World of Warcraft Patch 2.0 Honor System Changes
Patch 2.0 introduced changes to the honor system. The following selection of questions address those changes:

What is the new player-versus-player (PvP) honor system?
Like the current PvP honor system, the new honor system provides a way for players to participate in PvP combat and obtain rewards by defeating their opponents. The key difference in the new honor system is how the rewards are obtained. With the new honor system, you will obtain honor points that can be accumulated and spent like currency on rewards such as items, weapons, and armor.

Do I need to keep playing to keep my honor points intact?
No, the honor points will accumulate like currency, similar to the gold and silver you can obtain through killing monsters or completing quests, and will not degrade or be lost over time. This allows you to participate in PvP at your own pace, working toward the honor rewards, which you can purchase as soon as you have enough honor points to do so. There is no longer any ranking associated with the honor system, so you no longer have to worry about maintaining a rank or standing under the honor system. Players still interested in measuring their PvP ability against fellow players will be able to participate in the Arena System, which is a separate, new form of competitive PvP in The Burning Crusade.

Is there a limit to how many honor points I can accumulate?
Yes, there is a limit to how many honor points a character can accumulate, but it is currently set to be approximately twice as much as the most expensive reward. If you max out your honor points, you'll need to spend some before you can earn additional honor points.
 

The limit of course, is subject to change depending on what works best for long-term game balance.

Are honor points the only thing needed to purchase the rewards?
The battleground marks of honor currently awarded for participating in Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley will also factor in to the cost for many of the rewards. The amount of honor points and marks of honor required will vary for each reward. However, for most items the honor cost is the most significant part of the item's cost.

How are honor points earned?
Honor points are earned in a very similar manner to the honor rewarded in the current honor system. The game tracks your participation in world PvP as well as PvP within battlegrounds. As you kill enemies and assist your allies against the enemy, you'll earn honor. You will be able to track a rough estimate of your approximate amount of honor points received, and the points will then be calculated and awarded each night.

Will the honor and battleground reputation rewards available in the current system still be available?
All of the same rewards are available in the new honor system, costing both honor points and marks of honor from the appropriate battleground.

What will happen to my current battleground reputations, honor, and rank?
A new title system will display your highest rank achieved under the old honor system, but ranks will no longer play a part in the new honor system. The battleground reputations will carry over to the new system, and still be visible and increase through participation in the various battlegrounds, but the current rewards are now only available through the new honor system. However, you will be able to obtain a special title if you obtain exalted reputation with each battleground faction. This title may be displayed through the new title display system.

How will dishonorable kills factor in to the new honor system?
Although this is subject to change, we are not currently planning to have dishonorable kills play any role in the honor system. The NPCs around the world will no longer be set as civilians, so killing them will not impact your ability to obtain honor points.

Gaining Honor

What is the Honor System?
The Honor System allows players to gain Honor Points based on PvP kills and battles that can be used to spend on special rewards. Players earn Honor Points mainly through Battlegrounds and World Outdoor PvP. For more competative battles, participate in the Arena System.

Can I earn honor if I am in a group?
Yes. When grouped with other players, honor are divided equally amongst the members of the party. Just like in groups for killing monsters, players can gain bonus experience for killing players while in a group. If the character levels of some group members are significantly higher than others, the amount of honor gained by the lower level members will be reduced, just like it is with monster experience.

What if I do less damage than the rest of my group, say through healing, damage over time, or area-of-effect spells? Do I still get the same amount of honor as my group?
Yes. Players who are grouped in a party equally split the honor they earn. The Priest who heals will receive an equal share of points as the Warrior who is swinging away at the target.

What happens if we take out a faction leader in a raid group? Who gets the honor?
Members of the raid group that taps the creature will share the honor points equally. The points will be distributed the same way as experience points. It should be noted, however, that strategic targets are there to promote conflict and role-play between the Alliance and Horde, so players will find that killing enemy leaders will not be a disproportionately large source of honor.
 

If I am a raid leader, will I receive more honor than other non-leader raid group members?
No. Honor is divided equally among all raid-party members.

If I am on the other end of the battlefield as my party or raid group, will I still get honor for any kills they make?
No. Earning honor falls within the normal rules of experience gain. Players must be in the general area to receive the honor.

