Posted by Nethaera @ http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=55975614&sid=1

Now that the Before the Storm content patch has been live for the past week, we’ve had a better opportunity to track the rate at which players are accumulating honor, and subsequently how easy it's been to obtain honor rewards. In gauging these elements, we've determined that the effort required to obtain honor rewards is more trivial than we had intended. As a result, during today's maintenance we’ve applied a hotfix that reduced the amount of honor gained by approximately 30%. This change allows the honor rewards to be obtained at rate that better reflects the item’s in-game value.

The reason that we decided to reduce the rate of honor gain rather than simply raise the honor cost of each item, is to ensure that everyone’s time and effort participating in PvP since the patch is not diminished. As this change will only affect future honor accumulation.

Myself, I think this is a bad move. I wasn't able to get to the Blizzard forums since I'm stuck at work, but a lot of people seem to be very upset at this change.

Note: Some also stated on another forum post that they were not able to get to the above blizzard post or that it didn't exist anymore. Maybe they are re-thinking this?

Nope this change is indeed going to go live. The OP of the thread removed it initially to verify the information and then reposted the same exact thing over again.

Yes it sucks majorly.

Yes they measured honor gains during a week/weekend in which a ton of people were off from school, sitting home playing with the new patch changes etc. I would wager that the dropoff in bg's is going to be significant given this change.

Yes you will likely have 600 AV marks/tokens now before you can actually purchase a GM weapon/armor (slight exaggeration but only slight). GG on the wasted tokens and not being able to use them for anything aside from mounts without using honor.

I am sure people will still grind out the honor to get a few select items, but not many will go after the bg's with the same fire they were in the past week following this change.

Blizz stated they were not going to increase the cost of any of the items, but in actuality this is increasing the cost of the items using a different mechanism. Call it whatever you want but relatively it now costs YOU 30% more to get what you want from PvP'ing.

ps. This change sucks in case you haven't gleaned that from my reply.

i think the honor reduction is good for the game. so many ppl in my guild already got 3-4 piece hwl for a week of bg. that's insanely fast. at that pace, in a month's time, many ppl in the game will be decked out in hwl gear.

although there really should be something done with the honor tokens. it would be nice to be able to hand them in for additional honor, so it gives ppl an incentive to win.

http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/55975614.htm

I disagree. This is plain stupid and a very bad move by Blizzard. Really, HWL gear is going to be trash in 5 weeks when the expansion is out. A lot of people are just gonna stop playing until then.

I'm on the fence about it. It was odd seeing a warrior in greens and blues with a GM weapon, or someone that had never pvp'd in their lives and suddenly ( 3 days later ) have a GM weapon or the epic shoulders.

It still doesn't change the fact that you can, at your own pace, work your way up whatever items you want to get. They are all still attainable, just takes a bit more than 3 days of pvp'ing to get a GM weapon now.

it's the same price for lvl70 hwl gear too though.

http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/55975614.htm

I disagree. This is plain stupid and a very bad move by Blizzard. Really, HWL gear is going to be trash in 5 weeks when the expansion is out. A lot of people are just gonna stop playing until then.

Oh Noes, you have to spend 3 days PvPing to get a piece now. Cry me a river....

Ouch... I dunno, I'm kinda on the fence as well... I've spent all week pvping outside of raids and real life stuff, getting about 2k honor a day, and can only now buy something, I don't cosider that too fast, especially given the fact that I have like 150 tokens combined from that... then again, my battlegroup is inflated with horde premades by and large, and I'm alliance, so it takes us twice as long as a lot of folks I guess, but still. On the other hand, yeah, I've seen a lot of idiots with rank 14 gear already who somehow pvp 24/7, and it seems pretty damn sad, but here's the thing.. they'll still have that gear, they don't lose it, the rest of us just will have a harder time getting it now. Doesn't exactly solve the entire problem, y'know. I know blizz can't go back and change things, I just wish they did all testing/changing they wanted BEFORE the patch... patch needed more testing in general before release imo.

Oh well. I guess I'll just get a couple pieces that are the largest upgrades for me, and forget about the rank14 set bonuses. :/

I know it doesn't hurt the pre-mades much but honestly for me doing it in groups of 2-4 friends about 3 hours a day I was only able to accumulate 11k honor that week. Will be roughly 7.5k next week. It's still doable to get a few pieces before BC but it kills the chance at the set. No biggie really but it does hurt. It shocked me to see people getting that in a day... I even tried to join the Pre-mades on my server but most are filled with guild members and my guild is small. Not blizzards fault but I highly doubt I'm the minority :)

i think the honor reduction is good for the game. so many ppl in my guild already got 3-4 piece hwl for a week of bg. that's insanely fast. at that pace, in a month's time, many ppl in the game will be decked out in hwl gear.

although there really should be something done with the honor tokens. it would be nice to be able to hand them in for additional honor, so it gives ppl an incentive to win.

It would be nice if you can hand in one honor token from any BG to get a free repair for all your gear.. that way you don't even need to farm gold to keep your gear in top shape.. but this can only be used once a day (to prevent abuse from raiders.)

Althuogh personally I'm quite saddened because I was expecting to get all my epic armor over the Christmas break and now it'll take me longer. But it's a good move imo. It was just way to easy to get your armor and weapons with this system.

Unfortunately, like many people above mentioned, I'm angry that they didn't do anything about raising the total marks and such.

I dont think that 30% is such a big deal. The pvp purples went from being near impossible for most to super easy for all, a bit to easy IMO. I saw people in my guild getting a FM peice every 1-2 days and now it will take you 3 or 4, no big deal.
Hell I would be happy enough if I was able to get 1 peice in a week or two.

