Ive noticed alot of people are still confused with the way the various aspects of PvP work, I have found this excellent guide on the offical forums (Guide )

However for those who are blocked from the wow site:

For the official line, read here:
http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thre...en&t=38518&p=1

This is compiled from information gained from the above, plus:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/p...cle-part2.html
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...=1#post2309447
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/rewards-armor.html
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/h...ystem-faq.html
Please read at the links above, thoroughly.

Update
Good theoretical analysis of honour system for number geeks:
https://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thr...mp=1#post53747

Today, I updated required number of kills to rank for the week.

Honour System.

How do I get honour?

By killing players of a similar level, in the same way as killing mobs. If the player is grey, you won't get an honourable kill.

By killing certain NPCs. Faction leaders are probably the only people. You do NOT get it for killing guards, or quest givers, or random town members, or vendors, flight masters or anything else.

More info here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...=1#post2761331


* What's all this about kills and contribution points?

Kills are only a guide. They will not affect your rank directly.

Whenever you damage a PvP opponent, you're up for a share of Contribution Points (CPs), if that opponent dies. If you're solo, and do 10% of the damage to someone, you get 10% of the CPs for that kill. If you're in a group, and you do 10% of the damage to someone, your group shares 10% of the CPs for that kill (if they're close enough, just like experience).


Your level affects the maximum amount of honour you can earn in a week. Lower level equals a LOT LESS honour points per CP.


If you're in a 40 person raid, and your raid kills 1 person, each person will get 1/40th of the CPs for that kill, even though they will all log a kill (honourable or otherwise).

Update

There is no 50% reduction, like vs monsters, but there is also no group bonus. Raids are generally not a good idea, unless fighting other raids of similar sizes.


CPs are calculated daily and are somewhat complicated. The number of CPs you get per kill varies on a number things, like the level of the person you attack, how many times you've killed that person, the PvP rank of the person you attack, and so forth.

Repeat Kills
o The first time you kill someone you get 100% of the CPs
o The second time, you get 75%
o The third time, you get 50%
o The fourth time, 25%
o Fifth and any subsequent times are worth nothing.


Put simply, if you're a level 60 champion attacking a level 50 private for the 5th time, you're going to get a lot less CPs than if you're killing a level 60 grand marshal for the first time. If you gank the same person repeatedly, you will end up getting not additional CPs for the kill (although your kill counter will continue to increase).


In the next patch, a rough guide to CPs will appear after you make a kill. It won't be the final number, but will give you an idea of what to be looking for.


At the end of the week (during maintenance) your percentage of CPs against your entire faction will be used to calculate how many honour points you get, which in turn will be used to calculate your rank. The total honour points pool has a fixed minimum which can be increased by killing faction leaders and doing various battlegrounds stuff.


For this reason, the number of CPs you have will affect how you rank differently on each realm. There is no x CP = rank y formula.


Update

PvP ranks are compiled once a week, and will coincide with the weekly server maintenance. There is a minimum number of honorable kills per week required for eligibility; this number is flexible and depends on the average number of honorable kills for your realm that week.


Based on the number of contribution points received per week and the amount of people involved in PvP combat, a rating value is assessed for each player. This value is used to determine progression through the PvP ranks.


* What about Vanish/Divine Shield/Feign Death? I heard they reduce my CPs

This is nonsense, probably spread by a paladin who thought he was losing out.


* Hey, wait. I keep getting killed when I land/come out of instances

Well, as of the next patch (1.4.1) a 'buff' will disply that shows that you're worth no honour for 30 seconds after landing/zoning. This is currently the case, but the buff is not displayed. Hopefully, this will prevent some of that camping.


* Is there dishonour?

Dishonourable kills are logged, but currently nothing is done with this data. Dishonourable kills DO NOT negatively affect your contribution points.


As mentioned above, dishonour for killing NPCs will be in the next patch.


* What? No dishonour?

Yes, that's right. The problem is complicated. It's not easy to put in a dishonour system that won't be abused just as much as no dishonour. Think about it. If I received dishonour for killing a low level player, then I'd be sure to take some level 1s along on a raid so that the enemy couldn't use AoE without risking dishonour.


You're now going to tell me that if they're in the raid, then they're valid targets. Ok, that's fine. What if they're not in the raid. What if they just sit on the sidelines, waiting to be attacked and cause dishonour.


* The honour tab. It confuses me

You, and lots of other people, it seems. Here's the lowdown.

Here's a sample. I'll update it when the US servers have been updated. It's not me, by the way.

http://www.redutopia.com/showimage.php?image=15724

This Session: Exactly what you think. What you've managed since you've been logged in.


Yesterday: Your contribution for yesterday. It's updated at some point during the night, and not until you cross continents or log out/in, as I understand it. It contains only information for the last day, not the last week. That's why it's called 'Yesterday' and not 'The last few days'


Last Week: This is updated during maintenance (at a guess). At this point, all the CPs you've got from the tiptop kills week will be added up and worked out as a percentage against other players on your faction. Yes, this means that 100 CPs for you can (and probably will) give wildly different results than someone on another server.

Standing is how you stack up against others on your realm and faction, in terms of contribution points for that week only.


Lifetime: The all time stats. Obviously, it can't contain a rank until you've been alive for a week, and achieved enough honour for a rank.


* I'm a priest. What about healers?

