WRITTEN ARTICLE · BATTLEGROUND HONOR CHANGES
WoW Forever Honor changes: Alterac Valley and the other battlegrounds
Blizzard plans to make Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Darkspear Islands more rewarding relative to Alterac Valley. What the October 15 discussion means for your PvP plans.
What is changing about battleground Honor?
Blizzard wants more battlegrounds to feel worth your time in WoW Forever. In Wowhead’s October 15 report of the PvP podcast, Tim Jones describes making Alterac Valley less lucrative for Honor while increasing the appeal of Warsong, Arathi Basin and Darkspear Islands.
The direction is a move away from treating Alterac Valley as the automatic choice for every Honor session. The report does not provide exact multipliers or establish which battleground will earn the most Honor per hour for your character.
In this article
Game imagery © Blizzard Entertainment.
Do not turn the announcement into a farming tier list
A reward change and a measured result are different things. Queue length, match duration, wins, losses and how your group plays all affect what you take away from an evening. An old Classic farming recommendation cannot settle that comparison for a different set of rewards.
We would wait for current in-game reward values and repeated observations before naming a best battleground. A single fast match is a useful result for that group, not a reliable promise for everyone else.
| Useful question | What is still needed |
|---|---|
| Is Alterac Valley still best for Honor per hour? | Comparable sessions using the same current build and including queue time. |
| How much more Honor does each alternative give? | The actual reward values, not a guessed multiplier. |
| Are these changes already active in my beta session? | Current build notes or direct in-game confirmation. |
| Does more Honor mean faster leveling? | Separate XP evidence. Honor and character experience are different measures. |
How to fit battlegrounds around a leveling route
Decide what you want from the session before joining a queue. If you want to learn objectives with friends, a worthwhile evening does not have to beat questing on an experience spreadsheet. If your aim is a particular character level, keep that goal separate from your Honor total.
Before a PvP break, make a note of your next quest or hand-in. When you return, check the quest log and continue from that point. Avoid resetting a route simply because you spent part of the evening in a battleground.
Our Darkspear Islands guide covers its entry level, queue locations and objectives. Use that for the practical details. This article is about the newly discussed reward direction, rather than a replacement for the battleground guide.
A fair way to compare your own results
If you want to choose between battlegrounds, record the whole session. Include waiting time and unsuccessful matches rather than keeping only your best win. Keep the same build and character conditions when comparing results.
This is a suggested way to test your options. We have not run an Honor-per-hour benchmark, and we are not presenting an invented one.
- Record the build and date.
- Note time spent in the queue and inside each match.
- Record Honor gained separately from XP and reputation.
- Include whether you played solo or with a group.
- Compare several sessions before treating the result as a pattern.
Watch Blizzard’s PvP discussion
Episode 4 features Countdown To Classic with Josh Greenfield, Tim Jones, Savix and Tips Out. The official video is included below for the wider discussion. The specific Honor summary above is attributed to Wowhead’s report.
Related reading and guides
Sources and review notes
- Wowhead: Alterac Valley and other battleground Honor changes, October 15
- Blizzard: Explore PvP in Episode 4 of the Forever Podcast, October 15
Reviewed October 15 from Wowhead’s report of Blizzard’s PvP podcast and the official episode page. The reported direction is clear, but no numerical Honor table, measured Honor-per-hour ranking or confirmed deployment time is supplied here.
