillsbrad Foothills. Battlegrounds probably hurt the game in the long run.