I'm noticing at least couple threads spiraling off-topic towards the general issue of the implications of the new honor system, so I thought it might be helpful to direct those conversations to one place.

The main issues seem to be:

1. Ease of access to GM/HWL items.
2. Imbalance between premade and pickup groups.
3. Honor accrual being more efficient than "intended" (may still be the case post-adjustment).
4. Marks of Honor rotting in mailboxes with no place to spend them (will be exacerbated post-adjustment).

Feel free to supplement if there are any glaring oversights.

A note on the tokens you can always use the excess to pick up the 4 PVP mounts. Those would take 120 of each token type and if I am not mistaken there would be no honor cost associated with the purchase.

the honor adjustment seems roughly 50%, so its still relatively easy and I think flyinfungi hit the nail on the head. Gives casuals a leg up on the grind to 70 that they wouldn't otherwise have.

As far as premade vs pug goes - who cares? Thats like saying a pick up group should be able to take on a highschool/college/pro team in any sport. Sure the gear is usually different, but overall its the teamwork that wins the battle. Ive been grinding in premades pretty hard since the patch and it is definately still possible to beat t3 premades - even if it is a little more difficult. The DPS buff didnt change much of this anyway - most guilds prioritize t3 drops to classes other than dps since they get a sizable upgrade in AQ40 where tanking/healing classes are still getting pretty much t2-t3 upgrades with naxx loot.

A premade playing as a team verses a premade just stuffing around, you can make this argument, but a premade with careful class balance (read: no protection warriors) and everyone on a Vent server verses a mismash of people from various servers is indicative of a broken queueing system. That the premade people should get any honour from destroying a pickup group, as if they wouldn't have, the entire mechanic is just broken. Would you pay money to see Manchester United against an amateur team consisting of 50 year old portly men huffing across a field?

I tried some organised guild PvP for a couple of matches, it consisted of the raid leader queueing us between WSG and AB until we came across a PuG, auto-accepting out of a match if it looked like we were against an alliance premade, simply because premade verses PuG was the way for honour grinding. I tried doing AB as a PuG, if we were against a premade we'd get 5-capped and have our arses handed to us, but when it was a pickup verses a pickup it was quite competitive and fun.

[edit] grammar, as always

Obvious PvP system recommendations:

1) Seperate BG queues for pre-mades vs. soloers.

2) Eliminate BG token costs on everything. Allow Marks of Honor to be turned in for honor/cash/whatever.

3) Add more diverse items to the Honor System, including consumables, gems, etc.

It doesn't really matter if all the Honor System rewards are easy to hardcore players to get, since the rewards aren't very good anyway. Leveling from 1-60 is pretty easy too, but in fact that's one of the great strengths of WoW. The PvP Arena system is always there for more competitive/hardcore players, the Honor System should be very casual friendly.

2) It's actually very frustrating just to join WSG or AB game alone atm because of the numerous premades farming them. Getting spawncamped by a T2.5-T3 equipped team when your team is running in blues without any kind of communication is just not nice for either of the teams. Maybe "join as a group" and "join bg" buttons should join different queues, so that a team with less than 5/10 premade would never have to fight a 10/10 premade team. I'd guess that the queues would still be minimal with the current amount of games running.

Sometimes you just want to go to BG's PoM-Pyroing everything that moves without having to worry too much about your teams performance...

You can't eliminate pre-mades vs pugs without dramatically increasing the honor you receive versus premades. I mean, half the incentive for organizing in the first place is to get honor quickly, which you do by rolling pugs/crappy pre-mades as fast as possible. Matching systems would just drastically increase queue times for people who are organized, and lead to more long 3-2 battles, both of which would mean you be better solo queueing AV for honor, which is stupid. People who take the time and effort to organize in PvP should get honor faster and easier, just like a guild who organizes progresses through PvE content faster.

Sure, but that's not competitive PvP - that's you wanting to go have fun. Ideally there would be a world pvp venue for that type of thing, or you really shouldn't be caring about the scoreboard if that is all you want to do.

The level 70 rewards are not nearly as impressive, for the level, as the level 60 ones. The weapons are all blues, as is most of the armour - it's just epic belt, bracers, boots and cloak, if I recall correctly.

So I don't think it will have too significant an effect if people hoover up the whole lot as soon as they ding 70.

The arena system is where the real rewards are at. The rewards you buy with regular old honor is the equvalent of going and getting your blue set from Strat/Scholo/etc. (2 years ago obviously).

2) There’s a problem with most premade vs. pug suggestions because a lot of people join as a group who aren’t actually teams, but just 2-3 friends who want to play together. I’m sure they won’t enjoy suddenly being defined as a team and always pitched against Naxx farming guilds that only need to glance at the opposing team to cause them to instantly explode with character deleting critical hits.

I would like to see some kind of actual premade team functionality built in, where players can actually say “we are a premade” and the ones admitting to it all get paired together. I don’t care if this just means they get additional marks and honour, unique items, or there’s a massive ELO based battleground premade ranking system, just something with enough incentive to pull people away from it. I know full-well this wouldn’t stop it, because when we go against premades in WSG a lot of them just AFK out, supposedly because they get more honour just fighting the PUGs, but it might act as a deterrent, and the stronger teams will definitely want to show people what they’re made of.

Of course I’d also like to see the government rounding up chavs and putting then in a Battle Royale contest with the twist that they forget to deactivate the winner’s collar. Sometimes you’ve got to be realistic about these things. Maybe the friends/premade distinction will have to go altogether, if you’re grouped you fight groups.

4) This doesn’t matter to me really. They serve a small purpose of giving all battlegrounds some traffic and I don’t think they need to do more than that. I only wish they stopped sending them me once I have 100, having to delete them once you have 5+ pages to get to your gold selling advertisement spam and rejected auctions is a pain.

Also: At 70 the rewards are pretty lacklustre, but it also contains impressive Gems. However these already have restrictions in place: the honour cap and them being unique, people aren't going to buy loads of them because they can only get them when they've something to put them in.

I find it ironic that you complain about the way the system works, while at the same time telling us how you exploited it. Anyways, personally I think organized groups stomping pugs should be incentive for them to smarten up. Group up, learn some some tactics, maybe even meet some new people. Seems like the fundamental MMO experience. You can't beat a dungeon with 1 person, so you look for some friends, then you go and do the dungeon. Same thing for PvP.

Personally I took every single game we queued for and only lost 1 basin, in about 25-30 hours, because our alt casters (with maraudon blues) couldn't stand up to T3 shaman and deoi windfury trains. That being said, we only lost the game 16xx-2000. We probably played 40-50% organized groups and 5 capped about 90% of them. TBH these organized groups were pretty much geared only in MC/BWL gear, with perhaps a few early AQ pieces thrown in, and of course, some honor system epics.