World of Warcraft Honor System Live

Available now from the World of Warcraft Patch servers, the Honor System has been put into production. The Patch Notes are available on the official site and besides the Honor System includes new art, bug fixes, and new live events in Kalimdor and the Gurubashi Arena. There will also be, starting in May, a "Children's Week" celebrated in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. "It is a time to give back to the innocents of war: the orphans!"

Comments

ok, one question comes to mind here....

[Malor]

How can you be an orphan when your parents respawn every 10 minutes?

live?

[JVert]

It is live when I can login and download it.

It is not very live at the moment.

Re:live?

[cypher073]

Download went fine at least. But, it'll be live when I can log in, get booted, sit through a week-long extended downtime, fight with the authentication server, and finally get credited 24-hours of gameplay and full rest state. That might be sometime next week.

Take that Blizzard...

[softspokenrevolution]

Well, at least they can't blame this lag on naked night elves dancing in front of the Auction House. Take that patch notes and website server.

Bad day..

[Anonymous Coward]

To be on a pvp server!
My poor level 32 mage won't know what hit him.. Nor will the level ~30s that run into him.

Screenshots and info!

[JorenDahn]

PvP Honor ranks and corresponding rewards listed here.

Official images of PvP armor sets Wow, sexy.
Official images of the new mounts
Official listing of PvP weapons No pics though. :(

It Will Be Interesting...

[Chi Hsuan Men]

...to see how this will affect Horde / Alliance relations.

I play on Sargeras, which is a PvP server. Considering that it is a PvP server, there are a lot of clashes between the Horde and Alliance. Raids are constantly led against Horde and Alliance towns alike and in contested areas, "ganking" is a popular activity.

Though the interesting thing to note is when Alliance and Horde play nice. In certain areas, Horde and Alliance co-exist (to a reasonable degree) as they are BOTH attempting to complete quests.

For example, I was in Felwood last night working on a quest and a couple of Horde were right next to me killing MOBs and we pretty much go into a rhythm were I would kill one, then they would kill one, so on and so forth. At the end, we completed our objective (fill the vial with corrupted water), saluted each other, and went on our merry way.

In this example, we played nice with each, because it was mutually beneficial for us to do so, after all, we both needed to complete the quest... ...however, with the new patch, it will be just as beneficial, if not MORE for us to simply kill each other, as that will give us honor points which will eventually translate in p|-|47 l00t.

While the honor system MIGHT curb the rampant "problem" that is ganking (I don't see it as a problem, it's a pvp server, I deal with it) I think it will definitely escalate the desire for Horde and Alliance to kill each other, and make it more difficult to complete quests in contested areas.

Re:It Will Be Interesting...

[OglinTatas]

For example, I was in Felwood last night working on a quest and a couple of Horde were right next to me killing MOBs and we pretty much go into a rhythm were I would kill one, then they would kill one, so on and so forth. At the end, we completed our objective (fill the vial with corrupted water), saluted each other, and went on our merry way.

I play on a carebear server, and that is the way it is supposed to work (but maybe with rude gestures sometimes instead of just salutes). I imagine on a PvP server, if the honor system discourages that behavior, then it will have worked as intended. I wonder if it will significantly increase PvP on the carebear servers too? I hope so. I also applaud the PvP toggle, so that you can turn it on and leave it on, if you were in a PvP mood. I hope it still has the 5 minute cooldown before you can turn it off after combat, though.

Re:It Will Be Interesting...

[linzeal]

I play on the Ner'Zul server and as the rogue class officer for the 3rd largest guild on the server I have been anticipating with dread this move to an Honor System for months. PVP servers now will have an even steeper leveling curve that was not in place when the game went live. Places like Tarren Mills and Southshore will be bloodbaths during primetime and probably well into off time. Many people in my guild are considering dropping the PVE element of the game altogethter to have ganking parties 40 people strong that will kill en masse at the higher level neutral and enemy towns.

The game may change too radically for some and this might force some of the more reticent players on PVP servers to consider how much griefing they will allow in their online experience. When you are paying upwards of 50 bucks for the game and 15 bucks a month for the game the casual player who plays an hour or two a night is not going to be too pleased to not be able to meaningfully interact with the virtual world as he has done for the past 6 months there might be the addition of dishonor points for player kills. Which is what even a lot of us more hardcore folk would consider the minimal insurance that we will not be /spit on , ganked and griefed for the entierity of our online time.

Re:It Will Be Interesting...

[Achoi77]

I too play on a pvp server (Mannoroth), and have tested out the honor system on the test server. To be truthful, the 'phat lewtz' that are given thru pvp awards will be *very* difficult to get, as it is percentage based. The top rank (14) will only be awarded to .1% of all the total population, which translates to 1 out of every 1000. For a server with 30,000, that means only 30. For a smaller server with 10,000, only 10(!!!) will be able to acheive rank 14 and be awarded the big gear.

