The battlegrounds in World of Warcraft have seriously needed to be reworked. It’s been a clunky quest driven system while PvE has gotten a smoother interface and a more streamlined method of dealing with the daily hassle of doing a daily dungeon. We’re getting a rework in patch 3.3.3 including new calculations for honor and a new random battleground tool to replace the daily battleground quest.

Honor Changes

The amount of Honor awarded for an Honorable Kill has been increased by 100% for characters of all levels. Given that all avenues in the game which award players with Honor do so with a calculated conversion from a specific amount of Honorable Kills, this change means that all Honor players can obtain through various means will be increased by 100%. To offset against this in two key areas, experience gains in Battlegrounds have been reduced by 50% and Honor awarded for completing each Wintergrasp weekly quest has been reduced by 50%. When pairing the Honor rewarded from Honorable Kills being increased by 100% with the 50% Honor reduction from Wintergrasp weekly quests, and 50% experience-gain reduction from completing objectives in Battlegrounds, players will notice no change in the net amount of Honor or experience awarded in either case.

That’s a really confusing quote and it’s kind of hard to understand what they’re doing. Let’s break it down. Basically you’ll get double honor now for killing a player. In exchange, the Wintergrasp quests, the battleground objectives, and the experience gained in battlegrounds will be halved. This is supposed to even out to where you won’t notice a change in the amount of honor awarded in either case. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to mean that you’ll get the same amount of honor and XP as you get now or if the double honor from kills will make up for the rest. Whatever the change, you’ll be getting more honor now than before from killing other players and that’s a good thing.

Random Battleground Tool

You and up to four other adventurers can queue up now for a random battleground. Obviously the battleground will be selected randomly, but the rewards will be much greater than selecting the battleground like you normally would. This will only be available to level 80s, but Blizzard may change their mind about that in the future.

If you win the battleground then you’ll get 30 Honorable Kills worth of honor and 25 arena points. That’s until you win your first random battleground. Afterward, you’ll only gain 15 Honorable Kills worth of honor if you win. If you lose then you’ll get 5 Honorable Kills worth of honor regardless on your current standing.

This is a wonderful change from the daily quest and gives more players an incentive to PvP. It also helps get people in the battlegrounds that are fun but aren’t in any way efficient for farming honor (and makes them worthwhile too). This is something big to look forward to.

Holiday Bonus Changes

The weekly call to arms will be changed a bit. The weekend holiday bonus now be known as “Call to Arms”  and changes the way additional honor is awarded. You’ll now get a flat honor award instead of just double honor. The first win a day of a Call to Arms battleground will award 30 Honorable Kills in honor and 25 arena points. Each additional win will give you 15 Honorable Kills worth of honor. Losing will give you just 5 Honorable Kills worth of honor regardless of if you’ve won or lost.

These bonuses WILL NOT apply if you do the random dungeon option.

Marks of Honor WILL BE removed. This means that you’ll no longer have to farm a SPECIFIC instance in order to get a piece of gear! So spend yours now or wait to use the traders when 3.3.3 hits who will trade your marks in for honor.

So far the system looks like it’ll be a ton of fun and give us a bit more balance into the battlegrounds that are neglected while giving honor farmers a bit more honor. This will make the PvP grind a bit easier and more attractive to newer PvP players. Kind of a PvP boost if you will.

Wintergrasp Changes

The internal balance changes will be changed. If you want the technical details then click here. Basically if one side KEEPS winning then it makes it easier for them to lose. A simple yet needed change for some servers that have too many people on one side interested in Wintergrasp and not enough on the other.

Overall these changes seem to appeal to the casual crowd who are intimidated by the PvP system. This makes it easier and more accessible meaning that PvP might return as one of the main activities in the WoW end game. During WotLK PvP has kind of been on the back burner as players focused more on the more accessible PvE, but these changes will hopefully boost it up enough that we’ll see more PvP going into Cataclysm and a more varied endgame.