Well, the battle of tarren mill vs southshore actually stopped last night for the first time since the patch! In general I think the patch suits PvE quite well, nobody I’ve been talking to has many dishonourable kills (AoE mages for the most part) and if you want to quest you generally can. I use it as a break from grinding for essences in sithalus/plaguelands with the odd devilsaur hunt thrown in (icy weapon enchants sell very well, as do devilsaur sets). Doubt I’ll make any real rank though as its hard to compete with the mages who can do about 2-3k damage in the first 5 secs of the fight. My best results have come from shadowmeld->aimed shot on the cloth wearers. currently standing at 3 honourable one shot kills, if you have marks spec (aimed shot and all the crit boosting talents) and a slow weapon (bigger crits from the off) I’d recommend trying it out.
I’m on a PvP server and the main problem I’ve encountered is lag. I haven’t been to the Stranglethorn Vale recently, but the other main continuing battle is Tarren Mill/Southshore and that gets bad sometimes. The only character I’ve played since the honor system has come out has been a 38 priest, she has 120 HK’s even though I’ve spent very little time in PvP.
Everything will change with the next patch since Battlegrounds is being released then, so the lag will improve due to battlegrounds being in an instance.
Well I dislike the “honor” system since I think it rewards the worst kind of behavior and creates lag on my server. Since there is no dishonor, it promotes Ultima style gankfests and turns anyone 59 and below into a target. Who wants to pay to be farmed for points by other players? This patch was a huge mistake on the PvP servers. There will be a mass exodus and I suspect they will be able to combine all the PvP players onto one server within the next couple months. All out ganking just isn’t that popular, and I’m honestly boggled why they went this route when it’s been a failed model for so many other MMO’s.
But my main beef lately is the lack of casual player content at the higher levels. 0-50 was fun. After that there’s really not a whole lot to do I’m finding. Go to a new area, complete the measly 3-4 quests and then what? I have to find a big group and spend 3-4 hours in an instance to get any XP. After a month, I’ve only played enough to get to 53 because I’m just so bored. Blizzard stated that future content will not be focused on the casual player so it looks like they are moving away from the demographic that made them so popular in the first place. If that’s the case I don’t see myself paying to play much longer.
I can see why people on the PvP servers would dislike the system, but I agree with counsel wolf that it works pretty well with PvE servers. After all, you can’t be ganked unless you turn your flag on, so there’s tacit agreement that you run the risk of being attacked by higher level characters. I turned my flag off last night in order to quest in Tanaris, because I didn’t want to be bothered.
I’ve started doing more instances lately. We did Uldaman last weekend, in order to finish up all the quests there. We’ll be doing Zul’Farrak this weekend. I don’t like most instances, though I don’t hate them either (Gnomeregan the exception; gods I loathe that place). I’m not looking forward to running out of non-instanced quests.
Actually, for me it has consolidated all the gankers/PvPers into a smaller area that’s easier to avoid. I did the Scarlet Monastery this week and had less trouble getting killed than I expected. But I’ll also say that I’ve never had the problem of gankers to the extent that I’ve seen others gripe about. Yeah, I get killed occasionally by the Horde while I’m questing… I lose a few minutes, rez, and go about my business. Sometimes I’ve had to temporarily leave a quest until the Horde leaves, but not often.
There are a whole bunch of people who don’t understand how the honor system works at all. This is part of the cause of some of the problems. For instance, you only gain honor for contributing to the kill of someone who is at least “green” to you, and even then, killing a much lower level character gets you very little in the way of honor. Also, people tend to miss the fact that killing a character multiple times results in a diminishing return that’s pretty steep. By the time you’ve contributed to killing them for the 4th time in a single 24 hour period, you are getting no points.
The way it works is that every character is worth a certain amount of points, based on a comparison of levels. If you do 100% of the damage in order to kill a character, you get 100% of the points they are worth to you. If you do 50% of the damage, you only get 50% of the points they are worth. Etc. Once the points are totaled at the end of the week, they are translated into an honor total, which then determines your rank when compared with the other people with honor in your faction.
