As a eagerly waiting euro, I went to check US forums to know how HS implementation went.

Well you can say "mess". Everyone wants to raid, kill, get a flashy "honnorable kill" on his/her screen.
My feeling is that it will cool down with time, ganking and zerging won't give as much as raiding high level instances (especially not in the same time frame), but for now it seems to be the chaos of discovering.

Any insider's comments on this 1.4 patch? :)

This recent patch sounded great at the start. You cannot pass any horde now without being attacked on site. I was in the WorldDefense channel and just about every zone i knew of was under attack and dozens more that i have never even herd of. Tarren Mill on my server got pwned. Gagdetzan is being flooded with horde with the occational "rooftop" camper :( . I do this that the pvp will even out and will make it very fun, but at the moment everyone wants to get their rank up to commander for that 90 gold epic mount :) or that new equipment. The only huge ass complain that i have is the damn lag. I usually run around 70-120 latency but it has went up to 2-5k latency :confused: which is not playable when it takes me over 30 seconds to cast my insta cast spells. I guess the horde pwned the arena last night, but that pirate did not spawn and so the horde got together about 60+ and camped STv all night. So far i do not like this patch but i will if they fix the lag :mad:

Skullcrusher
(PVP)

I play on Skullcrusher as well. My character is Wysteria of Iron Council.

The ganking was nuts last night. As soon as I landed on the griff in Astranaar, I was killed. Released, ran back, starting running, killed again. =/ I think the honor system is a great idea if you could only get points for killing pc's within your level range. Level 60s camping newbie zones is stupid. :(

Your first mistake was playing WoW on a patch day. ;)

Blizzard's doing a pretty good job in the "which company can fuck up the most patches" department, although Sony isn't too far behind.

Hopefully they get the latency problems fixed quickly and the ganking dies down to something close to it's previous levels once the newness of the Honor system wears off.

Wait a second, thats 2 people from the Alliance... complaining about the Horde? :/

Afk, getting my tinfoil hat, the apocalypse is nigh.

Last night there was like 100 alliance at TM/Org/Barrens simultaneously, it was just retarded. :(:(

I'm still waiting for my moonfire to finish casting from last night :(

The mobs of alliance were so big, and the lag so great that, I couldn't even tell I was in the middle of them because they hadn't registered on screen yet. When the lag caught up I was dead.

Alliance cant do shit on Elune unless they have 10x the people :(

Honestly, I think its awesome. I've collected about 500 kills so far (solo, none of that pansy raid I-get-credit-if-a-mage-next-to-me-uses-an-AE crap) ... and honestly if you can solo or duo thats FAR better when it comes to points (was getting about 60 contribution points / kill opposed to like 2 or 3/kill in a raid setting) and you can do this outside of TM ... just sneaking around sniping people.

The things to realize is:
You kill in a raid, you get contribution points divided by 40.
You kill in a group, you get contribution points divided by 5.
You kill someone who just landed, or just zoned: you don't get shit.
You kill someone who just rezzed: you don't get shit.
You kill someone who is grey: you don't get shit.
Green is hardly noticeable, even cons and up are where the real contribution points are and you can kill 20 greens and not get as much as a person who killed 1 even con ... its just not worth wasting time and effort on people lower level than you.

I think the concept of pvp is great, I love the alliance versus the horde, and I think its hysterical when they raid zones. BUT, I think raiding a newbie zone with a raid of level 60s is gei. I just wish that they made it impossible to attack someone of such lower level without them attacking you first or something.

The person who said they were still waiting for their moonfire to cast from last night cracked me up! :)

**edit to add**
While its great you don't get anything for those acts, you also don't get penalized for it. I think if they added in a penalty, that would help a lot!

Problem with penalties for "greykill" is possible abuse and difficulties.
No more AE in towns, no more "lowbie" help, and more than I can think of.

Carrot instead of stick. When there is no point in bashing lowbies, why do it?

Gonna have to find those that do it and ask them :).

Though I know a lot of folks now say they do it because it was done to them. =/

How about making lowbies invulnerable to highlevel attacks until they perform some kind of action themselves?

Means that I couldn't save your cow ass if you were under attack, imagine that! :p

The things to realize is:
You kill in a raid, you get contribution points divided by 40.
You kill in a group, you get contribution points divided by 5.
You kill someone who just landed, or just zoned: you don't get shit.
You kill someone who just rezzed: you don't get shit.
You kill someone who is grey: you don't get shit.
Green is hardly noticeable, even cons and up are where the real contribution points are and you can
kill 20 greens and not get as much as a person who killed 1 even con ... its just not worth wasting
time and effort on people lower level than you.



