Quote:i've thought that there should be a zero-sum honor system. You get killed, a small fraction of your 'honor' gets transferred to the person/group that killed you. If a member of a group gets killed, the group shares the dishonor ... protect your priest!
People have worked out ladder systems in great detail; what I'm suggesting is a kind of ladder system for honor. There's plenty of issues to be worked out -- decay of honor/dishonor? normalization? etc -- but it ought to be workable.
I am afraid that zero-sum just further penalizes lesser-geared or lower-level players in the current system. One of my biggest problems with the honor system on PvP servers is that it isn't half as difficult to kill someone who is already fighting a mob, but it is potentially worth more than half as much honor. (Honor is awarded based on the damage your group deals to a target during the fight; damage from a mob decreases the available honor in proportion to that damage).
The threat of the 'other side' (or being that threat) is the thrill of a PvP server, but the "Honor" system provides greater rewards for ganking than for a fair fight. If zero-sum rules were added to this system, then lowbies would potentially have levels and levels of dishonor to grind off.