In addition, one of the Blizzard reps clarified a couple of points today. Honor gains per week are affected by the level of your character. If a lvl 60 and a lvl 40 both end up with 2000 contribution points at the end of the week, the lvl 60 will probably end up with a higher rank, because he/she will gain more honor for their 2000 contribution points.
Personally, I don’t see much in this system that encourages ganking any more than than anything else. If anything, I see this system as encouraging lower level characters to band together and fight back against the higher levels, since the lower level characters will get more points from killing the higher than the higher will get for killing the lower.
I forgot to mention: You also gain no honor for killing someone in the 30 seconds after they arrive at a flight master. So all of those people camping the flight masters killing people as they show get bupkis.
That hasn’t been confirmed one way or the other, as far as I know. I believe the answer is not directly. However, contribution points are split amongst all members of party or raid, so a healer in a party will gain points from damage done by other part members. Right now, the best advice for healers seems to be to get into a party and keep your party members alive so that they can do more damage, get more contribution points, and get those points split amongst the group.
You only gain honor for someone who is green to you, BUT you don’t get dishonor for killing someone much lower than you just for fun. There is NO penalty for ganking lower level characters. That’s my issue. I’m 26 levels lower than most of the people in any given raid. If someone wants to come up to me and one shot kill me, they can, with no penalty whatsoever. All it costs them is two seconds of their time. It costs me a trip to the graveyard and a lot of frustration.
But that was already the case. The honor system hasn’t changed it. I think that once the excitement dies down and people realize they aren’t being rewarded for killing people too low of a level, there won’t be any more ganking than there was before.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a penalty, if they can figure out how to do it without the other problems I mentioned.
I think it’s pretty lame. Maybe it’s ok for PvP servers, but I resent that it has for the moment turned RP and PvE servers into de facto PvP servers. It might have been ok if the numbers of Horde and Alliance were roughly equal, but Alliance server populations typically outnumber Horde by at least 5-1, usually resulting in a lame gankfest.
Actually, I think the “honor” system is beyond lame, and actually pathetic and laughably stupid in its conception, especially on non-PvP servers.
Speaking of Hillsbrad, it is now almost impossible on any server for Horde characters to accomplish questing in the vicinity of Tarren Mill. That just sucks. Especially lame is that DKs have not been incorporated. Alliance are repeatedly killing Horde questgivers and merchants in places like Un’Goro and Zoram’Gar, to no ill effect, and Tarren Mill is a disaster area 24/7. If you’re a Horde character trying to quest in Un’Goro, and some group of 10-12 Alliance are constantly ganking the Horde questgivers, as is typical, and there are maybe 2-3 Horde in the area, as is typical, you’re basically screwed in terms of completing those quests. And that sucks. Not everbody wants to be forced into PvP all the time on non-PvP servers.
Bottom line: if you’re into PvP, the “honor” system is lame and poorly implemented. If you’re not into PvP, or don’t want to everytime you quest in certain areas on non-PvP servers, the “honor” system basically tells you to fuck off.
This is incorrect. The most wildly skewed numbers (that I have seen) on the worst servers barely get above 3-1, and most servers are closer to 1.5-1. And these numbers are all based off of 3rd party programs that Blizzard has repeatedly said are incorrect. Blizzard has not posted their own numbers, it is true, but I think it’s incumbent upon the players to give them at least some benefit of the doubt.
I would also say that this is incorrect. I play Horde on Thunderhorn, a server that the census sites claim is one of the worst in terms of Alliance/Horde number balance. And while it is true that Hillsbrad is the site of nightly PvP, and Horde quest-givers are often killed in the combat, I cannot agree that this makes it impossible to quest there. Quest NPCs respawn very quickly, and 9 times out of 10 I have had no problems turning in my quests and getting new ones.
I will agree that this is a problem. As does Blizzard. In the next patch they have already said that they will implement a dishonor penalty for killing NPC quest givers.
All that aside, I have not noticed a severe increase in this behavior after the implementation of the Honor system over what was occurring before the Honor system went into effect. There was some increase in the first week, but it seems to have cooled off a good bit. I have had very little trouble questing around the PvP battles, and have not had too much trouble with lag even with 50+ people in the same zone fighting it out.