Thank you kelraz. You are one of the first to acually understand that you dont gain rank from kills, it's from points. I know some people that have over 100 kills just from one raid..and under 10 points. I have just 9 Hk's and 4 Dk's and have over 350 atm solo. I honoestly think raids for points are pointless unless you raid a high ranking NPC, but still that 40 ways. Plus anything more than one raid group is just lame. All it does is lag the servers up and ya cant do anything. The horde were trying to kill that little king/prince but no one could directly attack the horde because there was so much lag. So everyone jsut sat in the center area where you start that mini Onyxia quest and just Ae'ed for about half an hour until they all died.
On another fact has anyone acually looked at the equipment that you can get from the ranks? From what i saw on the internet and what i saw from going to stormwind....it does not seem worth the time. I think that most of the Valor/Lightforge/Dreadmist etc etc stuff is jsut as good if nto better. I did notice on the Rogue stuff there was no agility at all. And when ya ahve the full set it gives ya +15 sta if i remember. The weapons are pretty good...49 dps on a 1h plus the crit chance. but thsi grandmarshel status seems hard to get and by the time you get it. People will be pwning zones like MC and will be easy to get something with better stats and dps.
Over all the Honor System is a great idea. I just think the rewards need to be more worth the time( from what i saw) and the lag...needs to stop or people need to get through their head that 200 person raids are not the way to get points fast. Good ol fashion killing what ya see when soloing works fine and gets you points very fast.
Skullcrusher
<PVP>

That very well may be the problem, people are misunderstanding the system.

How about making lowbies invulnerable to highlevel attacks until they perform some kind of action themselves?
yea that would be a good idea i guess, but that ruins the purpose of a PVP server=/ yea it sucks balls to get ganked at low lvl but thats the risks ya take on a pvp server. I do think that within the next week that being will gethow the honor system works and the raids will calm down. I dont think raiding goldshire does any good at all. No points plus possible DK from killing a civilian marked NPC.
One thing that i do think that sucks is when a Civilian NPC attacks you, which is automaticly a DK.

I just think the rewards need to be more worth the time
I don't think so. I remember reading something from official webpage where they were stating that they wanted PvP to bring "rewards" that makes you different on the battleground, but that aren't better than achieving "hard" instances or high levels bosses.
And I agree with this vision, PvP should be the cherry on top of the cake, something that entertains you, not a mustdo feature that not everybody can achieve.

When are the "ranks" released, then?

Do they wait a week and then at the end of the first week take the top .01% of the point getters (based on contribution points, not kills, as Kelraz said) and make them the top rank, make the next 1% the rank below that, and continue on down the line?

(Not using exact figures, as I have no clue what the real percentages are)

Or is there a minimum point total you need to achieve before you can be entered into a new rank tier?

This sounds like "status points" in EQ2. What do you do with said "points"?

They're not really like status points. As I understand things, when you make an "honorable kill" in PvP, you get some points. At the end of each week, all the points for everyone on a team (Horde or Alliance, of course) are tallied up, some seekret goblin equations are applied to them, and rankings are assigned.

The ranking your character gets "unlocks" a certain group of PvP gear on a special PvP merchant. You can then purchase these items with normal ingame currency.

The fact that the rankings are retallied every week means that your ranking can go up or down, especially if you take a few days off from PvP. Since the PvP gear has a ranking requirement, if your rank drops, you will no longer be able to equip that rank's gear until you regain the rank.

The ranking your character gets "unlocks" a certain group of PvP gear on a special PvP merchant. You can then purchase these items with normal ingame currency.


This sounds like doing writs for a faction or levelling your guild from status points and unlocking rewards. It's not exactly like SPs but it's similar in concept :)

Except that in a stable EQ2 guild, you'd never have to worry about losing your guild level, and right now, you never really have to worry about losing the faction-specific gear (unless you're really stupid.) Another difference is that, theoretically, every guild in EQ2 could eventually reach level 30 and maximum faction with the various factions in their city.

It sounds like the WoW Honor rankings will have only a limited number of people allowed at a given rank, with very few people in the top rankings, and more and more people in each successive lower rank. If you slack off in PvPing for a few days or so, the other people on your side are going to catch up to you and could possibly push you down to a lower ranking.

Basically like Buad said in WoW's system you cant just attain the rank for the gear and sit on your ass and keep the rewards, you have to keep fighting. Not to mention you are actually testing your skill by going up against human opponents.

