ADVERTISEMENT
Honor System
From WoW: IncGamers World of Warcraft Wiki
With The Burning Crusade expansion, Blizzard updated their highly critisized Old Honor System, with a new one, and added The Arena system to make sure to reward actual skill over "grind" linke the old system was accused of. The idea of the system is to reward players for valiantly (or cowardly) killing players of the opposing faction with Honor Points, and that you can use these points to trade for equipment that are good for PvP. These Honor Point Rewards are not as good as Arena Rewards, but are still not to be scorned at, as it is a lot harder to get rewards from the Arena. Honor Points earned from killing players in Outdoor PvP or Battlegrounds are kept, and you can have as many as twice the most expensive item you can purchase with them. This differs from the old system, where you got more Honor Points (and before that Contribution Points), but they deteriorated every week.
How the Honor system Works
The Honor System is designed to be a system where your faction (Alliance or Horde) recognizes the help you personally have provided towards their standing against the other faction, and rewards you with "free" gifts. It has as such no relation to "honourable kills", and any player you kill, regardless of circumstances will give you a few Honor Points that you later can use to "purchase" Honor Point Rewards.
Accumulate Honor Points
You will accumulate Honor Points from Honorable Kills derived from Outdoor PvP, regular outdoor kills, Battlegrounds but not The Arena. You also get bonus Honor Points from completing objectives in Battlegrounds, or to win a Battleground game. There is also a small Honor Point bonus for killing Racial Leaders such as Thrall or Bolvar Fordragon. Over all, the most efficient way to accumulate Honor Points is through Battlegrounds. You will not loose Honor Points (unless you use them), but if you reach the maximum number of Honor Points allowed (currently 75 000 Honor Points in Patch 2.2), everything you earn after that is lost until you spend some.
Limits on gaining Honor Points
There is limits on how you gain Honour Points by killing other players. The reason behind this is to avoid having a system that provokes players to make life miserable for other players that have no reasonable means to defend themselves, being repeatedly killed and to discourage players to kill opposite faction members when they are in trouble (ganking).
Level limits
You will not gain Honor Points by killing players of a much lower level than yourself. You can easily see if a player will give you any Honor Points by looking at his level:
- Red/Orange colour of the numbers will give you the most Honor Points
- Green colour of the numbers will give you a little Honor Points.
- Grey colour of the numbers will not give you any Honor Points.
At lvl 70, you can get points for killing players of lvl 62 and up. High level players will also recive more Honor by killing players of apropriate level than a player of lower level, killing other players of their apropriate level.
Contribution Limit
You will only get Honor for as much as you contributed to an opposing faction member's death. This means basically that you (and your group) gets a percentage of the dead players worth in Honor Points, depending on the amount of damage you dealt compared to others. Please note that this is the total amount of damage. If the target was healed continously during the fight, you will get a percentage of the total amount of damage dealt compared to all other sources (other players, groups or mobs), regardless of how much his max Hit Points was.
Repeated Kill Limits
There is a limit on how much Honor Points you get for killing the same players several times the same day. It decreases the amount of Honor Points a kill of a specific player will yield by 10% per kill, until the player is worth 10%. The Honor Points will not decrease under 10%. When the honor calculations are made on the server (usually around 03:00 at night), the status for how much Honor Points you get for a speicifc player is reset.
Group Limits
If you are a member of a Group or Raid, you will have a lot easier time to get Honorable Kills, as any opponent player killed by anyone in your group will give you a "HK". However, all Honor Points earned by the group is split between the players that are in the vicinity (and alive) of the kill, so you will only get a fraction of the Honor if you are in a large Raid, like in Alterac Valley.
The advantage with being in a Group or Raid is that you will get Honor Points for healing your team mates, and if it is an Outdoor PvP battle, your group have a bigger chance to do more total damage to every kill, giving your group a bigger total of Honor Points than players PvPing alone. There is ofcourse also the advantage of greater survivability in a group, which is important as you get no Honor Points if you are dead.
Example:
Player 1 is lvl 70 and farming [Mote of Mana] in Netherstorm. Player 2 and Player 3, who are also lvl 70 and looking for targets to gain Honor Points, finds Player 1 with 30% hp just killing off a mob. Player 2 and Player 3 comes out of Stealth and Ambushes him. The fight is short and easy. As all players are lvl 70, killing Player 1 will award the maximum Honor Points, but because Player 1 had taken damage from the mob before he was attacked by Player 2 and Player 3, they will only recive 30% of the Honor Points that killing Player 1 was really worth. As they are two in a group, they will in the end only recive 15% of Player 1's Honor Point worth for another lvl 70.
Should they attack Player 1 again when he have run back to his corpse, and having 50% health when ressurecting, the Honor Point reward is modified again. They get 50% of his total worth because of his Hit Points status, but as they both have killed him already once this day, they only get 90% of that, so they have to share 45%, and get 22.5% each. They would thus get more Honor the second time, as he had more HP to begin with, but every sequenceial kill will give less Honor until they basically recives nothing from killing the Player 1.
Spending Honor Points
While gaining Honor Points can be very challenging and fun, it is perhaps even more satisfying to spend this hard earned standing of Honor Points and Battleground Marks into Honor Point Rewards to gain a better advantage against other players on the battlefield. Players up to lvl 60 could have use for some of the equipment that is available from the Old Honor System, which you get by talking to the NPCs that stands near the Battleground entrances in Azeroth (Eye of the Storm does not have such equipment).
