I think the fun of pre-nerf was the idea I could get several pieces before BC.

Now I'll probably only get one. That's one more than I thought I'd get, so I'm not complaining.

But that nerf gave the smell of grind - which when its transparent to me I don't mind and I seem to enjoy.

But something about them specifically saying "we want something to take you longer to get" rubbed me the wrong way.
 

Tobold's observations match what I've seen in the past and commented-on under another post:
AV is the place to honor-grind. Historically, both AB and WSG are inferior if you are looking for honor currency. This is because honor was, and still is, about bonus honor, not about HKs, and AV is the place to get bonus honor.
A purely efficient honor grinder will probably play AB and WSG only on their holiday weekends, and AV otherwise. I'd guess that the marks requirements will pretty much take care of themselves.

And yes, the new system has turned PvP into another grind classic WoW grind. Under the previous PvP reward system you were competing against other players (and yes, that was really tough) - but now you're grinding. Attitudes of PvP-ers have predictably adjusted to this reality, for better or worse.

The main effects of the PvP rewards rework were threefold IMO:
- Opened all PvP rewards to everyone (Great! But with the caveat that these are the level-60 'old-school' Tier 2 PvP epics)
- Left the impression that these items could be gained quickly (Not so, especially for casuals)
- Left the impression that the PvP gear-gap would or could be closed (Not so, the hardcore PvP-ers quickly rounded out their sets and are now banking honor currency toward level-70 items while the rest of us slowly grind toward the items they're already using)

It's turned out to be "easier epics" rather than "easy epics".
And the 30% off sale ended last Tuesday.
Sorry, the new merchandise will not be in until mid-January.

Maybe some gear-inequity concerns will be abated by the promised gear-matched PvP. But who knows? (Shrug.) Gear inequity hasn't ever stopped badly-overmatched level-51s from jumping into AV...

IMO, the best thing about the new PvP rewards system is that the PvP-er has gained choice of slot of reward item. But I'm under no illusions; I'll just play within the system as it is as long as I'm enjoying myself and am being rewarded in some way.
 

Personally, I think that the new honor system was released badly unfinished and the 30% honor nerf was just made to scare the casuals away from the BG servers to ease the load.

For example, the Arathi Basin weapons are more expensive than High Warlord weapons, but are vastly inferior. The number of marks you gain from battlegrounds is ridiculous when compared to the honor. An average player probably has a stack full of each of the mark types before he can afford any of the epics. So, my guess is that most just rush through Alterac Valley (14 honor per elite killed), kill the boss and ignore the opposition. In fact, I already have seen AV games where there were less than 10 kills total. A bloodless match can't be far away. I have written about some of the unintended consequences as well.
 

What I find strange is that Blizzard's developers probably though something along the lines of "Oh shit, there are people getting X epics in just a few days!!..", which is basically just true about the hardcore grinders but not for the casuals. Well, Blizzard seem to be pretty fond of diminishing returns, so why not add just that to the honor gain? The "honor nerf" would just be applied after you've earned let's say 5000 honor in a day (Just picking a more or less random number.). It wouldn't matter much for the hardcore players because they would still get their items long before the casuals, but the casuals wouldn't be punished for the hardcores gathering their gear too quick. Imagine the outcries after such an implementation though. :)
 

I did a one AV last night where we faced I guess a guild from Frostmourne (or Frost-something server). Every single Horde player was from the one server. We figured they must have all queued at exactly the same time to manage such a clever stunt. Their second clever act was to annihilate us. I managed to break through the front line at SF GY and got down to Coldtooth Mine, which is where the Pally scared the hell out of me by healing me as I sat down to eat. We decided to cap Coldtooth then trinket back to Dun Baldar (rather than go for FW GY) but it was practically pointless as the Horde racked up a 25-min win.

I then played several AB games and lost them all, got 55 HKs for the evening and wound up with barely 200 Honor.

Shalkis is right on. Most of us will have all the Honor Marks we need (& more) before we have enough Honor to buy our Epics. I have 15 AB Marks but want 40. I doubt I'll have the Honor to compliment those 40 Marks, so then I'll hit AV. But I only need another 11 AV Marks there, so again, I'll have more Marks than I need and will end up turning them in for more Honor.
 

@ Capn John
Can you turn excess marks in for additional honor at this time? I was under the impression that this was not possible at this time. If anyone can verify that, it would be most helpful.
 

Brian,

Thanks for pointing out the blue-name marks update. I guess it was nice of Blizz to at least admit another byproduct of a poorly-thought-out and poorly-tested new PvP system.
I will point out that the 30% honor currency nerf is likely to lead to 30% more useless marks. I wouldn't be surprised if the fix was: Honor nerfed even more, and marks-for-honor exchange brought back. I personally would welcome an additional incentive to actually win a BG.

Like you, I'm a reasonably-geared level 60. So when I calculated that I could probably get fully decked-out in PvP epics in... six months of pretty hard PvP, I decided that was not for me, so I PvP for fun only, when I want a break from questing for epic mount gold or want to fill in a ½ hour between other stuff. Six months from today my main will likely be level 70, have completed many of the Outland quests, and be running the new instances rather than still repeatedly playing the same old battlegrounds I haunted for two months in the lead-up to the 2.0.1 patch -- to earn level-60 stuff.