I must admit this does sound appealing. :)

It may be.... if you can survive the gankings to get to a high enough level to participate effectively in it.

Basically, say I have 1000 points placing me 250/1000 Alliance Members (numbers all made up). There are 14 pvp levels. To become Grand Marshal / High Warlord you need to be in the top 1% (or the top 10 people in my lil scenerio). To get Field Marshal you need to be in the top 3%. Marshals are the top 6%. Privates are the top 99.9%. Something like that. At the end of the week, you can lose your spot if you suck it up and everyone else is awesome.

The rewards, for the most part, are very pvp aimed. The hunter set for example has an lower recast time on our stun/snare. This is great for chasing someone down. Priests get an increased fear. They have high base stats and low spirit, unlike PvE gear, because in PVP there isn't any time to regen you need all or nothing. Its fairly intriguing. However, either option is viable ... you can pvp, you can pve, you can do a little of both ... and still advance your character.

In the future they'll add battlegrounds, basically pitting 100 horde vs 100 alliance with their own bases with the objective of razing the oppositions base: a la WC3. There you'll get extra "points" for completing that task of razing the base in addition to kills.

So you have to buy the gear with currency, but may not be able to use it if your rank slips? On one hand that's really mean, you have already paid for it you should be able to use it all the time, but on the other hand it's sort of neat that they make you accountable for having it. I am kinda split on this!

Buad is right, it does sound good if you manage to get to a level high enough to participate. :) I am only 26 right now and I haven't had too many problems (except that first night raids in the newbie zones) but I hear the mid 30's on is pretty brutal in the contested areas.

I'm pretty sure the gear you buy with PvP points is relatively cheap to offset the possibility of not being able to use it.

I'm pretty sure the gear you buy with PvP points is relatively cheap to offset the possibility of not being able to use it. The equip that ya get from the pvp merchants are dirt cheap, but yea ya have to factor in the time ya spend to get it and upkeep your status.


50 Paladin of Skullcrusher :eek:

Stranglethrone Vale wasn't that bad last night. You could actually make use of the Alliance quest NPCs in the expedition camp last night. Apparently Booty Bay was a mess, though ;).

My group stayed away from the main roads and stayed relatively gank-free.

I do feel sorry for the AFK Horde rogue we ganked at the expeditionary camp, though (well, only a little) -- standard procedure on approaching the camp is to launch a flare over it to reveal any hidden rogues. Most of the time last night, no one was revealed, but one of the last times we went back to finish some mastery quests, I uncovered that poor rogue. They were apparently AFK because they didn't fight back at all and their corpse stuck around afterwards.

Oh, and then there was that moron druid or shaman that we chased almost all the way into Duskwood. He would have gotten away if he hadn't ran into the ravine that's there on the border between STV and Duskwood. That ravine is actually a decent place to hide from a non-tracking class, but the problem with it is that it only has one way out, and by the time the hordling got to the exit, me and my group were waiting for them :).

Today I had the coolest set of kills ever. There was a raid getting set up for UBRS and they were all dicking around pvping each other. I snuck up, aimed shotted one, threw a thorium gernade, multishotted, and used my bomb pet to finish them off. Took out 8 horde in 20 seconds.

I think the worst story though I was in Southshore and got attacked by a druid. I started sapping their mana they started to wear me down ... I kited them a bit with my snares and concussions. We each potioned, I bandaged once and used my gem studded belt heal once. Finally a paladin snuck up behind the druid and finished it off me having only a few hitpoints to spare. I was so excited me and the paladin started /cheer-ing and /moon-ing and whatever totally oblivious that the fact that the Alliance was starting to lose and was falling back to Southshore and totally passed me and the celebrating Paladin by. We were busy mooning and cheering surrounded by at least 20 horde, all looking at us funny and ultimately destroying us.

Update that was posted (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=2761331&p=1&tmp=1#post2761331) a few days ago about the honor system and upcoming changes:

As promised, we met with Lead Designer Kalgan and presented him with the following questions. Please sit back, relax and take a moment to review the information he has provided. As always, your constructive feedback is appreciated. Enjoy!

Epic Battles = Epic Lag?

Since the Honor System encourages players to take part in player vs. player combat, large scale battles are forming in areas such as Hillsbrad and the Barrens. This has been causing extreme latency, which is frustrating for both those participating and those that aren't. Do you see this as a problem, and are there plans in motion to address this issue?

The current lag being generated by the large PvP battles is unfortunate. Although optimizations are being made to improve the play experience in high-density battles, we suspect that much of the current behavior will be very short lived. The Honor system has sparked great interest, and seeing that areas such as Hillsbrad and the Barrens were already hotspots for player vs. player combat it isn't surprising that players rush to either locations in order to check out the new system.