Will I get credit for killing guards?
Based on player feedback we have decided to no longer award honorable kills for killing NPCs that are not racial leaders. This will prevent players from feeling as though they need to "grind" NPC kills for honor. This change will also help the honorable kill totals mean more than they otherwise would.

What happens if I am fighting a player and that player runs away, then another player or group finds the player and kills him or her? Do I get any honor having damaged the player first?
No. If a player does not take damage for 1 minute since the last time they were attacked in PvP, any damage done by the first player is null and void. The next player or group who finds and kills the target gets the credit.

Will there be additional honor gained for rapid-fire killing? For instance, three honorable kills in thirty seconds.
There are no current plans to reward players for going on killing sprees, other than the normal honor they earn.

Will there be a survival bonus? For instance, each kill beyond the first without dying equates to more honor.
This will not be a feature upon initial implementation of the Honor System, but is a possible candidate for continued refinement.

WOW Honor Rewards

What incentives do I have to gain Honor Points in the Honor System?
By killing other players and racking up honor, players will gain access to new equipment and weapons. Some of these weapons also require Battleground tokens.

Can I earn Honor Points in Arena Matches?
No. This is a seperate system where players earn Arena Points that can be used on special Arena weapons and equipment.

Honor Decay

Once I gain Honor Points, do I keep it indefinitely, or do I have to keep earning it?
There is a limit to how many honor points a character can accumulate, but it is currently set to be approximately twice as much as the most expensive reward. If you max out your honor points, you'll need to spend some before you can earn additional honor points.

Warcraft Battlegrounds

How does the Honor System fit in with the Battlegrounds?
In the Battlegrounds players will be fighting primarily against other players which will net honor points. There will also be other methods of earning honor in the Battlegrounds besides player-vs-player battles. Battlegrounds are instances geared towards promoting player-vs-player combat, so players who complete objectives in Battlegrounds will receive honor.

Will killing players in the Battlegrounds automatically result in me getting more honor than if I kill someone on the other parts of the realm?
No. However players participating in Battlegrounds can earn honor in other ways besides killing players.

Misc.

Will one class have an advantage over the others? Some classes seem to be better equipped for gaining honor than others; was that taken into consideration?
During our testing we did not come across any one class that had a distinct advantage over the others. Each class has an equal chance of gaining Honor Points depending on how it is played.

It seems that some realms have way more Alliance than Horde members. How will this affect the Honor System ?
Contrary to popular belief, the numbers of Horde and Alliance are very similar on player-vs-player realms.

How am I supposed to play the game when every where I go someone is waiting to gank me? The graveyard is nice, but I want to see the rest of the world too!
Players who chose to create characters on a PvP realm are supposed to feel a sense of danger where ever they go, that is why we offer player-vs-player realms!

What happened to the old ranks?
Ranks from the previous sytem are now purely cosmetic. They no longer affect anything beyond the name above a character that has previously earned them.

The new World of Warcraft honor system

As apparently we will get the new honor system patched in before the expansion, I'm not calling it the Burning Crusade honor system. But of course all the information I have on how about it works is from the BC beta. As you all know, the old honor system, where you were assigned a rank based on your *relative* performance compared to the other players on your server and your faction is going out the window. And the new system will give PvP rewards based on absolute points. The big advantage in that is that lets say winning 50 battlegrounds and doing 1000 honor kills in the new system will always be worth the same, regardless how much the other players played, and regardless of whether you did those battles over 1 week or over 1 month. So how do the rewards work?

What I did was visit the PvP reward NPCs, both in the Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar, and the one standing in front of Alterac Valley. I couldn't actually do a battleground, because there aren't enough players on the beta servers to fill one up. But I was able to see the rewards, and what they cost.

The big disappointment was the Alterac Valley PvP reward NPC. He was offering exactly the same rewards as before, with no "level 70" items added (yet?). That makes the best items available from him look decidedly mediocre compared to green and blue items you can get in the Outlands even at level 60. The big surprise here is that there are no more reputation requirements. You don't need to be exalted to buy lets say The Unstoppable Force. You just need to "pay" 30000 honor points and 80 Alterac Valley Marks of Honor. Whatever reputation you gained with the Frostwolf is useless now.

