Early versions of the game introduced an honor system in which players were rewarded for participating in PvP campaigns of any type. The honor system was divided into 14 ranks of increasing achievement. [4]. Rankings were updated on a weekly basis, and each player’s PvP statistics would be published on the World of Warcraft website. Published rankings for that period were broken down into server and factions, so that players of individual servers could compare and compete with their fellow faction members.

There were several statistics associated with this honor system:

Honor kills (HK) is the number of opposing players which were killed.
Dishonorable kills (DK, or less commonly DHK) is a penalty applied when higher level players would kill lower level players or NPCs. This penalty was applied to earned honor, reducing that players honor, and might even reduce their rank.
Earned honor, or honor points, was a weighted value which took into consideration the rank of the successful kill. Killing players of higher rank would earn more honor than players of lower rank, yet each would earn a single HK. A law of diminishing returns was integrated into the system to prevent the exploitation of repeatedly killing the same player. Successive kills of the same player would earn less honor, until no honor was earned.
The honor system was subject to “honor decay”. If players did not participate in PvP, their earned honor points would begin to decay, reducing players rank to consecutive lower ranks. Higher rankings would decay at a faster rate, until one could ultimately lose their ranking. It was not uncommon to see a player who was at rank 14 suddenly demoted to a lower rank, in the space of a single week.

The cities of Orgrimmar and Stormwind houses a special “officer quarters” which players of rank six or higher were entitled to access. Inside were vendors from which players could purchase rewards based on current rank. For players who were lower than rank six, another vendor was located outside this building who would sell a limited inventory, also based on current rank.

These vendors would sell equipment only based on current rank; if a players rank decayed to a lower rank, that player was no longer eligible to purchase the higher ranked rewards. During this period, it was not uncommon for players to “make the rush”, earning the highest level rank possible, and then purchasing all available rewards before they were locked out. This particular issue was eventually removed, thus allowing players to purchase rewards based upon their lifetime rank, rather than current rank.

Ultimately, this entire honor system was scrapped in favor of the current system introduced with patch 2.0.1, released 2006-12-05. Titles which were previously attainable by achieving large amounts of honor, though no longer attainable, were retained by those who had earned them prior to the patch.

Both honor decay and dishonor was removed. Killing lower level characters gains no honor, but does not have the adverse affect of diminishing honor. Killing NPCs nets no honor at all, regardless of the NPC or players levels. Honor kills is now a running total of all kills, and earned honor is still weighted against the opposing characters PvP accomplishments; more or less honor is earned depending on the opponents individual PvP statistics. Accumulated honor is now used as a type of currency for purchasing gear and items. [5]

Sample PvP statsTo illustrate some of these statistics, a sample screenshot is provided on the left.

This player is of the Horde faction. This is indicated by the icon which is located to the right of the word “Honor”. Alliance players have a corresponding icon.
Due to the presence of an honor rank, First Sergeant, this indicates that this player participated in PvP prior to the honor system changes detailed above. This rank indicated is a Horde title, in this case, First Sergeant being Rank 5.
Player has accumulated a total of 3,406 lifetime kills; 102 being the prior day.
Accumulated honor is 2092, which is a calculated value based on a number of related statistics.
Player does not participate in the arena system, as the lack of stats for the arena indicates.
Comparatively, this player does not often participate in PvP campaigns.