The Honor System
Ok, I have been doing a lot of research in my spare time and have crunched a few numbers and I think I finally made sense of the honor calculation system Blizzard has in place. I hope this thread will shed a little light on exactly how leveling and the honor system works. Please feel free to add things to this post about the honor calculations because there are still a few areas that are hazy to me and that I don't have difinitive answers to.

If there has already been a thread like this I apologize in advance. I didn't see one anywhere so I thought I'd share my own findings. Here it is.

The Basics:

1. Honor points are accumulated each time you take part in the killing of a player of the opposing faction.

2. You are penalized if your level is less than 60 (meaning you don't gain as much honor for a kill as a level 60 does).

3. Your total amount of honor points are added up at the end of each week (during server maintenance).

4. Your total honor for the week determines your standing on the server for that week. Obviously, with standing #1 being the highest you can achieve and so forth.

5. Your standing determines what share of rating points you will recieve for that week. The higher the standing, the larger share you get.

6. Your rating points are points that you earn (different than honor points) each week based on your overall standing on the server for that week.

7. Your total amount of rating points determine your rank: Rank 14 is 60,000 and above, rank 13 is 55,000-59,999, rank 12 is 50,000-54,999 and so on.

8. If you finish standing #1 on your server for the week, the largest amount of rating points you can earn is 13,000.

9. Each week you automatically lose 20% of your total rating points (Honor Decay) to start the week. You have to pvp enough to make up the 20% you lose every week not to lose rating. What gets kind of confusing is the cap for rating loss when you don't PVP at all or not enough to come close to making up what you lost. The cap is 10% but cannot exceed 2500 in this case. So, the most rating points you can lose is 2500 for the week. So, in essence, if you don't PVP at all or finish high enough in standing for the week to earn back the 20% you lost, your total amount of rating points will decrease.

Example A:

# Player A has a rating of 52,000 in the previous week. Player A does not pvp at all in the current week. Player A will lose 5,200 (10%) rating points essentially, but it is capped at a maximum of 2500 loss for the week. So player A would only drop from a rating of 52,000 to 49,500 (Rank 12 to 11).

Example B:

# Player A has a rating of 12,000 in the previous week. Player A does not PVP at all in the current week. Player A will lose 1,200 rating points (10%). The 2500 cap will not apply here because the 10% does not exceed 2500. So no rank is lost in this sceanrio but Player A does fall to 10,500 rating points for not PVPing at all in the new week.

Where it gets hazy is, "How do I know what standing I need to maintain my current rating". I don't quite have a formula to answer that question, but any help on this would be much appreciated.

The Skinny:

So, with all this info I have put together a chart to show you how to go from rank 0 to rank 14 and how long it will take you to do it under absolute PERFECT conditions.

The chart below shows what would happen if you started to pvp from scratch (Rank 0) and you finished #1 on your server every week, and you earned the maximum of 13,000 rating points each of those weeks (remember that is under optimal conditions which I will explain more after the chart). Here it is:

Week 1: 13,000 Rating Rank 4

Week 2: 23,400 Rating Rank 6

Week 3: 31,720 Rating Rank 8

Week 4: 38,375 Rating Rank 9

Week 5: 43,700 Rating Rank 10

Week 6: 47,960 Rating Rank 11

Week 7: 51,368 Rating Rank 12

Week 8: 54,094 Rating Rank 12

Week 9: 56,275 Rating Rank 13

Week 10: 58,020 Rating Rank 13

Week 11: 59,416 Rating Rank 13

Week 12: 60,533 Rating Rank 14 (Grand Marshal/High Warlord Woot!)

So, it IS possible to go from rank 0 to 14 in 12 weeks.

Now, like I stated above, this is only possible under OPTIMAL conditions. Those conditions being that you finish #1 on the server every week, you are allotted the maximum rating points each week (13,000), and you are level 60.

The Grey Areas:

Here are the things I am either not sure of or have no data on at all.

1. Blizzard states that your faction's participation in pvp as a whole also has bearing on the total amount of rating points to be given out for the week (the total rating pool). So, I'm not sure how much the faction has to pvp in order for the #1 standing to receive 13,000 rating points. I don't know if it's a certain amount of honor or what. Any clarification on this would be a help.