In a way that makes sense. You get 1 Mark of Honor from losing, and 3 from winning. So while currently people in AV often go reputation farming, and ignore the win condition, winning AV will become a lot more important. Because all the honor points don't help you if you don't also have the 80 Marks of Honor. Assuming you win half of your battles, you need to finish AV 40 times to pay for the Unstoppable Force.

Next I went to the Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar, which is now open to everybody, not just officers as before, because the officers rank doesn't exist any more. You can still display your highest rank, if you want to, but it doesn't do anything any more. Except, curiously, of still giving you the 10% NPC vendor rebate if you ever made it to rank 3. No idea why they left that in, as I don't see how new players would be able to still gain that bonus.

In the Hall of Legends there are several PvP reward vendors, for armor, weapons, mounts, and accessoires. Here there are a few level 70 items, but up to now I only counted 4 of them, the others are still the same as the PvP rank rewards. For example a Sergeant't Cloak (level 60 version) now costs 1500 honor and 10 Arathi Marks of Honor. General's Satin Leggings cost 4250 honor and 30 Warsong Gulch Mark of Honor. Some items cost "Eye of Storm Mark of Honor", but I didn't see any Eye of Storm battleground.

Most stupidly an epic mount cost 30 AV, 30 WSG, plus 30 AB Mark of Honor. But as it still needs 150 riding skill (which still costs 720 gold), this mount is just for show, you can with the same riding skill training cost buy an equally fast standard epic mount for just 80 gold, instead of paying 90 Mark of Honor for a battleground epic mount.

What I don't really like is that most items here also cost specific Marks of Honor. If you don't like lets say Warsong Gulch, you can't pay for the General's Satin Leggings, because these need WSG Marks of Honor. Only the potions, insignia of the horde, battle standard, and some cut gems to put into sockets can be bought with honor points without Marks.

As long as Blizzard doesn't adjust the PvP rewards to the much higher level of Burning Crusade PvE rewards, I don't see how the changes will induce people to play more PvP. The new system is better than the old reputation farming and rank system, but the rewards need some serious balancing to make PvP as attractive as PvE.

 

World PvP in Outland.

The Burning Crusade will contain numerous changes to PvP. This includes a PvP Arena System and the ability for players of either faction to capture the neutral town of Halaa located in Nagrand. The interactive map displayed on Blizzard's website shows multiple 'neutral' cities, however it isn't clear as to how similar they will be to Halaa. The new PvP Arena System will allow players to compete against other 'Arena Teams' regardless of their allegiance. It has also been confirmed that the Honor System will undergo major changes. It has been stated that there will no longer be 'Ranks' as before but players will still earn 'Honor Points' that will be spent like currency. Lead game designer Tom Chilton stated in an interview that their goal with the Arena system was to separate the competitive PvP from the non-competitive PvP. The Honor System will behave more like a "non-competitive grind" in order to make it feel like "something that you can work toward over time."
The Arena System and the Honor System will have separate rewards.

Rumours of a new battleground have been confirmed by Blizzard.

Arena games are split into two sections: rated and non rated games. To enter a rated game, you must form a arena group in Nagrand. You must also be at the highest level in the level cap.

PvP rewards currently have a buy price of honor and battleground tokens. Honor doesn't decay from week to week, so a player can now gain honor at his or her own pace in order to purchase rewards.

As of 24 October 2006 several Blizzard posters have announced that the PvP review will in fact take place in the upcoming Patch 1.13. The last patch, 1.12, was designed to be the final major update before the expansion, but the pushing back of the release date to January has allowed them more time to implement certain aspects before it arrives.

World of Warcraft

PvP Honor System & Rewards Article

This is our final in-depth look at the upcoming player-versus-player systems planned for World of Warcraft, and it deals with the new Honor System and Rewards. When these systems are deployed, there will be many more incentives for players to fight each other than just the thrill of the kill. And honorable PvP players will receive just rewards for fighting players that are of appropriate levels. We're in the midst of testing these systems, but there is already a lot that we can share with you.

As we have mentioned before, when you kill other players in your level range you will receive an honorable kill. All your honorable kills for a week are then calculated to give you an honor score for that week, which then translates into an honor ranking. This honor ranking carries with it titles and material rewards, and eventually, officer status and other perks.


