I really cannot find even a little good piece on what Blizzard proposed. It’s simply flawed in all its points. It’s a bucket of water filled with holes. It’s simply impossible to suggest a “fix”.

So I’ll simply repeat how the model should work. It’s all old stuff I fear.

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Instead of a ladder for the catass you should just gain honor by strictly achieving goals (and not by ganking freely). Honor points make you “unblock” ranks. These ranks are based on a fixed amount of honor points you have to gain.

For each rank you have stuff and specific skills (area based, moral bonuses to your faction members etc…).

When you unblock a rank, though, you cannot use your powers directly. You need to actively flag yourself with that rank to be able to use them. The players have to form squads, so that there could be one “Knight” (for example) only if there are another 10 “normal” players flagged as “Private”.

The ranks are then “voted”. All the players that unblocked the rank are eligible. If an higher rank is already chosen, the player will have to fill a different role. So a “Knight” may be forced to downgrade himself in the case the rank isn’t available or is already filled.

The systems allows to set roles in the battlefield. Where the lower ranks have different goals to achieve and where the higher ranks work as support to boost up the effectivity of their allies with area-based bonuses and other special powers. Both the high ranks and the lowers play side by side.

This simple system would avoid the free ganking (because you unblock the ranks by accomplishing goals, no matter how much you gank), it would allow newbies to play along with the experienced players, improving the overall sense of community, because a pure catass will be able to play its role only if there are enough “newbies” around and, finally, the system would also mantain the integrity of the rank system because you’ll never see the “Knights” or the other high ranks outnumber the Privates/Scouts.

All this would also still allow to gather statistics about the kills to display then on a dedicate website with various types of ladders.

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My proposed system to calculate “honor” is also way better than Blizzard’s “honor points work like the exp”.
And my battle system is still more complete, accessible and fun to play for *everyone*.