Ok well all the servers are down, so I did a little bit of snooping at the WoW website. I know Strid said this already but I'm bored.....
Rank:
You obtain rank by gaining "Honor points"
How do you obtain these honor points? By killing people from the other faction.
The level of the people you kill determines how many points you get. For example, killing someone your lvl or around your lvl will give you X points.
The last method is the normal or optimal way of obtaining points. You can also gain much honor by killing the racial leader NPCs. These are basically some of the leaders in the story of Warcraft: ex. Thrall, Sylvannas Windrunner, Magni Bronzebeard, etc. Of course, this is a harder way to get honor because you will need a raid group to kill these <Incredibly tough> NPCs, which results in higher honor.
You do not get any honor by killing people far under your lvl. One thing to point out is the color of their name. Like in crafting, green has a slight chance to lvl up, yellow has moderate chance, orange has high chance, and gray has no chance. In a similar fashion, players whose names are in gray will yield no honor.
You will gain less honor by repeatedly killing the same person during the coarse of the day. I'm not sure what the time limit is, but if you kill the same person within the hour, you will get 75% less honor, then 50%, 25%, etc. One final thing to point out is the lvl range. A lvl 60 who kills a lvl 60 will gain more honor than a lvl 40 who kills a lvl 40.
How can you
lose honor? Dishonerable kills. This includes NPCs that are way below your lvl. The website did not indicate PLAYERS, just NPCs, especially those who give quests, etc.
I read a little something about BG. Basically, BG is a new style of PvP for Warcraft synonymous with Unreal Tournament 2004 or Battlefield 1942. UT2004!? BF1942!?!?!??! What on earth are you talking about? That's right, this is a new kind of PvP for WoW. The Alterac Valley BG (something you don't need to worry about yet since the lvl restriction is 50 or 51, so that's too high for us right now). Alterac Valley is basically destroy the opponents' towers by any means necessary. So it is a battle of tactics going back and forth as both sides attempt to destroy or capture key points on the map (like BF1942).
However, at lvl 21 (I believe) you can participate in Warsong. (of course, this is broken down into lvl categories so that 21-30, 31-40, 41-50 lvls play with eachother, and you don't have a slaughter of lvl 20's by lvl 40's. The objective is to capture the enemy's flag by any means necessary. (UT2004 was the only good example I could think of).
So really, the objective in BG is not to just kill your opponents, but take control of strategic locations or objects that are crucial to victory. I can imagine that there are good material or honor rewards included in these fights. I heard they are really fun, and really competitive.
Cheers!
(Forgive all the spelling and grammar errors, I wrote this kind of fast)
(I'm pretty sure this info is right, I skimmed over the WoW website. Tell me if I have any errors and I'll change it

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