2. The only constant I am aware of for rating points earned is the 13,000 per week maximum. I do not have any data to help me calculate what each standing's maximum per week is after standing #1. So I'm not sure if it's percentage based or what. For all I know the maximum rating points that can be given out for a week for standing #2 is 12,000 (just throwing a number out there). I don't have any idea how these are calculated, but from researching many threads and other sites, I assume it is % based. Any help on this would also be appreciated.

3. Also, from what I have read in the forums, I have come to the conclusion that it IS possible to go from rank 13 to 14 even if you finish as low as standing #3 for the weeks leading up to your rank 14. I have not heard, seen, or read anything lower than this. Please post if you have info regarding this issue as well.

Common Misconceptions About Honor Points:

The common misconception about the honor system is the honor point total you accumulate for each week. The amount of honor you accumulate for the week is not the end-all be-all. This is because it is all relative to what other players have done for the week. I'll give you an example:

# In week 1 Player A busts his hump and receives 400,000 honor, but he only finishes 15th on the server in his faction for that week.

# The next week, he doesn't pvp quite as much and still gets 350,000 honor, but he finishes 9th in his faction on the server.

# How is this possible you ask? Simple. Honor points are only a measuring tool to show how well you did compared to other players of your faction on your server. So, in week one of our example, Player A just happened to be amongst others who pvp'ed heavily for that week. In week 2 when he thought he wasn't pvp'ing as much, neither were his peers, and that reflects by his standing for the week.

In Closing:

I hope this guide has helped people understand a little bit more about the honor system and how Blizzard calculates ranks.

If there is anything I left out of if anyone can add to my findings it would be much appreciated. I will try to update this post with any new information I get.

Also, If I am totally wrong in my findings please let me know. I don't want to be posting bad info up here.

Please bump this post if you found it useful and informative so others can see it too. Thanks all!

Updates:

12/26/05

www.WoWGuru.com has some very good projection graphs. It seems to be pretty accurate.

12/29/05

Ok, after pestering most of the top PVP'ers on my server I have gathered quite a bit of data and crunched the numbers a little bit to see if there is some kind of multiplier or flat percentage for standings less that #1 (and by the way thanks to everyone on my server for putting up with me pestereing them for this info!). Here are the numbers I gathered for the week ending 12/27/05:

Week's Rank Rating Points Given

1. 13000

2. 12770

3. 12499

4. 12351

5. 12115

6. 11746

7. 11656

8. ?

9. ?

10. 11393

11. 11351

12. 11301

13. 11284 (This is me woot!)

14. 11153

15. 11095

16. 11038

17. 11023

18. 11011

19. 10981

20. 10977

21. 10934

22. 10822

23. 10800

24-32. 10799-10258

33. 10257

34. 10254

After looking and playing with the numbers, my best assumption is that Blizzard calculates rating given like a bell curve (As was stated somewhere in this post already). It seems as though I was a little off in my statements saying that honor points only matter in determining your standing for the week. Your total honor points DO have something to do with how many rating points you are allotted.

Example:

# Let's say standing #1 set the mark at 750,000 total honor points for that week. Standing #2 had 749,000 total honor points. Assuming standing #1 got the maximum allowable rating points for that week (13,000), standing #2 would probably bet very close to 13,000 rating points (probably like 12,850-12,900).

# Same scenario for standing #1 (750,000 honor points with 13,000 rating allotted for that week). If standing #2 got 650,000 honor points that week, he/she would get a lot less than 13,000 (probably more like 12,500 or so).

So, I have concluded that your total honor not only determines your standing for that week, but also gives a weight to rating points allotted to you that week. If there are a lot of players all bunched up very close to eachother in honor points for a week, they will all have similar rating points allotted to them that week (Look at standings 16-20 on the above chart).

I will gather more numbers next week to see how much they change.

1/5/06

Here are the weeks rating numbers for the week ending 1/3/06 (and thanks again everybody for putting up with me bugging you in game for these numbers):

Week's Rank Rating Points Given