If you're in a group, and someone does some damage, you'll get a share of CPs, just like with experience for killing monsters. If you're solo, and just healing people randomly then, no, you will get nothing. Sorry. Join a group.


* Won't AoE be great?

For racking up kill numbers, sure it will. As mentioned above, this has little bearing on CPs (and therefore rank), though. It's about the amount of damage you do. Small damage to 10 people might be as much as large damage to 1. Plus, if they run away and don't die, no CPs at all for you, my friend.


* PvP Ranks?

There are 14 ranks for each faction. They're distributed on some kind of curve, so that there will be very few (1 in 1000) people with rank 14, whilst many, many people can be rank 1. Each rank has different rewards.


Your rank is based on Honour points (HPs). HPs are calculated, based on your CPs as a percentage of your faction's realm's CPs. This means that if you get 10% of the CPs for your realm, you'll get 10% of the honour. This also means that you can be standing 1, but only by a tiny margin, and therefore not actually receive a huge amount of HPs, whereas someone who is first by a mile will get a greater portion.

Let me try and demonstrate with numbers.

o Player A

Standing 1, 10000 CPS.

All other 1000 players on his realm who engaged in PvP got around 10000 CPs too. Therefore, he's looking at about 0.1% of HPs. (10 000/10 000 000)

o Player B

Standing 1, 10000 CPs. All other 1000 players on his realm who engaged in PvP got about 100 CPs.

Therefore, he's looking at about 10% of the HPs for that week. (10 000/100 000)

(Thanks Araxias)


Also, remember, the total honour pool can be boosted by killing enemy faction leaders.


* What about that PvP mount for 90g

Well, it's the same as a 900g epic mount. It costs 90g because it requires that you gain rank 11 in PvP status. THIS WILL NOT BE EASY. Let me say that again, THIS WILL NOT BE EASY. Not only must you be rank 11 to gain the mount, you'll need to maintain rank 11 to continue to use it. This goes for all PvP equipment. Think of it like a level requirement. If you no longer have the required rank to buy something, you can no longer use it. You keep it, but cannot re-equip until you claw your way back up the ladder.


* Gank fest, no?

Well, yes. Quite possibly. But the more people who read this, or least understand the system, the less that is likely.


You are going to find, though, that some people form groups of 60s, and farm level 50s. Blizzard have said that

a) CPs are calculated in a very tricky way and
b) Diminishing returns on the same players and
c) they're monitoring it very closely.

Hopefully, after a couple of weeks of seeing their massive kill scores resulting in low ranking, people will start to change their tactics and attack people the same level/rank. If ganking does proves to be a viable way to gain CPs, I'm sure they'll adjust the values you get for people much lower level than you. Until the CPs have run for a couple of weeks, we really have no idea how it will play out, but I honestly believe that if at level 60 I spend all day grinding on noob 50s, I won't do nearly as well as another 60 who kills a few other well-ranked 60s.


In fact, this has been backed up with hard numbers.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...tmp=1#blizzard


A solo level 60 killing a level 60 enemy: worth approximately 166 points if they're rank 1 (although within a few weeks many level 60s will be rank 3 or higher, in which case the value would be about 190 or more).


A solo level 60 killing a level 48 enemy: worth approximately 20 points.


This means that you'll need to kill 8 level 48 players (assuming no repeat kills) compared to 1 level 60, if you are level 60.


For some very good advice on levelling on a PvP server, this is a great thread.
http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thre...mp=1#post34345


* What about lag? I've heard xxxx is insane

Yes, lag will be an issue. As with any raid you might have seen, it takes a while for all the character models to load. You might get killed before you know what's going on. As has been mentioned, though, things might calm down a little, and it is something they're working on. We all know what this can mean, however.


I think, if you're really planning on PvP being your main source of fun, you need to consider getting a gigabyte of ram, and maybe a new graphics card. You can't play on an ancient system, and still cast the blame entirely on blizzard. It won't completely solve things, but it will make them a whole lot better.

512 meg of ram is about £30 at the moment. A decentish graphics card is £80. I realise not everyone has access to that sort of money, but save your pennies. It really will help.


Frigg asked for links to cheap graphics cards. Neither are top of the range, but they're both capable of running very reasonable settings on a lot of games. nVidia are blizzard approved, but I provide links to both, because people have their preferences.


Radeon: http://tinyurl.com/7mdou

nVidia: http://tinyurl.com/cjtdn

The latest news is that Battlegrounds, featured in the next patch, will reduce the load, because most players will be there. Personally, I think we'll still see people ganking like crazy


* My server has 5:1 alliance:horde. I'm horde. ergo I'm screwed.

Well, yes and no. You're only competing against other horde, so you're not completely screwed. You are going to find it extremely hard to defend against multiple raids at the same time, though. So I recommend focussing your defence in one town at a time. No resistance from enemy players means no HKs for the alliance.

What does all this really mean?

Basically, it's going to take a little while to stabilise things. Right now, it's new and fun, and pretty mental. US reports widespread raids all over the place. I imagine it will be the same for us on the first weekend. PvP is going to be hellish, and level 50+ is going to have a hard time being ganked by people who don't understand the rules.

You'll either have to create a new character on a PvE server, or accept that things are going to get a bit messy, certainly in the short term, and probably long term too. There are always people who want to make other peoples' lives hell.