Honorable Kills
 

Honorable Kill!
The way we calculate honor is fairly detailed, and a lot goes on under the hood while we crunch numbers to arrive at your final ranking for the week. However, what players will see when they kill an appropriate-level target is a simple message. We can't actually display your honor score from a kill when it happens because we don't determine the final value of a kill until the end of the day. Also, your honor points for the week are a percentage of the total honor points available based on your contribution to your team's overall effort for that week.

If you are grouped with others, then all players in your party also gain an Honorable Kill. In fact, it works just like experience points. And just like experience points, you'll get a group bonus for your Honorable Kill as well. At this point, the way we determine whether your opponent counts as an Honorable Kill works similarly to how we determine whether you will get experience from a monster. If you would get experience for killing a monster of the same level as the opposing player (i.e. their level number is not colored gray to you), then you'll get an Honorable Kill.

In some cases, you might end up joining with other groups to slay one or more enemy players. In those instances, we will not be using tapping rules to prevent other groups from earning an Honorable Kill as well. If multiple groups team up to kill a player, all groups will earn a percentage of honor based on how much damage they dealt to the defeated player. For example, imagine that an enemy player is killed by two other players. Player A was solo and did 35% of the damage, while player B was in a group and did 65% of the damage. Player A would get 35% of the honor from the kill, and Player B's party would get 65% of the honor. That honor would then have a group honor bonus applied to it before being divided amongst the group. Rest assured that even players that did not engage the enemy player (perhaps because they were healing instead of fighting) will get honor points; as long as you are in a group that helped kill an opposing player, you'll get honor.

The amount of honor you gain is based mainly on three factors: 1) your target's level, 2) your PvP rank, and 3) your level. Then, at the end of the week, we gather all your Honorable Kills and Dishonorable Kills, and then apply certain modifications based on relevant data. For instance, we track repeat kills, and the system will reward you less and less honor with each successive kill of the same opponent on the same day. You'll gain full points for your first kill, but you get far less points with each kill after that, to the point were you will eventually get zero if you continue to prey on that player. We also add a bonus to your score for participation in strategic objectives, such as conquering a Battleground or killing an enemy NPC leader, such as Thrall or King Bronzebeard. The exact number of strategic leaders has yet to be determined, but at the least, the four racial leaders for the Horde and Alliance will count as strategic objectives. For those out to kill the human leader, keep in mind that neither King Anduin nor Jaina actually qualifies as a strategic objective; it's the king's protector, Highlord Bolvar Fordragon, who is the true leader you must kill in order to gain bonus honor points for your faction.


Dishonorable Kills
Player versus player battles are always best when played out between opposing forces of equal level. Thus, our system creates incentives to attack foes around your level. And it also does not reward those who kill players far below their level. If the player or PvP-enabled NPC you kill is trivial (i.e. gray to you), then you won't get an Honorable Kill. In fact, if you kill an NPC who is not PvP-enabled or who is PvP-enabled and trivial, you will gain a Dishonorable Kill. This exacts a penalty on those who, for whatever reason, kill trivial NPC bystanders. To make it easier to identify a potential Dishonorable Kill, such NPCs will be labeled as "civilians" in their tooltip. Note that dishonor does not apply to killing players, regardless of their level.

Dishonorable kills immediately reduce your current rank, causing the rank bar in the honor interface to move to a lower position. The amount of rank lost increases for each dishonorable kill made that day.


Tracking PvP Rankings
At the end of the week, we will total everyone's honor points including modifications, and then compare everyone's scores against each other. Based on this, we arrive at 14 rankings for all PvP participants. Your final honor score for the week is thus a percentage of the total honor pool that is established for that week. The honor pool is set at a minimum value, and can be increased through the successful achievement of the strategic objectives outlined before. Because we will recalculate all ranks weekly, players can move up or down in rankings based on activity or inactivity. We will not reset players' points each week, so players don't start at zero and on equal footing each time we recalculate honor scores, but rankings will start to shift if a player begins to engage in more quality PvP action or begins to withdraw from PvP play. We anticipate that it will be quite some time before players eventually climb up to the higher ranks, as the system naturally requires players to amass large quantity of quality kills in order to break through to the highest levels. This could take several weeks, if not months, to happen.


