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PvP Honor System and Rewards |
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World of Warcraft Honor System Launches!
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atch every fork in the road, travel in packs, and keep your weapons close at hand - player-versus-player (PvP) combat in World of Warcraft just got a little more competitive. The Honor System is up and running, and players will be ranked weekly based on how well they do in the PvP game and can earn special rewards based on that rank. We recently caught up with Tom Chilton - a Lead Game Designer on the World of Warcraft team - and asked him a few questions about the Honor System and how it was implemented.
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Why was it decided to implement a ranking system [in World of Warcraft] that is similar to the Warcraft III ladders on Battle.net®?
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Honor System Rewards?
The Honor System is a separate leveling mechanism outside the experience ladders for questing and instances. And with this new game mechanic comes new rewards. Players will be ranked on a weekly basis using a formula that tracks their number of honorable kills and successful raids into enemy territory and, in the near future, participation in the epic Battlegrounds. Based on what rank you achieve, you'll have access to special items, mounts, and other goodies, and we have here a list of those rewards. While this isn't comprehensive (and of course the game's Development Team is constantly adding new content) you can view a good cross-section below of the loot you can earn through player-vs-player combat. If coveting these new items is in your nature, then get in the game and start hunting down players of the opposing faction!
 Click here to see a complete list of reward armor sets
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Since player-versus-player (PvP) is competitive by nature, we felt that the system that measures success in World of Warcraft's PvP should be a competitive system.
A ladder-style ranking offers many benefits that other systems don't.
For example, since a limited number of players at any given time can make use of the PvP rewards, it ensures that the honor system rewards are very meaningful without running the risk of the PvP rewards drastically devaluing PvE loot (i.e. if it took less total playtime to get the PvP rewards in comparison to the player-vs-environment (PvE loot).
This is important to us as PvP and PvE are both aspects of World of Warcraft as a whole, and not two games that are completely independent of each other.Due to this, the loot awarded for both aspects of the game need to compliment each other and not run the risk of having one render another obsolete.
In addition, a ladder-style system ensures that players entering the game long after the honor system has been active have a chance to rise to the top ranks. This isn't the case in an ever-inflationary system where players who have been in the game for years can never be caught up to by other players that join later, regardless of whether the more recent players are more effective.
Finally, one of the major benefits is that a ladder system helps ensure that over time, the game world does not become inflated with "Generals" and "Warlords".
We have taken some in-game video of the horde and alliance barracks which shows off some of the honor rewards.
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What are the major design goals of this system?
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The primary design goal for the honor system is to give players a way to measure success in World of Warcraft PvP, and a way to reward players for how successful they've been in that aspect of the game. Players that engage in PvP crave competition, and the honor system is intended to fuel that desire to compete.
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How do you think the addition of the honor system will affect how the game is played?
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We expect that it will increase the amount of PvP that takes place in the game. In addition, it will give the PvP community a tool to use for bragging rights.
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Why was it decided to not include penalties for higher level players that gank players of a lower level?
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Ensuring that penalties for this kind of behavior are warranted complicate the system tremendously. Some examples...
What happens if a high level player is attacked by a low-level player? Do we have to start tracking who "started" the fight? How does the player see that in their interface? More target colors? More UI flags?
What happens if a high level player is healing a low level player that kills another low level player? Does that warrant dishonor? What happens if the high level player didn't even realize that lower level player was engaged with another low level player (i.e. the enemy player had run around a corner and all the high level player saw was an injured low-level teammate, so he heals)?
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, and the number of gray areas leading to players seeing "Dishonorable Kill!" messages without even understanding why it happened can easily get to the point where the system does more harm than good. Players are far more sensitive to being punished when they don't feel they should have been punished compared to being rewarded when they perhaps shouldn't have been rewarded.
As such, we didn't feel as though the dishonor aspect of the design was up to snuff yet. So, since we're pretty certain that simply rewarding players for fighting other players of a reasonable level will reduce the amount of "lowbie killing" by some amount, it seems prudent for us to see just how necessary dishonor is after the honor system is implemented, and make decisions from there as to how to how dishonor needs to work.
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What can non-hardcore players expect to get out of the system? |
So far our data shows that non-hardcore players can expect to get quite a bit out of the system, quite likely more than they expect. The data indicates that the hardcore make up a small percentage of the total participating playerbase, and as such will most likely fill the highest ranks. However, the majority of the playerbase (made up of casual players) will occupy the majority of the ranks.
This "casual majority" actually appears to exhibit very small differences in time played, and in PvP effectiveness, which means that the majority of the ranks will be occupied by players that are actually in very close competition with each other with regard to how much time they're investing and how many points they're gaining. A slight, but sustained improvement in performance can therefore result in significant increases in rank.
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Is the Honor System still relevant on non-PVP servers? |
Yes. Any players from the opposing faction killed on PVE servers will count toward the honor rankings. Also, once the Battlefields are
implemented kills in these zones will count as well. Given the ladder system being used, honor rankings are balanced across all of
the servers, regardless of type or population, so the system will be implemented across all the World of Warcraft realms.
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How long do you think it will take players to achieve the highest Honor System ranking?
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Several months. The exact time period will depend on how consistently the top players are able to perform week-over-week. If a high pace is held steadily, then the advancement of those players will be quicker - but the more 'off-weeks' the top players have in the PvP system, the slower the advancement to the top ranks will be.
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How were the rewards for each ranking decided on?
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We've provided a list of some of the rewards available for the Honor System - check out the accompanying sidebar to the right of the second paragraph. As to the rationale for choosing them, we knew we wanted a few tiers of armor sets, a single set of weapons, and many other miscellaneous rewards, so we looked at each rank, and what percentage of players would be likely to "peak" at that rank, and decided which rewards would fall into what rank based on that.
The primary goal was to ensure that a player would have something cool to look forward to at each rank, regardless of whether the reward was primarily visual (i.e. a tabard) or functional. The items that were both highly visual and highly functional were generally reserved for the upper half of ranks.
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How is the work proceeding on Battlegrounds and when will we see the first of these in the game?
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Work is proceeding well, and hopefully it won't be much longer before players can start beta testing them on the test server. The Battlegrounds are another major facet of the PvP content and we're excited to see the players' reactions once we get that in as well.
For even more information on the new Honor System, check out the PvP Honor System and Rewards Article recently posted on WorldofWarcraft.com.
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