With such a difficulty ranking, it's better off if you and your guildmates farmed out MC or something.

That said, it will be a rough time for the first few weeks, since people will not realize that the honor system only kicks into high gear for endgame people. What I DO suspect is that the rampant lowbie ganking will ebb quite a bit to acceptable levels, Tarren Mill not withstanding, and that we will see a LOT more raids on the capital cities. (which should be fun!)

Re:It Will Be Interesting...

[meta-monkey]

I don't think it'll be much of a problem for people at lower levels. At level 60, I don't get honor points from ganking level 30s. The honor sytem lewt is only usable by high-level players, and is geared towards them. So there won't be roaming bands of level 40s hunting for level 35s in STV...they're still going to be leveling to get to 60 where the honor system really kicks in.

That said, people level 50-59 are absolutely screwed. They're going to be hunted down mercilessly. A level 50 player is still green (honorable kill worthy) to a level 60, so that guy is gonna get ganked. Then the ganker is going to call in all his guild mates, and they'll camp him and take turns killing him so they each get an honor kill until the guy gives up and logs. Essentially, once you hit 50 you better either hide in an instance or only go outside with a full raid group until you're 60.

Re:It Will Be Interesting...

[meta-monkey]

I don't think there's anything like that...there are diminishing returns for the same player killing the same player over and over again, but not guild. That doesn't matter if you're in a group or not...the first time you'll get 100% of the honor points you would get, based on the group bonuses, and the next time you'll get fewer, and fewer, until probably after you've killed the same guy 4-5 times you won't get any points for killing him at all for a day or so. I don't think guilds have anything to do with it. If that were the case, large guilds woud be a serious disadvantage, and you'd be better off just disbanding your in-game guild but still teaming up over Ventrillo or something.

Re:It Will Be Interesting...

[Minna Kirai]

Though the interesting thing to note is when Alliance and Horde play nice. In certain areas, Horde and Alliance co-exist (to a reasonable degree) as they are BOTH attempting to complete quests.

It's a little interesting to note that the enmity between Horde & Alliance is maintained by what is essentially NPC bigotry. In towns with NPC guards, players of the other factions will automatically be attacked. Fighting back will flag them for PVP, attracting the nearby PCs to come pound on them.

But in the wilderness, there are no NPC faction-members to start fights. And since the two sides aren't warring by default in that situation, they tend to cooperate like you described.

with the new patch, it will be just as beneficial, if not MORE for us to simply kill each other,

The game is called "Warcraft" after all- you're supposed to be at war, and that means attacking on sight. From the perspective of authors trying to make a game world fulfill their longstanding preconceptions, that effect will be exactly what they want.

make it more difficult to complete quests in contested areas.

Hey, if Honor points will be giving better l00t anyhow, why bother questing? The quest location becomes like a meeting-place for Honor battles, with the quest reward a consolation prize for when you're standing around there and don't meet an enemy party.

Not looking forward to this...

[meta-monkey]

I can't say I'm looking forward to this patch. I chose a PvP server to PvP...I still love that. I just don't like the way the rewards are implemented.

I have a wife and a job, and don't have as much time to play as the college students and bums who make up most of my guild. With the PvE stuff, I might not always have my stuff first, but I'd get it eventually. I got to 60 about a month after my friends. They had time to run three instances a day for their class sets. I could only run maybe one before bed, but that was fine. I didn't get my stuff first, but I got it eventually. Now we're working through Molten Core and have killed Onyxia several times, and I've got pieces of my epic class sets. I'll get the rest, eventually, too.

Now with the PvP system, you get your rank determined by the percentage of server-wide kills you got that week. Only a certain percentage of players per server will be able to get the higher PvP ranks. It doesn't matter if I'm the greatest PvP'er who ever lived, I will never get the epic PvP sets, simply because there's no way I can get more kills in the 1-2 hours a night I have to play than the people who have 8 hours a day to play. With the PvE stuff, I wouldn't be there FIRST, but I'd be there EVENTUALLY. With the PvP system, I'll never get there, and will only be somewhere in the middle of the pack, forever. Eh.

Re:Not looking forward to this...

[Daikiki]

You do have a point, of course, but a game like this needs to cater to many types of people. WoW has always been very friendly to the more casual players; much of the content can be taken on solo, and the rest state bonus even gives casual players a bit of a leg up by giving players who aren't online as frequently as some an experience bonus for their kills. As you've said, even as a casual player, you will be able to take on all of the challenges the game has to offer and acquire all of the uber-loot eventually.