Honor Tab
To display a player's PvP rank, we will be adding a new element to your character info sheet that shows your current rank. Your character sheet will have an "Honor" tab that tells you how many Honorable and Dishonorable Kills you're accumulated for your current play session, the previous day, and last week. The tab will also show players a few other stats, such as the number of points awarded them during the previous week and their overall ranking for that period as well.
 

PvP Rankings and Rewards

Officer's Barracks
There are a total of 14 ranks in our PvP system. The lowest five ranks are considered the rank and file of the PvP army, while the ranks from six and higher are considered officers. This distinction is important because once players achieve an officer rank they gain access to the officer's barracks, where some of the best PvP rewards are contained. We are also aware that it breaks the sense of immersion in the game to have a top heavy system with more higher-ranked players than lower-ranked ones. The system is thus designed so that most players will be settled into the "enlisted" ranks, while each successively higher rank will be populated by fewer and fewer players. The highest rank of 14, for example, will only be occupied by the top 0.1 percent of players (one in every one-thousand characters). You'll need to fight furiously and honorably to climb up the ranks of our PvP system and keep it up to stay there.


PvP Reward Mount
Although we've been calling the material benefits of a PvP rank rewards, it would be more accurate to say that achieving a rank gives you the right to buy certain exclusive items. You don't necessarily gain a free item when you hit a certain rank, but your rank does entitle you to buy and use a "reward" item. And in all cases, these reward items will be priced substantially lower because they are rewards. The elite commander's PvP mount you can buy when you reach rank 11, for example, costs one-tenth the price of a normal elite mount. You can use that as a general guideline for how much (or how little) a PvP reward item will cost you when you attain the right rank to buy it.

All 14 ranks, their titles, and the rewards you can get when you attain those ranks are listed below:


Rank Icon Alliance Title Horde Title Reward

14 Grand Marshal High Warlord Epic-quality weapon and shield
13 Field Marshal Warlord Epic-quality helm, shoulder armor, and gloves
12 Marshal General Epic-quality gloves, leggings, and boots
11 Commander Lieutenant General Commander's epic mount
10 Lieutenant Commander Champion Superior-quality helm and shoulder armor
9 Knight-Champion Centurion Battle standard


Battle Standard
Use: Place a Battle Standard with 1500 health that increases
the maximum health of all party members that stay within 45 yards
of the Battle Standard by 15%. Lasts 2 min.



8 Knight-Captain Legionnare Superior-quality chest armor and leggings
7 Knight-Lieutenant Blood Guard Superior-quality boots and gloves
6 Knight Stone Guard Access to officer's barracks, officer's tabard, and potions
5 Sergeant Major First Sergeant Superior-quality bracers
4 Master Sergeant Senior Sergeant Superior-quality necklace
3 Sergeant Sergeant Superior-quality cloak, 10% discount on all goods and repairs from your faction's NPCs
2 Corporal Grunt Team insignia trinket
1 Private Scout Tabard


Buying PvP Reward Items

Most of the items listed are self-explanatory, but they all offer tremendous bonuses that will make even the most diligent treasure hunter take notice. Stay tuned to www.worldofwarcraft.com, because in the next few weeks, we'll unveil more of the actual rewards themselves. The only item that does bear explanation is the battle standard. It is a special item that you can plant in the ground, like a shaman's totem, for an area effect benefit for you and your party.

With the exception of the tabards, discount, and access to officer's barracks, all the reward items must be purchased from a PvP vendor. The rewards for ranks one to five can be bought from a PvP vendor that stands outside the barracks, but the rewards for ranks six and above can only be purchased from vendors inside the officer's barracks. You can already see the entrances to each side's officer's barracks in the cities of Orgrimmar and Stormwind.


Shaman Armor Set



Champion's Mail Helm
Head Mail
301 Armor
+8 Strength
+25 Stamina
+9 Intellect
Durability 70/70
Classes: Shaman
Requires Level 58
Requires Champion
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%

Set: +40 Attack Power.
Set: +20 Stamina.
Set: Shock spell critical strike chance increased by 2%.




Champion's Mail Shoulders
Shoulders Mail
278 Armor
+5 Strength
+5 Agility
+16 Stamina
+15 Intellect
Durability 70/70
Classes: Shaman
Requires Level 58
Requires Champion
Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 3.
Set: +40 Attack Power.
Set: +20 Stamina.
Set: Shock spell critical strike chance increased by 2%.




