Mini Patch 1.8.4

[Concillian]

Since the goal of Battleground players is different.  Some just want to rank up, get rewards, etc.  Some want to just play PvP on a more even field than world PvP can provide.  Some just like the strat and challenge that PvP offers, etc. You need to try and work the rewards so the min max, get my honor people, have the same incentive to do a 30 minute match as they do to do 3 10 minute matches or 6 five minute matches or whatever.
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Yes, this is the root of the issue, and the proposed changes would help.

5 minute max flag duration = forced heavy conflict and shorter WSG matches... coupled with the AFK debuff should significantly reduce AFKing. This addresses one of the main issues with WSG... the fact that it can last a long time.

weighted team bonus honor values = less incentive for the organized honor machine teams to find easy opponents / more incentive to stay and fight a difficult opponent and not just AFK out looking for an easy opponent.

There is already greater honor for killing higher rank people, but by and large, the way to rank up is not the honor through killing, it's the bonus honor received from accomplishing BG objectives (especially winning).

But yeah, there is a need to even the playing field. In my mind, putting a mechanism in place for team weighting is the first step towards the ideal world... cross server BGs (a pipe-dream perhaps). Weighting teams then allows matching up of ~even teams, and cross server BGs would then allow matchups of similar gear/ability levels, at least as close of matching as I can see happening in WoW.

This then satisfies all comers. You work against people approximately at your rank on the ladder and you have to beat them to advance up the ladder. There would be a low incentive to AFK because you'd get matched up with other similar teams. Newcomers wouldn't have to know all the tricks and strategies, as they'd end up matched against other low rank players, but as they climbed the ladder they'd have to learn advanced strategies to have any hope of competing against the tougher opponents.