Having said that, I think it's perfectly valid to reward the hardcore players for their efforts as well. The gear and perks you can acquire in the PVP honor system are pretty cool, granted, but they're hardly essential to your continued enjoyment of the game. There are people out there who play WoW for 40 hours a week or more, and I think it's fully justified to reward people who put a lot of time and effort into the game with some unique items, benefits, and perks. Simply letting them get the stuff everybody else will eventually get as well, only faster, just won't hold a player's attention. Bear in mind that it doesn't actually take that long to reach the level cap at 60, especially if you're a dedicated player. Until now there hasn't been much of a mechanism to keep players engrossed once they've hit the cap. I think the new honor system should fit the bill nicely without any serious drawbacks to more casual players like us.

Re:Not looking forward to this...

[xutopia]

I think there are ways to reward people who play more with perks that don't advantage them over people who play less. Take these ideas for example:

• even faster mount (10%)
• faster casts for mount and heartstones
• faster cooldown on Heartstone
• a second heartstone
• unlimited free gryphon rides
• portals instead of boats

These are just ideas and I'm sure smarter people than myself can think of better ideas. They are already advantaged by more drops because they get more chances at them but do they have to have uber gear on top of the already excellent stuff they get?

Part of the reason why WoW was so great is because of the XP bar system. It's made so that even players who play very little still can catch up relatively easily to their friends to quest together. If 4 of my friends have awesome gear and I lag behind in terms of buffing items they'll find it sucks to group with me and I don't want that.

Honor with no Dishonor

[agrounds]

The problem is that they have implemented an Honor system, that rewards players for continual ganking, without the supplementary Dishonor system to discourage griefing.

--There are rich rewards to be had for slaughtering any and all opponents of roughly the same level.
--There are no penalties for slaughtering any and all oppenents of lower levels.

While I realize that there was no discouragment before to stop this.. my priest still bears the scars of Stranglethorn Vale, what many fear this will lead to is roaming armadas of factions farming Honor points by killing everything in sight. I see this being the most likely outcome.

The server populations had already become overrun with NightElf and Undead stunlock rogues. There are more rogues than any other single class, as they are vastly overpowered for levelling and moreover singularly designed for wholesale murder (I used to play a rogue myself, before I retired him out of disgust for the easy win). Now, instead of farming instances and working toward saving money for great items, they can simply take the low road and farm players trying to simply quest and level a little.

Blizzard has done a major disservice to the player community, and I feel the ramifications of this will resound within the userbase as characters are dropped in favor of more rogues. They have already nerfed most of the classes into oblivion and back, this just justifies my belief that Blizzard developers do not play on live PvP servers and see what we see. I suspect that my time will be spent on a PvE server very soon.

Before you fire off a reply with a 'STFU n00b' or 'Cry some more' consider carefully how difficult it will be to run Molten Core, Maraudon, Dire Maul, Stratholm, and the like when you have effectively discouraged most other classes from levelling other than rogues.

Re:Honor with no Dishonor

[meta-monkey]

Well, keep in mind that you won't get honor points from killing players who are "gray" to you. That is, players who are much lower level. So if players are intent on farming people for honor points, they need to be killing people level 50-60. Camping level 30s won't do them any good, and they'll just be wasting their time when they could be earning honor points. The PvP rewards are only usable by level 58-60s anyway. I don't think this will have much impact on people pre-50.

That said, level 50 people are SCREWED! They are going to get farmed until they quit the game! They're green to level 60s, so they're honorable kill worthy.

Re:Honor with no Dishonor

[_UnderTow_]

Before you fire off a reply with a 'STFU n00b' or 'Cry some more' consider carefully how difficult it will be to run Molten Core, Maraudon, Dire Maul, Stratholm, and the like when you have effectively discouraged most other classes from levelling other than rogues.

I already see probems for rogues (and hunters) trying to get into groups for high level instances. There are simply too many of them. The problem may get worse with the honor system, but I think it will be self correcting, as people realize that there is too much competition for group slots among rogues and go back to their main characters.

My main is an Arms/Fury Warrior, and he eats rogues for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I have no problems with the whole alliance using rogues.

Re:Honor with no Dishonor

[agrounds]

You have a valid and insightful point. I must admit I am somewhat spoiled, as my new main since moving to Laughing Skull a month ago, is a priest. I can count the number of groups I have been turned away from in 44 levels on two fingers. When I played my rogue, I was continually turned away unless I knew someone in the group, and my old warlock main was about 50/50 on getting into instance runs.

That said: As a priest: Much love to the warriors! You keep us alive.

Hopefully the eventual release of Battlegrounds will defer some of the player farming away from the questing zones.

Re:Honor with no Dishonor

[ildon]

what many fear this will lead to is roaming armadas of factions farming Honor points by killing everything in sight. I see this being the most likely outcome.