Where to Spend
The Alliance and The Horde can visit their Capital City and go to Champions' Hall in Stormwind (Alliance players) or Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar (Horde players) to use their Honor Points.
In order to get to the Battleground NPCs associated with the Battleground Factions and to purchase their faction specific PvP gear, you need to go directly to the Battleground entrance.
Alliance
- Champions' Hall, the main Honor Point Reward location is located in the south part of Old Town in Stormwind City, near the Warrior and Rogue trainers. You enter through a white Instance port, where you can find NPCs that will trade your Honor Points and Battleground Marks for PvP equipment.
- Alterac Valley, the place where you can get the AV mount and other rewards that are very good for PvP up to lvl 60 can be accessed through a tunnel, located in Hillsbrad Foothillsnorth of Southshore. The vendors are located outside of the tunnel. You can also enter the Alterac Valley Battleground, and go to the southern bunker in Dun Baldar to purchase AV rewards.
- Warsong Gulch, the place where you can get the WSG mount and other rewards that are very good for PvP up to lvl 60 can be accessed in the southern part of Ashenvale Forest.
- Arathi Basin, the place where you can get the AB mount and other rewards that are very good for PvP up to lvl 60 can be accessed in the Refuge Pointe in Arathi Highlands.
Horde
- Hall of Legends the main Honor Point Reward location is located in The Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar, near the Warrior trainers. You enter through a white Instance port, where you can find NPCs that will trade your Honor Points and Battleground Marks for PvP equipment.
- Alterac Valley, the place where you can get the AV mount and other rewards that are very good for PvP up to lvl 60 can be accessed through a tunnel, located in Hillsbrad Foothills north of Tarren Mill. The vendors are located outside of the tunnel. You can also enter the Alterac Valley Battleground, and talk to a vendor in the Horde camp to purchase AV rewards.
- Warsong Gulch, the place where you can get the WSG mount and other rewards that are very good for PvP up to lvl 60 can be accessed in the northern part of The Barrens close to Ashenvale Forest.
- Arathi Basin, the place where you can get the AB mount and other rewards that are very good for PvP up to lvl 60 can be accessed just north of Hammerfall in Arathi Highlands.
How to Spend
You can't just use your Honor Points to buy items. You also need Battleground Marks, earned from playing through a Battleground game. You generally need a few dozen of thousand Honor Points, and a few dozen marks of a specific Battleground. The Battleground Marks needed are different from different items. The faction specific items for characters up to lvl 60 only requires marks from their specific Battleground.
What Rewards You Get
There is an assortment of general PvP rewards, as well as class specific rewards you can purchase with your Honor Points. Read more about it in the Honor Point Rewards article.
Important About The Honor System
- Battlegrounds are the foundation of the Honor System, and is primarily the game style used to accumulate Honor Points.
- Outdoor PvP is the secondary source of Honor Points, including World PvP. However, World PvP should not be discarded as a Honor Point source, as you more often fight in smaller group or alone, and get a bigger chunk of the Honor every kill is worth. In many cases, primarily in Outland, there is also a specific objective with the PvP battles, earning Outdoor PvP Rewards that are outside of the Honor System.
Common Honor System Questions
Can I earn Honor Points in Arena Matches?
No. The Arena is a seperate system where players with a good Standing earn Arena Points that can be used on specific Arena weapons and equipment.
Can I earn Honor while in a group?
Yes. The honor earned is split equally amongst the Party/Raid members. It works just like experience when killing monsters, and players can also earn group bonus Honor, in the same way group Experience bonus works. If the level of the members in the group are significantly different, the amount of honor gained by the lower level members will be reduced, just like with Experience.
What if I do less damage than the rest of my group?
Still rewarded. If you do less actual damage than others in your group because you are healing, Polymorphing, snaring or doing area of effect spells, you still get the same amount of Honor as the other members of the Party. Grouped players split earned honor equally (unless level difference is very big), so Warrior and Priest get an equal share.
If our group take out a Faction Leader, who gets the Honor?
Everyone. All the members of the group that taps the Faction Leader will share Honor Points as usual. Please do remember that strategic targets are put in the game by Blizzard to promote conflict and role-play between the Alliance and Horde, so killing enemy leaders is not a large source of honor.
Does Raid Leaders get more Honor than members?
No. It is divided equally.
Do I get Honor if I am far away from the kill?
No. The system works similarly to Experience. If you are far away, you will not be awarded other's kills, and you will be awarded the full amount of Honor for your own kills.
What NPCs give Honor?
None. NPCs that are not part of a Battleground objective no longer give Honor.
Do I get Honor if I hurt a fleeing Player who dies later?
No. If a player does not take PvP damage for a full 1 minute since the last time they were attacked by a player, the first player's damage is reset. Whoever hurts or kills the player later gets the full credit.
Is there bonus Honor for rapid kills?
No. Blizzard has currently no plans to award players going on killing sprees, besides the normal Honor Points.
Is there a survival bonus?
No. A bonus where each kill beyond the first without dying will give more honor is not awarded at the moment. However, Blizzard says: "This will not be a feature upon initial implementation of the Honor System, but is a possible candidate for continued refinement."
Once I gain Honor Points, will it decay?
No. Honor gained will remain. However, if you reach the maximum Honor Point, set to about twice as much as the most expensive reward, you will stop accumulating Honor Points until you spend some.
