Well, that was a nice little dream while it lasted.
The latest patch of the PTR has substantially reduced the value of each Mark of Honor you get from each battleground from 2000 to 185. This means that grinding Marks is no longer going to give you a massive bank of honor, but that’s not why this a big deal. That’s a theoretical loss, one where we never had the value of that bank to begin with. No one had an actual bank of 1.2 million honor that was just wiped out.
No, the important part is that the current, actual value of a Mark of Honor will go from 248 to 185, or a 25.5% loss to the value of your Marks of Honor over the current trade-in quests. In exchange for the convenience of being able to turn them in individually instead of in matched sets, you will only realize 75% of the honor value of each Mark.
Now, I don’t know if the Concerted Efforts / For Great Honor quests are going away. It didn’t really matter before, what with the crazy hyper inflated honor rush we were about to experience. But now it really matters.
If the quests stay, then this reduction becomes nothing more than a convenience charge. I actually like this model — if you can get all 6 battlegrounds and turn in the marks together, you effectively get a bonus over turning them in singly. Okay, that’s cool. I can live with that.
If the quests are taken away, though… Well, then there are a lot of players who just lost out on a lot of potential honor.
Okay! Back to the honor grind! See you in Alterac Valley!
Cynwise's Warcraft Manual 
Uh… this sucks. Bad. I was saving marks for my Black Elekk (only need 7 AV marks now) and I figured I’d just turn them all in and tada! Mount and leftover honor. And now… meh. Back to farming AV I guess.
Ugh. I was also working on getting marks for a mount, saw the changes and went, hmm, or I could stop now and just use honor later. Guess I better finish up losing AV another 13 times before 3.3.3.
If it’s any consolation on the mount grind, the 90 tokens you’re getting are worth 22,320 honor right now. The price in 3.3.3 is 50,000 honor — more than double — but it’s probably easier to get since you can get honor from anywhere (especially Wintergrasp quests.)
Personally, I’m still missing 2 of the 5 war mounts, and all the Halaa Talbuks. I’ll get them someday. 😦
I only PvPed for leveling… so it’s not something I’m particularly interested in doing anymore. I just like the mount. Have to decide if losing 7 more AVs is easier than doing some WG…
Are you going for the Stormpike Battle Charger?
If so, that ram is TOTALLY worth it.
no, for the elekk. because draenei look ugly on anything else
I like that, if that’s the system they do — a little bonus if you turn in a matched set, a nerf if you turn them in individually. I mean, as much as anyone EVER likes a nerf…but that’s a sensible system and I can get behind that. Here’s hoping it’s that way and not the other way you listed.
“if you can get all 6 battlegrounds and turn in the marks together”
yeah. good luck with that. I’ve been queuing up for since I got to the right level for the SotA and IoC BGs at various times of the day and after being in the queue for hours and hours each time I’m still yet to get in ONE battle let alone enough to use up all my AV marks.
I have found this to be highly level-dependent. I have terrible time getting into SotA and IoC in the 70s bracket. I don’t think I’ve *ever* gotten a IoC in the 70s bracket.
The 80 bracket, however, is thriving. SotA is one of the fastest queues to pop, and IoC pops about as often as AV.
I share this frustration — I can’t turn in my 99 marks on my DK because I have zero IoC marks — but often it’s a problem with the bracket in your battlegroup, and things change when you level up.
Since faction changes Horde BG queues are impossible. At slow times in Rampage battlegroup it takes 20 to 30 minutes for one of the popular battlegrounds like WSG to pop, and IOC never pops at all.
That is at 80, and on a well populated battlegroup. The BG finder had better work to even this out or getting my Wrathful gear just isn’t going to happen.
I’ve heard that about Rampage queue times, and you definitely have my sympathy. I really do hope the BG finder helps – it should, in theory, but we will have to see how it translates in practice.
Y’all make me appreciate the Ruin battlegroup more and more. Solid PvP at all levels, thriving twink community, and very short queues at level 80.
Now if only we could do something about those premades from Warsong… 🙂
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