You fail to acknowledge that perhaps this was the intended outcome. The game is desinged around player conflict. The non-PvP or "Normal" servers are designed for people who are not interested (or less interested) in this type of conflict.

You don't hop on a game of Quake and start complaining when people kill you, do you?

Re:Honor with no Dishonor

[Chyeld]

Consider this:

People who are already ganking lowbies are doing so for one of two reasons. Either they like being a-holes, or they are bored and have no incentive to do otherwise.

People who are interested in gaining Honor are going to do so for two reasons. They want recognition and they want phat loot.

If someone is already ganking, then the Honor system currently gives them incentive to concentrate on higher targets. So the majority of the bored ones are more than likely going to switch.

If someone isn't already ganking, then the Honor system gives them a reason not to. Not because they will be directly penalized by it, but because wasting time on killing lowbies when others are going for real kills is going to drop them lower in the rankings.

You will never lose the a-holes. Even if you instituted an insta-perma-ban on people who killed anyone grey to them, you'd still have people with too much time on their hands and a fist full of momma's credit cards who are willing to level someone up and get that one kill just to be a dick. But I don't see how this is going to increase their numbers at all.

What I'm really waiting to see is what happens when they finally introduce the Battlegrounds. Once those are in, you really won't have time to PvP outside of them unless you are just waiting for your turn to go in. From what I can tell, the oportunities to gain honor inside the BG will more than outstrip the opportunities outside.

Re:Honor with no Dishonor

[vitaflo]

There are more rogues than any other single class, as they are vastly overpowered for levelling and moreover singularly designed for wholesale murder

And for every person who says nerf rogues, someone else will say nerf shaman, nerf priests, nerf paladins. Everyone thinks every class is overpowered, when the fact is you're either a good player or you're not.

Honor System has "Rest XP"

[Databass]

It doesn't matter if I'm the greatest PvP'er who ever lived, I will never get the epic PvP sets, simply because there's no way I can get more kills in the 1-2 hours a night I have to play than the people who have 8 hours a day to play.

To balance this somewhat, the Honor System benefits from an offline bonus the same way Rest XP does. When you are logged out, you are slowly gaining bonus points added to your honorable kills when you are logged in, the same way you get bonus XP from being logged out a long time.

It can't completely compete with people who can PvP for 16 hours a day, but it's meant to help. You can still get to the middle ranks. If you really must have the top ranks of PvP combat, something we all managed to get along without before they were in... maybe you could use the money you make from working all day to hire some teenaged gamer to fight on your account for you while you're at work! ; -)

Re:Is there a stand alone downloadable patch?

[antdude]

Thanks. I didn't find it there earlier when I checked. SOmeone told me FileShack has a copy too.

Re:Is there a stand alone downloadable patch?

[endx7]

Filefront has it.

Back of Rogues

[Holdstrong]

For starters, on my Server, Rogues are NOT the most played class. In fact, they are not even in the top 3. So stop making generalizations about the entire game bassed on your experience on one server. Next, complete stun lock is a myth. It just doesn't happen the way the Nerf Rogue crowd would have you believe. Stun lock is a method of keeping your opponent stunned so you can build up combo points and get off your big damage move. Stun lock ONLY happens if the Rogue gets off the first hit, and is only successful in a one on one environment because any other damage to stunned player will break the key stun in the combo. Even IF the rogue executes his perfect stun lock combo... a player of equal level will not be dead. And of course let us recognize that many classes have stun lock counters... such as the mage Blink. Last, The reason Rogues do not get invited to end content is not because there are so many of them. It is because they are absolutely useless end game. This is readon I ditched mine - a leather wearing aggro whore is not a fun character to be running around with when mobs hit you for 1k damage. (about 1 fourth of a good rogues health) So please, back off the rogues.... if a lot of people are playing them it is because they are fun to level, and they are relatively easy to play. A poorly played rogue will beat almost any other poorly played class. But with two evenly skilled players at level 50+, a Rogue is almost ALWAYS at a disadvantage. If you think a Rogues are godly in WoW you have either never played on to 60, or you simply dont know howto play your current character.

Ah crud...

[Apparently someone]

So I go home happy, tonight.

Woot! I can't wait! I have mail coming in. Auctions going off. Guildies to see. Quests to complete and/or turn in. Yesterday was awesome, and tonight's been all planned out!

I open WoW and discover a new patch is on it's way to my machine. Oh, GOODIE!

... wait ... downloading.
... wait ... patching.
... wait ... (remember) time to recover/reconfigure UI mods.
... wait ... reconnect after 1 hour in the queue. [WUPS! disconnected from server]
... wait ... reconnect after 1 hour in the queue.
... and then, you guessed it, now we get to...

... wait for rez after being ganked.

MAN, I'm stoked!
:P