I feel this was the one thing Vanilla WoW perhaps lacked. I sort of wished they had never added battlegrounds, but having ranked premades fight eachother on a ladder could be cool. I don't think Arena was ever good for WoW. Having 10 or 15 person Ranked BGs might actually work. Having "Competitive" pvp in an mmo doesn't really make sense, so I sort of understand why Vanilla WoW lacked it.
Could Rated Battlegrounds work on Nostalrius? No rewards just ranking/ladder.