It isn't at all. Blacklisting SS vs TM is just idiotic seeing it can't even pop for us since we don't have WoD. Blacklisting AV does nothing since it takes the most amount of people to get a random to pop and as soon as the minimum amount of people that are needed in a bg that bg pops. Only reason to blacklist a bg is for, like you mentioned, making sure a bg you don't like doesn't pop. Can also be used for getting AV to pop IE blacklisting WSG and EOTS since these two have the least amount of people needed, however, this will cause long queues.
Other than that don't listen to what people on here say about blacklisting. Blacklisting SS vs TM... lol
You're right on every point except that blacklisting is useless. I guess I need to further explain myself...
If everyone queued only rBG, only WSG would ever be played (the goal of rBG is to make that person enter a BG as fast as possible).
If 5 people only-queue EotS (5/30th of the required population) and 5 people only-queue AV (5/80th of the required population), EotS is going to take the players who queued rBG, because it is closer to being full.
However, if 5 people only-queue EotS (5/30th of the required population) and 20 people only-queue AV (20/80th of the required population), the rBG players are going to be sent to AV because WoW detects that AV is closer to filling (as a percentage) than EotS.
First, let's talk about why this happens. If rBG only calculated the number of spaces left when putting people into a battleground, only WSG (or Twin Peaks at endgame) would ever be filled. Therefore, rBG was implemented as a way of saying "I don't care, I'll play anything" so that the players who /do/ want to queue a specific battleground can eventually get that to happen.
Second, let's talk about why this is problematic for our bracket. Automatically assumed at endgame is that a battleground is going to quickly fill. Looking back at that hypothetical Alterac Valley with 20 people in queue for it, we can tell that it is going to fill fairly quickly at endgame, especially with the influx of rBG players. This is not the case at 20-29. Just because it took 60 minutes to get 40 people in queue for AV does not mean that it will take another 60 minutes to get to 80. People are constantly leaving queue and there simply isn't the population to support an 80 man battleground.
Third, let's talk about why this is harmful for the bracket. Since we've already established that Alterac Valley is an unrealistic goal given the 20-29 population, we can easily see how the allocation of rBG players towards it can be harmful for getting other battlegrounds to pop. Those 5 people in queue for EotS don't know it, but all of the rBG players who might have been put into their EotS queue are being placed in an AV queue - simply because AV is closer (as a percentage) to being filled (I.E., 5/30 players for EotS is 16.66%, whereas 20/80 for AV is 25%). In short, AV is starving other battlegrounds in the bracket while not actually giving out pops to players in queue for it.
Please, please, please do not make blanket statements about something that you're not extremely familiar with. This is a problem that this bracket needs to be made aware of, not made ignorant of.
The best solution is to blacklist AV if you want to get a BG pop - and queue randoms with no blacklist if you want to queue AV.
Skirmishes have been mentioned, but that's fairly silly. They have an extremely low impact on battleground queues since the games are extremely short. The only way skirmishes could impact BG queues would be if people were only queueing for skirms - but then how can we fault them for queuing something they enjoy, instead of growing old in a battleground queue that isn't ever going to pop because of AV (which people are still sadly misinformed about, even on these forums).