For those of us that have raided MC, BWL, AQ40, or nax just think about how long it took to get your raiding sets, if you even have the full sets yet. People will still be able to get the pvp alot faster than they could get a full T2 or T3 set. And so what if the gear will become outdated when the expansion comes out. It not like new gear will being laying on the ground in the outlands just waiting to get picked up, it wil take some time to get also

Oh Noes, you have to spend 3 days PvPing to get a piece now. Cry me a river....
bitter much?

Nah just tired of seeing people complain about a system that allows them to obtain Rank 13/14 gear, when before they had no shot at it. Casuals are rarely happy...

I dont think that 30% is such a big deal. The pvp purples went from being near impossible for most to super easy for all, a bit to easy IMO. I saw people in my guild getting a FM peice every 1-2 days and now it will take you 3 or 4, no big deal.
Hell I would be happy enough if I was able to get 1 peice in a week or two.

For those of us that have raided MC, BWL, AQ40, or nax just think about how long it took to get your raiding sets, if you even have the full sets yet. People will still be able to get the pvp alot faster than they could get a full T2 or T3 set. And so what if the gear will become outdated when the expansion comes out. It not like new gear will being laying on the ground in the outlands just waiting to get picked up, it wil take some time to get also

When your guild is just starting out in those zones I would agree that your premise makes sense. It will take the average player quite a bit more than 3-4 days to get any of the PvP rewards. The problem with most peoples whining/bitching/complaining is that the average player is not playing the game 5-6 hours a day 3-5 days a week. The average player is playing the game for a few hours a week tops, but somehow the measuring stick is the hardcore player who plays 20-30 hours a week when deciding who should get what gear and how quickly they should get it.

WoW was not designed for the hardcore players, you can look to Vanguard if you are into beating your head against the wall though. Unfortunately the hardcore players have skewed the system radically and now it is starting to bend back in the other direction...and people are getting miffed :moon:

It would be neat if there was an actual system capable of rewarding people based on skill instead of who has the most time to invest. Hopefully that is what the arena system will be. :epopcorn:

I wish there was a cap on how much honor you could earn a week, that'd cut down on a lot of this. It's just dumb imo that some people out there pvp for like... 16+ hours a day or some **** just to get their junk. I realize that those that spend more time doing it should get more rewards and blah blah, but there's always people out there that have to totally go bonkers and ruin things. But alas... that's a MMORPG for ya... every single one out there has that problem >.>

I pvped for 3 hours monday and made 2300 honor (ab fights) I pvped last night for 3 hours, and made 1600 (mostly ab, with some av's)

So I went from getting a HWL chest peice in 10 days to 13 days. /yawn.

Thats not that bad. I just wish I didn't have to play AV to get AV marks. AV sucks for Horde. Its rediculously slanted towards Alliance.

Thats not that bad. I just wish I didn't have to play AV to get AV marks. AV sucks for Horde. Its rediculously slanted towards Alliance.
At least you don't have hour long queues. At least you win AB or WSG. I have a horde alt I pvp with a lot too, and I would gladly switch places with my horde alt. Horde has it so much easier earning honor it's silly.

I hate having to play AB and WSG to get AB and WSG marks. AB and WSG sucks for alliance. It is ridiculously slanted toward Horde.

Took me playing about 2-4 hours every day for a week to get 12k for the AB shoulders. Normally I can only get in 2-4 hours for two or three days. So now I will be lucky if I can get 2 pieces before the expansion.

yeah, horde rocks in ab, decent in wsg (pretty even with alliance), and straight out get pwn3d in av. :)

How is WSG slanted towards the Horde? Just wondering since I don't do much pvp.

Nope this change is indeed going to go live. The OP of the thread removed it initially to verify the information and then reposted the same exact thing over again.

Yes it sucks majorly.

Yes they measured honor gains during a week/weekend in which a ton of people were off from school, sitting home playing with the new patch changes etc. I would wager that the dropoff in bg's is going to be significant given this change.

Yes you will likely have 600 AV marks/tokens now before you can actually purchase a GM weapon/armor (slight exaggeration but only slight). GG on the wasted tokens and not being able to use them for anything aside from mounts without using honor.

I am sure people will still grind out the honor to get a few select items, but not many will go after the bg's with the same fire they were in the past week following this change.

Blizz stated they were not going to increase the cost of any of the items, but in actuality this is increasing the cost of the items using a different mechanism. Call it whatever you want but relatively it now costs YOU 30% more to get what you want from PvP'ing.

ps. This change sucks in case you haven't gleaned that from my reply.

If people end up with an excess of tokens stored up and little honor left, it's very likely Blizzard will implement a system to trade tokens for honor (like they had pre-2.0) The conversion rate will depend on how badly skewed the ratio of tokens to honor is..

On a side note about HWL gear being trash.. I personally will only purchase the pieces that'll upgrade greens to epics. Currently, I'm still using a green shoulder and headpiece. The blue and epic feral gear in all my other slots will likely last me a couple of levels beyond 60.

The horde run into a lot of issues when fighting in AV. But they run into a lot more misconceptions.

First, the Horde isn’t anymore organized or disorganized in PVP than the alliance is. And it’s motivated the same way. The difference is that the horde has a smaller player base, so idea’s and changes take less time to “move” through the community.

When it comes to AV, the issues with the game come down to geography. In nearly every case the Alliance has a pretty easy walkthough, where the Horde has to really fight the odds to get it done. Take getting SP for instance. If you compare it to getting Frostwolf GY it’s a nightmare. I can’t count the times I’ve seen 15 alliance hold off 30 horde there, where it’s really easy for 15 alliance to plow through 10 defenders at Frostwolf. And the alliance base is guarded by a bridge that its very easy for the Alliance to hold, where the Frostwolf base can be taken with a pair of level 20’s.