Legionnaire's Mail Chestpiece
Chest Mail
370 Armor
+20 Stamina
+20 Intellect
Durability 120/120
Classes: Shaman
Requires Level 58
Requires: Legionnaire
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Set: +40 Attack Power.
Set: +20 Stamina.
Set: Shock spell critical strike chance increased by 2%.

Blood Guard's Mail Grips
Hands Mail
231 Armor
+6 Strength
+15 Stamina
+7 Intellect
Durability 50/50
Classes: Shaman
Requires Level 58
Requires Blood Guard
Equip: Increases healing done by spells and effects by up to 11.
Set: +40 Attack Power.
Set: +20 Stamina.
Set: Shock spell critical strike chance increased by 2%.




Legionnaire's Mail Legguards
Legs Mail
324 Armor
+5 Agility
+20 Stamina
+11 Intellect
Durability: 90/90
Classes: Shaman
Requires Level 58
Requires Legionnaire
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 16.
Set: +40 Attack Power.
Set: +20 Stamina.
Set: Shock spell critical strike chance increased by 2%.




Blood Guard's Mail Walkers
Feet Mail
255 Armor
+14 Stamina
+10 Intellect
Durability: 60/60
Classes: Shaman
Requires Level 58
Requires Blood Guard
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 8.
Equip: Increases the speed of your Ghost Wolf Ability by 15%.
Set: +40 Attack Power.
Set: +20 Stamina.
Set: Shock spell critical strike chance increased by 2%.


Warrior Armor Set


Champion's Plate Headguard
Head Plate
534 Armor
+9 Strength
+8 Agility
+31 Stamina
Durability 80/80
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 58
Requires Champion
Set: Increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%
Set: +15 Stamina
Set: Reduces the cooldown of your Intercept ability by 5 sec.


Champion's Plate Pauldrons
Shoulders Plate
493 Armor
+7 Strength
+6 Agility
+23 Stamina
Durability 80/80
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 58
Requires Champion
Set: Increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%
Set: +15 Stamina
Set: Reduces the cooldown of your Intercept ability by 5 sec.


Legionnaire's Plate Armor
Chest Plate
657 Armor
+9 Strength
+6 Agility
+25 Stamina
Durability 135/135
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 58
Requires Legionnaire
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%
Set: Increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%
Set: +15 Stamina
Set: Reduces the cooldown of your Intercept ability by 5 sec.

Blood Guard's Plate Gloves
Hands Plate
410 Armor
+16 Strength
+15 Stamina
Durability 45/45
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 60
Requires Blood Guard
Equip: Hamstring Rage cost reduced by 3.
Set: Increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%
Set: +15 Stamina
Set: Reduces the cooldown of your Intercept ability by 5 sec.


Legionnaire's Plate Legguards
Legs Plate
575 Armor
+7 Strength
+13 Stamina
Durability 100/100
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 58
Requires Legionnaire
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 2%.
Set: Increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%
Set: +15 Stamina
Set: Reduces the cooldown of your Intercept ability by 5 sec.


Blood Guard's Plate Boots
Feet Plate
452 Armor
+8 Strength
+5 Agility
+23 Stamina
Durability 65/65
Classes: Warrior
Requires Level 58
Requires Blood Guard
Set: Increases your chance to parry an attack by 1%
Set: +15 Stamina
Set: Reduces the cooldown of your Intercept ability by 5 sec.

A shaman orc donning
"The Earthshaker" PvP reward armor set


It is important to note that all the PvP reward items have a rank requirement, just like normal items have a level requirement. Tese items will be very potent, and useful in both PvP and normal combat, although they will of course be tuned to provide the most benefit in player versus player battles. As you can see, even the lowest ranked item is of superior, or blue, quality, while the higher ranks eventually give you epic, or purple, items.

We're working very hard daily to fine-tune all the aspects of our upcoming PvP system, including further testing of the Battlegrounds and the ranking and rewards. We hope you'll bear with us as we continue to iron out the details and balance it for your enjoyment. We're as excited as you are to engage in a true player-versus-player system that will finally elevate the war between Horde and Alliance to the truly epic proportions it deserves. Thanks for being patient, and we hope to see you soon on the battlefields of Azeroth.