Zarhym has announced today major upcoming battleground and honor changes. These changes will be present in the next minor content patch, which will be on the PTR soon. Some of the key points:

• Marks of Honor are going away.
• Holiday weekends will now be denoted as "Call to Arms" and award tiered system of honor for participation. The tier is based on you winning or losing the battleground, and if you've won or lost before.
• Honor kills reward 100% more honor, Wintergrasp weekly quests give 50% less honor, and XP rewarded from honor kills are reduced by 50%.
• Implementation of the Random Battleground Finder -- much like the current Random Dungeon Finder. There are further honor rewards, which are similar to the ones provided by the Call to Arms.

Obviously, there are a ton of implications in these changes to the basic way people participate in PvP. These changes also represent a good start to the massive overhaul we'll see in Cataclysm when rated battlegrounds are introduced.

The full statement after the break.

From Zarhym:

We have several changes planned for Battlegrounds in the next minor content patch and would like to share them with you now. This patch will be available for public testing and we encourage you to participate, queue up and provide some feedback on these changes.

• Firstly, say goodbye to Battleground Marks of Honor. We feel this currency system is a bit outdated and are getting rid of it. Any items which require these marks as currency will have their costs adjusted appropriately to remove this requirement. The quest NPCs will still be available to award players Honor for turning in leftover marks, but this is only to help players clear this expired currency.
• Next, the Battleground holiday weekend will now be denoted as "Call to Arms" in the Battleground tab and Calendar. If you prefer a specific Battleground over all others, look for those words next to its name to determine whether or not you'll receive bonus Honor. The bonus awards for Call to Arms Battlegrounds have been adjusted.
  
  
  • Winning a Call to Arms Battleground for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
  • Additional Call to Arms Battleground victories after the first win for a player that day will award them with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
  • Losing a Call to Arms Battleground will award players with 5 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
• To bring the rate at which players obtain PvP rewards with Honor more in-line with the rate at which players obtain PvE rewards via the Dungeon Finder, we'll also be increasing the amount of Honor awarded for an Honorable Kill by 100%. In light of this, the amount of experience provided from an Honorable Kill, and the amount of Honor awarded for completing the Wintergrasp weekly quests, have been reduced by 50%.
  
  It's important to note one thing about these 50% decreases. All Honor awarded for completing objectives in Battlegrounds and Wintergrasp is actually based on an Honorable Kill conversion rate. So if you destroy a tower in Alterac Valley for example, the Honor you're awarded is actually based on a flat number of Honorable Kills. Since Honorable Kills will now award 100% more Honor, completing such objectives will also award more Honor. This is why experience gains based on completing Battleground objectives and Honor awarded from the Wintergrasp quests are being decreased by 50%.
• Now that we hopefully have your attention, we're pleased to announce the implementation of the Random Battleground system! This system will work virtually the same as the Random Dungeon option in the Dungeon Finder. Players can queue with a group of up to five players for a Random Battleground in the Battleground tab. As with the Random Dungeon option, the Battleground chosen will not be revealed until players zone into the Battleground for which they are selected. The bonus rewards for this system are identical to the updated Call to Arms bonuses.
  
  
  • Winning a Battleground using the Random Battleground option for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
  • Winning additional Battlegrounds using the Random Battleground option after the first random win will award players with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
  • Losing a Battleground using the Random Battleground option will award players with 5 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
  • When using the Random Battleground option, players will not receive additional rewards if the Battleground chosen is under the effects of the Call to Arms bonuses. In other words, the bonuses do not stack. In addition, if a player has been rewarded 30 Honorable Kills worth of bonus Honor currency from either the Random Battleground system, or the Call to Arms Battleground, he or she will be rewarded 15 Honorable Kills worth of bonus Honor currency that day for each additional victory. This applies whether the Random Battleground system is used, or the Call to Arms Battleground is chosen specifically, as a player cannot be rewarded the full amount of bonus Honor more than once per day.

All of these features and changes will be available in the next minor patch which should be hitting the public test realms in the near future. Please help us out by testing this system and providing your feedback so we can make some fine-tuning adjustments before the patch's release.

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Patch 3.3.3 is up on the PTR and as with every new patch there's a flurry of new information. Check out the official patch notes, changes to battlegrounds, new achievements that hint at future content, new models (and more new models) in the game files, things to do with those pesky frozen orbs, UI updates, and perhaps more to come before it hits the live realms.

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Tags: battleground, battleground-finder, breaking, honor-kill, makr-of-honor, marks-of-honor, patch-3.3.3, ptr, public-test-relam, pvp, random-battleground-finder, wow-patch-3.3.3, wow-patch-3.3.3-ptr, zarhym

Filed under: News items, PvP