31/03/05 PvP honor system developer Q&A

(Originally posted March 31st)

The developers have taken the time to answer some of the questions that have come up in the honor system discussions. We hope you'll find them both interesting and informative. Enjoy! :)

Does honor always decay, or only from inactivity?
This is a misunderstanding as to how the honor system works. There is no true “decay” there is only a percentage correction between your current honor rating and your new rating. This is because honor points behave more like a rating system.

Does it always decay at the same rate, or does the player’s rank/duration away affect it?
Again, rank changes as a percentage of the difference between a player’s current honor rating and their current week’s honor rating. However, in order to give players a cushion for “off weeks” the correction is substantially faster when a player is increasing their honor rating than it is going down.

Does it decay to 0, or is there some nominal rank it stops at?
Players would typically have to be inactive in PvP for a very long time (months) before they reach zero.

As a working professional I love the current implementation of the rest system. What has been released thus far about the honor system sounds like a grinder's paradise. Are the developers definitely going to include a helping hand, per se, for the casual player?
We have implemented a system very similar to the rest state system for honor. This system will give you a bonus to the number of honor points you earn in a week, up to a certain amount. It is slightly different in that each week the bonus pool re-fills itself completely. Once you have used up this pool for the week, you will earn points at a normal rate.

In addition, since the majority of players in WoW are casual gamers, the majority of player will be competing against players of a similar skill level and playtime. We expect many players to be surprised at how viable they will be in the honor system.

Will the test servers be brought back to test the patch that contains the PvP Honor System?
Yes. The test realm will be brought back up to test the patch that contains the Honor System.
(This realm is currently only available in the US.)

If a raid group takes out say the King does the entire raid group get honor points and does the honor points received scale at all between people in the raid group?
Yes, the entire raid group that tapped the mob will share the honor points. The honor points will be distributed in the same way that experience points are distributed. It should be noted, however, that strategic targets are there to promote conflict and role-play between the Alliance and Horde, so players will find that killing enemy leaders is not a disproportionately large source of honor.

If you attack a player, and that player goes out of sight – heals - and someone later kills him...by going out of sight, we will obviously lose our part of the percentage in the kill, correct?
If a player is in a fight, leaves combat and heals - then gets killed by another, different player – that player will get credit. Once a pair of players leave combat with each other any damage credit is reset.

Are you planning on adding in any sort of dishonor penalties?
We plan on evaluating the Honor System without penalties and moving forward from there. While it is very possible that we will add penalties for dishonor in the future, we are trying to be as careful as possible by evaluating the system with only incentives for killing honorably at first, so we have a better handle on how substantial any penalties would need to be assuming they prove necessary.

What constitutes for an Honorable Kill on the Kill Total page of the UI? Any kill you help with in any degree that nets Honor, or only those with other requirements met (eg; +50% damage dealt), even though others will still net Honor?

I'm basically curious since, even though those totals are just fun stats, if someone that uses a ton of AE will tag far, far more "Kills" than someone attacking single-targets, even though they are grouped 100% of the time and have the exact same Honor. EG: 2 max-rank Humans, 1 Rogue, 1 Mage, exact same Honor, 100% grouped with each other other, but the Mage has 750 more "Kills" because he's constantly getting more credit thanks to Area-effect?[/b]
Any honorable kill you contribute damage to will net you honor. However, a small contribution will net you a small amount of contribution points. If you cause slight damage to 10 targets, you may not get as many points as if you caused significant damage to one target. Remember – the target must die in order to get contribution points. In addition, it is important to note that a player’s honorable kill count is meant primarily as a fun thing to keep track of, and is not necessarily a true indicator of a player’s effectiveness. A player’s honor rating and team contribution points are a much better indicator of a player’s effectiveness.

Also, based on player feedback, we have decided to no longer award honorable kills for NPC kills that are not racial leaders so that players do not feel as though they need to “grind” NPC kills for honor. This change will also help the honorable kill totals mean more than they otherwise would.