We feel the largest contributing factor in the reduction to the latency in these hotspots is the fact that Battlegrounds will be ready for release next patch! Yes, that's right, I said next patch, and yes, I said Battlegrounds...plural! The implementation of Battlegrounds will draw players away from towns and into instanced environments designed for either small-scale or epic battles between evenly matched teams (we’ll be sure to get you more information soon about how the instancing works). With many players taking their PvP action into battlegrounds (due to both the fun-factor and the contribution points for completing objectives), we expect that combat in the outdoor world will be of a much more manageable size.

Battlegrounds plural?! What does Kalgan mean?!! Hmm...

Uh, Kalgan?

...

How Do I Quest at a Grave Yard?

The new Honor system seems engaging, but many times I would prefer to simply quest. How am I supposed to enjoy the other aspects of the game and avoid player vs. player combat when the majority of the population is hunting other players in an attempt to gain honor?

We're fairly certain that once Battlegrounds are released, players will notice that the player vs. player combat taking place in contested zones will be substantially reduced. As described earlier, players will generally find it advantageous to their honor score to fight in battlegrounds. I would also like to make mention that players on a PvP realm should always feel some sense of danger when questing in a contested zone, as such is part of what makes this realm type fun and exciting, assuming it is at a reasonable amount. Once players understand how the Honor System works and how they should best be utilizing their time in order to gain its rewards, we expect that you will not be in any more danger than you were before the addition of the Honor System (possibly less).

Orcs vs. Human?

Since the Horde vs. Alliance ratio on certain realms is not perfectly balanced, don't you think that the faction with larger numbers will be at a significant advantage?

Despite a very common misconception, Horde and Alliance numbers are pretty well balanced on PvP realms. Since most players will be building up their Honor ranking by fighting in a Battleground environment, where sides are evenly matched, realm imbalance shouldn't factor in to either faction's ability to progress in the Honor system.
That being said we are investigating other solutions in the short to mid term to help the Horde vs. Alliance imbalance. Yet nothing we can discuss at this time.

Why Won't You Punish Us?

You've stated on many occasions that you will analyze the Honor system and only add a system of dishonor if player actions necessitate such. While this is a noble cause, it seems as if having no system of checks and balances in place that punishes players for "unfair" tactics will only result in frequent and unwanted trips to the local graveyard. Now that you've seen the system working on the test realm, have your thoughts on this changed?

We're taking our first step towards a dishonor system upon the release of the next patch. Trivial civilian NPCs such as quest givers and vendors will now give dishonor points to players that prey upon them. We haven't decided upon a specific penalty but it will be enough that the majority of players will not wish to engage in combat with those NPCs. This combined with the fact that upon the release of Battlegrounds most players will not be targeting towns or unsuspecting adventurers nearly as often, should reduce the need to add too much more in the way of a penalty, or dishonor.

With that being said, I would like to reiterate that just as we added this small addition of dishonor as result of seeing the system in action, we will continue to analyze the Honor system and make improvements until we're satisfied with the way it’s working.

Equal Opportunity Classes?

Does each class have an equal opportunity to advance in the Honor system? It seems that the Mage has a greater advantage over the Warrior due to their area effect spells and their ability to dish out a ton of damage in a short space of time.

The initial data has not indicated that any one class has dramatic advantages over another. I believe this train of thought to be spawned from the confusion surrounding how players rise in rank. Keep in mind, an Honorable Kill does not determine the rate at which you progress under this system, only that the kill itself was considered to be fair, and that you received contribution points for that kill. A players total contribution points, which takes into account many factors to determine the value of a kill (as described in other previews and FAQs), is the more relevant factor in determining a character’s advancement in rank at the end of the week.

Warriors for example, are an extremely durable class that are capable of doing good damage and (depending on the scenario) often have a greater survivability rate than cloth classes. The data we’ve seen thus far indicates that the most important factor lies in how well a player uses the advantages of their class. As a side note, one of the things we're adding in the next patch along with Battlegrounds is a new combat log message which will appear after each kill informing you of your estimated contribution points for a kill when it happens. This number will be slightly crude, as it doesn't factor in players killed under the diminishing return rule but it will provide players with a better understanding of how the system works and how valuable a given kill is.

