When 5.1 was first announced (very soon after the launch of the expansion,) the previously-mentioned arrival of Horde and Alliance forces in Pandaria was to be expected, but the Brawler's Guild came as something of a surprise.
I actually love the idea of an underground, seedy fight club (which admittedly only really applies to the Alliance version) hidden in the cities. It's something Ardten, my Worgen Warrior, would be totally at home in. Likewise, I love the idea of epic solo content - a place where you can find something cool to do on your own that isn't a daily quest. Much like Pet Battles, it gives the game a certain degree of fun solo content, only in this case, it's really your character doing something badass.
So my initial conception was that you Brawler's Guild would work a bit like Sunsong Ranch - a one-player phase that gave you a different version of the arena than everyone else. You could sign up for a fight and go beat the crap out of something, maybe getting some kind of cosmetic reward (I would love to see Blizzard's art department churn out transmog armor sets. For Brawler's Guild, I'd suggest something like weapons that look improvised and cobbled together from various machine parts and the like.)
However, it appears that the Brawler's Guild is something very different indeed: It is not actually instanced at all. Only one person will be fighting at a time. Blizzard's attempt to keep this from leading to extraordinarily long queue times is to gate the feature by requiring invitations to be bought off the Black Market Auction House.
It's flavorful, yes, but damn if that doesn't mean the feature is basically not going to see use except by a small minority of players.
There will be ten invitations per server, and members of the Brawler's Guild will be able to invite ten additional people. Now, what this means is that either the guild will be dominated by a cartel of super gold-rich players, or it means that the exponential growth of the guild will make the gating absolutely useless and lead to 12-hour-long queue times for anyone who actually wants to get in there and fight.
Honestly, I don't know what Blizzard is thinking here. Yes, having spectators as real players fight their foes sounds cool on paper, but this is a video game. We're here to be the heroes, not the audience. Sure, if my buddy is down in the pit, giving some swamp monster the beating of a lifetime, I might cheer him on, but the way it seems designed is that the vast majority of people will be stuck watching from above (or possibly not even getting in the door, which would be ridiculous.)
The way it stands now, the Brawler's Guild areas, Bisto's Brawlpub (or whatever the gnome's name is) and Brawl'gar Arena will be, at best, a cool RP location for those of you who are into it.
To save this thing, I think they really need to take it back to the drawing board and make it something people can actually enjoy, and not just hear about.
All that said: I LOVE that there is now a reason to hang out in the Deeprun Tram area. Oh, the memories, when I used to save the like 50 copper or whatever it was on flight paths by using the Deeprun Tram. Even low-level characters don't need it anymore, now that you get all your EK and Kalimdor Flight Paths automatically.
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