The Battle Isles?

Okay, just for the heck of it this morning I went to the Battle Isles, and started playing around. Won a few Zaishen (sp?) Challenges.
I talked to the Priest of Balthasar, and saw the "Unlock Skills" tab, and thought "Cool! A way to get the elite skills without getting anally raped in the South Shiverpeaks, etc!"....
And then I saw the "You will not learn this skill, but it will be available to your new PvP Only characters."

So my question is: For those of us who don't play PvP, do the Battle Isles really serve any purpose at all?

Not really, just to have fun, and play PvP, this is one of the game's best parts, and it's downfall - PvP and PvE aren't really linked at all (except for Faction's specific PvP AvA/Fort/Jade).

Well that seems like a pointless question.....

No. To those that don't PvP much, the islands where one goes to partake of PvP don't have much purpose.

yeesh

and this belongs in the Q&A section, too many people posting in wrong sections lately; stab stab*

Actually, there is a benefit to unlocking skills with Balthazar's faction. If you want a non-elite skill that isn't available from a trainer until much later in the game, you can use faction to unlock it, then you will be able to purchase it from any skill trainer. However, I'm not entirely sure how you will get the 1k Balthazar faction required if you don't PvP.

They're link through HA. You can't enter FoW or UW without favor. Also none of the statues work if we dont have favors. Correct me if im wrong on that one.

youre right valiance.

I HATE how balthazars faction doesnt help people without PvP characters at ALL. i have 5 lvl 20s,(used to be 6 but i deleted one :| )and i PvP some(granted its not a lot) and ive earned like 100000 balth faction(again granted its not a lot) and ive basically used it to unlock absolutely useless skills and runes. if they created something PvE like that we could buy with balth faction, i might actually PvP some. THIS is the downfall of having PvP and PvE have almsot no relation