The link: http://wow-europe.com/en/pvp/pvp-article-part2.html
Ahhh, the much awaited honor system. Some players felt it would help with the stupid ganking. Some felt it wouldn't. I don't think anybody anticipated that it would actually make things worse. But so it shall.
Now, let me first put things in perspective, for the uninitiated. “Ganking” or “griefing“ generally refers to killing characters being controlled by other human beings. This can refer to fair, even sided combat, but it more often refers to high level characters attacking much lower level characters that have no hope of defending themselves. This is extremely frustrating, and since there's no real reward for doing it, it's clear that people do it solely to upset and frustrate other players. Hence the term “griefing.”
To give an example of how this plays out, there's a city in WOW called Booty Bay, where both Alliance and Horde characters are common. There's a L60 Undead Mage named “Crosis” who spends hours a day, running around killing lower level characters. L60 is the highest level, and this person's devotion to fucking up the game for everyone else is so powerful, that his name is legend among all Alliance players. Once, when I was joking with another Alliance player about “loving and understanding the Horde,” he said “you wouldn't say that if you'd ever met Crosis.” He's that much of an asshole, and the game does that little to rein him in.
This is what some optimistic rubes felt the honor system would solve. How wrong they were.
“[W]hen you kill other players or aggressive PvP-enabled non-player characters (NPCs) in your level range, you will receive an honorable kill. All your honorable kills for a week are then calculated to give you an honor score for that week, which then translates into an honor ranking. This honor ranking carries with it titles and material rewards, and eventually, officer status and other perks.”
So, point number one, is that they're going to reward players for “honorable” kills. What's honorable? “If you would get experience for killing a monster of the same level as the opposing player (i.e. their level number is not colored gray to you), then you'll get an Honorable Kill.” Again, to put that in perspective, anything within about 8 levels of you will fit this criteria. Thus, my L45 Mage could get an honorable kill for attacking a L40 Horde. In case it's not clear, it would be trivially easy for me to do this. Even at a pretty severe disadvantage, I would win this fight every single time. But, it would still be an honorable kill. What's the outcome? The outcome is that it's now actually advantageous to kill every enemy PC you see. I used to wave at them, ignore them, maybe even help them out. Now I can get loot for killing them. What do you think the outcome will be?
Ok, but how about dishonorable kills?
“In fact, if you kill an NPC who is not PvP-enabled or who is PvP-enabled and trivial, you will gain a Dishonorable Kill.” Yeah, that's right. You only get dishonorable kills for killing NPCs. You can do like Crosis does, and run around killing human controlled PCs all day, and not even get a dishonorable kill for it. But there's more: “As it stands now, when you accrue a Dishonorable Kill, it will not have a negative impact on your current honor ranking.” So, to sum up, you can't get dishonorable kills for killing PCs, and even if you could, it wouldn't matter.
Jesus Blizzard, you guys are fucking retarded. Seriously. You need to stop.