Will equipment worn that someone no longer has honor for be removed, or can they continue to wear it so long as they don't remove it?
If a player looses the rank required to wear items gained through the Honor System, they will be removed and placed in your inventory space. If your inventory space is full they will be placed in the standard overflow slots.

Could you add a line to the honor character page listing the highest honor ever achieved on that character?
Yes, consider it done.

How does the PvP system that is being implemented affect the world outside battlegrounds. In other words, in contested zones will it be able to control graveyards and other key points?
While we are looking to have PvP affect the outside world in ways that are interesting and most of all fun to players, this will not be a feature that is included in the initial Honor system or Battleground patches.

How do you intend to prevent guilds/individuals from farming honor using the "you kill me, I kill you" system? Unless you LOSE an equal amount of honor for dying as you would gain from killing an equal lvl player, "farming" honor will be the best way to reach the top of the PvP food chain. How do you guys intend to stop this kind of stuff?
As we’ve stated before, subsequent kills on the same player will have diminishing returns. In addition, willful collusion between two guilds of opposing factions is considered an exploit, and participating players will be penalized accordingly. Also, the system can track unusual patterns that help expose this behavior.

Do you have any information on if there will be new spells or talents available to characters with higher ranks?
We currently have no plans to reward players with talents or spells.

Will Raid Leaders receive more honor than a standard raid participant, due to their leadership role? Will there be bonus honor for being the raid leader when a racial leader is killed?
No. Honor will be divided equally to all raid participants.

How long range will honor be split between members of a raid group? If I kill someone on one side of a battleground, will someone in my raid on the other side of the BG get honor points?
It falls in the normal rules of experience gain. You must be in the general area to receive honor.

Will there be Guild Honor Points, and if so, will they be usable for anything? For example, could a guild master with a high honor guild use that honor to purchase items for the guild? (or something like guild housing)
We have no plans for guild honor points when the system goes live.

Will there be additional honor for rapid fire killing? For instance, 3 kills in 30 seconds.
We have no plans to reward players for going on killing sprees, other than the normal honor they earn.

Will there be a survival bonus? For instance, each kill beyond the first without dying equates to more honor.
This will not be a feature upon initial implementation of the Honor system, but is a possible candidate for continued refinement.

Will there be an area of dishonor? A place where no one can kill the opposing faction without losing honor. A good place might be an Argent Dawn tent or camp.
Not at this time. However, there will be times at which players will be worth no honor. For example, when a player loads into the world by crossing an instance line or logging in, or immediately after landing from a flight, that player will be worth no honor temporarily.

Will my title be visible to those around me?
Yes. Players will be able to see your title as part of your name. In addition, players may view your honor tab when they inspect you. Link - shot

Guild honor-ladders would be nice, is there a good chance this might get implemented?
Not when the Honor System is first implemented.

Will we be able to gain honor within battlegrounds? If so, I will never leave :-) And would destroying/capturing an enemy base in a BG result in a a lot of honor?
Yes. Battlegrounds are instances geared towards promoting PvP. Players who complete objectives in Battlegrounds will receive honor.

Will pvp kills on battlegrounds reward MORE pvp honor than those made in "regular" parts of the server?
No. However players participating in Battlegrounds can earn honor in other ways besides killing players.

Is it possible for the developers to rethink the items becoming unusable due to rank decay?
It isn’t likely, but we will be closely evaluating the system on both the test and the live realms. We feel that since pvp is inherently competitive in nature, the system that rates and rewards players should also be a competitive system and not another leveling system. A rating system helps make it possible for players that enter the game years after the system go live to “catch up” to other players.

Also, as noted earlier, since most players are casual players most players are therefore competing primarily against other casual players that play a similar number of hours per week. This, combined with the “honor system rest state” should allow casual players to make very respectable gains in rank without feeling the need to change their play patterns.

Any other unique weapons that you guys have showed off in screenshots going to appear as honor rewards?
Yes. We have to keep some surprises…