If you wish to read the Honor System Q&A with Kalgan which was posted on the 31rst of March, please follow the link below.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=2309447&p=1&tmp=1#post2309447

As for my experiences, one thing I've learned is that demonology warlocks are one of the best pvp classes out there. Mix that with the fact that I'm on a pve server so the overall skill level is a bit lower, and I can do 2 or occassionally 3 lvl 60's at the same time depending on class, and I'm 55. :)

I leave the pvp flag on a lot of the time, and my level usually leads to them underestimating me. I can't count the amount of times some hunter or rogue tried to gank me in the middle of a fight, and I kill them without losing half hp or mana. The amount of people that have little skill but assume level is all thats needed is amazing.

When trying to get points, I usually do a single group, much better points that way. I'm very glad to hear the battlegrounds are coming in the next patch.

*grumble* They should give 30 minutes res sickness to anyone that ganks someone that's grey to them.

That's 30 minutes PER grey death.

Better yet, 30 minutes per level of difference per grey death. :devil

Then tell the retarded gray con players to stop trying to attack the level 60s, personally i dont want to kill grays, but when theres 2 or 3 (or more)of them running at me and attacking, I'm not going to sit there and run because they are gray.

When dishonor comes in its going to be bullshit that you wont be able to defend yourself against grays without consequences, since they seem to love making their way into big crowds and attacking whoever they damn well please.

I see what Sam is saying and I have to agree. Last night we are pvping and I'm battling a druid so I kill him then some 42 warrior charges me. Should I have gotten dishonor because I'm 60 and killed a gray when he was the one being the aggressor. Its something they will have to figure out to make a fair system.

The problem is not the morons that are attacking people that are too high (although the only fair way to have dishonor would be to take into account who the aggressor was), it's the lame ass level 60s that are going around griefing grays.

Those lame ass 60s will get theirs in due time. They'll realize they gained nothing from it and have already fallen behind the curve. Supposedly, and I'd rather imagine this is true from playing my alts plus my lower level guildmates, ganking has dropped on most servers.

I'm not a ganker most of the time... if they're grey and not trying to kill me, or killing guards, then I leave them be.

Though last night, I was running through 1KN and saw a 41 pally and 39 warlock killing guards at Freewind outpost. I sat and let them kill a guard, and then /shoo'd them away... They went up the lift and killed another guard. At this point I realize they need to die for killing my fellow cows. I flag and sit and wait for them to attack me. The warlock fears me into the guards and about 5 come running after them both.

They start to fight the guards but it's obvious they're going to lose. (I'm not attacking at this point, as the guards are doing a good enough job) The pally DA's and they turn and wait for the lift to come back up so they can escape...

The lift gets up to the top just as the pally's DA fades. I war stomp and the lift goes back down before they can get back on it. They were trapped out on the ledge and suffered two nice guard deaths.

I tend to leave grays alone also, but once in awhile you get that angry twitch where you remember a gray causing you to die in some mass pvp fight, and then there's gray splotchies all over.

Actually, not even have I stopped getting ganked lately for some reason, but I've even started to recieve help from highlvl alliance players from time to time.. strange experience imo.:eek:

How'd you all do? 368 kills, 12875 points, standing: 68

CPs: 6022
Standing: 86
Rank: 3 (Sergeant)

Not bad for a level 53 considering we're heavily out numbered most of the time.

Its really amazing actually looking at the differences there. You got half my CPs but still placed remarkably close to me ... the alliance must really be zergtaffic on your server. Its not exactly even on mine but its noticeable that there are more alliance people raiding say ... southshore ... than horde defending.

Wonder what the hell they will (or can) do about the horde / alliance imbalances.

*edit* Elune is PvE too, right? Guess that'd change the values a lot too. Burning Blade is very much PvP.

The imbalance doesn't matter that much really, since it's percentage based; per faction.

The Alliance on Elune outnumbers us like 5:1. And they are horribly zergific. =(

Last night there was a pretty even battle at XR. I still don't understand why the alliance are allowed to use that graveyard, but they still got their asses handed to them.

If you actually go to Tarren Mill, or XR when there's an insane zerg, usually it's best to just scout around the main group, and pick off solo people.

CPs: 6022
Standing: 86
Rank: 3 (Sergeant)

Not bad for a level 53 considering we're heavily out numbered most of the time.People must not have alot of kills on your server or there is not alot of people on the server. Some people have over 30k points any they not even top 100


O nm i didnt know you were on a PVE server=/

http://www.tit-guild.org/index.php?module=news&id=775

Some example of when it's even on Elune. Generally it's that size of an Alliance force +/- 15 people, and a lot less Horde. I am still in favor of the Alliance having to use the Ratchet GY instead of the XR one.