I am certainly going to advocate for exactly that. I probably won’t be successful but I went through the grind and wanted to give my thoughts. From the looks of this thread, I’m not alone in my thinking.
Make the total grind longer, but let people do it in smaller increments.
I have achieved rank 1 multiple times, I have achieved gladiator countless times on various classes. Hero of the alliance and horde, all require skill to receive. All the rank 14 titles mean is you have more time then the next guy. You eventually get it handed to you, seems like a pretty crap system.
So because I have a job a wife and children and cant dedicate 10+ hours a day to the game I shouldnt ever be able to get rank 14? Im all about a grind, but if I pvp for 12 consecutive months, 5+ hours a day and am unable to obtain it because I simply dont have enough time. Whats really the point of trying to rank past rank 10 if youll never be able to get to the higher ranks. Its like finishing the same raid endlessly knowing you will never get any loot. 
I can’t stand the current system to be quite honest.
I gave up after I saw that I needed a week of 400k, then 2 weeks in a row with 500k caps. With my current responsibilities in life its just not possible to play 12 hours a day in AV.
Additionally, I feel like there needs to be more honor “safe spots”. What I mean by that is, if I have a 500k cap, there should be more than one safe spot. There are weeks where for 6 days straight theres a 10 man multiboxer unguilded sitting afk at AV portal and everyone spam reporting them does nothing. So i get 200k and its a waste because I didnt hit the honor goal and then I have to repeat it.
I think this new honor system was a step in the right direction for sure but it still needs some tweaks. Some die hards are gonna reee at me over it but lets be real, the amount of R14’s in lvl 40 greens with 1k total honorable kills sitting in org right now is WILD.
Wait until BC. You have your time to shine.
Also, you made a choice. You decided to have a child. It’s either rank 14 or a child, you aren’t permitted to have both.
The council has spoken.
You have to make the honor system such that players compete with one another. Standard honor caps are not the way to do this. Just re-implement the 2019 system for god’s sakes.
I hit r14 on era and it was a complete joke. My friend group refers to anyone on era with r14 title as ‘dollar-store high warlords’
So because I have a job a wife and children and cant dedicate 10+ hours a day to the game I shouldnt ever be able to get rank 14?
This how it has ALWAYS been for the last twenty years on vanilla and vanilla pservers. Yes, this is how vanilla is intended to work. Put in the effort and you get the rank. This is why, prior to Classic Era, when you target a Grand Marshal, it’s a head-turner. You’re like “Oh my god, that’s a Grand Marshal!”
Note: I am not dedicated enough to get even above rank 10 in the old system, just to make that clear.
It’s your kind of draconic implementations that got me banned at the end of Wrath in the first place.
That’s why I would rather side with AFKers and Botters over report-happy players. Botters and AFKers aren’t criticizing me or cementing their authority on what I should or shouldn’t be doing on the battlefield; nor likely are they taking the time to report me for anything.
I don’t care for AFKers or Botters anymore than you do, but ideally speaking, the random queue is for everybody to join in. That means accepting the group you were given and doing the best you can with it, regardless of if you see botting or AFKing.
Who’s going to be the enforcer? Players? As noted above, I caught bans for abusive language which have been normal nerd spats throughout online PvPing since the beginning of online PvPing.
It’s possible to DC and have your character stuck somewhere and have misconstrued for AFK…
This is neither here or there, but sometimes people have emergencies and don’t want to lose any progress in a BG they’re in, such as going to the bathroom and coming right back to re-engage…
Who’s going to be the judge and enforcer of who’s doing what and who needs to be punished?
"If I can only raid 20 minutes a week how am I supposed to clear all raid content when raids take longer than 20 minutes to clear? I have 36 kids and 4 wives.
Why should I have to meet the requirement for something in order to get the rewards from something?"
This is a worse take than the other guy’s take. The extreme minority in a gaming environment has no more influence than the majority. Professional athletes and royalty have money and influence, therefore their thoughts and desires matter. They make money and make other people money. Random guys on the internet fussing about a video game do no such thing.
Such a ridiculous false equivalence you provided.
Influencers tend to be a minority, if that’s how you were categorizing players in a game: influencers vs non-influencers.
Guild leaders and/or raid leaders and/or any player driven content leaders, or leaders in general across virtually all domains are a minority versus followers.
It would be difficult to claim less influence on this, imo. Especially, while prefacing it with “that’s a worse take than…”
Only those who achieved Rank 15 truly understand the complexities of Classic WoW PvP. 
What we’re saying here is that this should change. Most folks don’t have any issue with this being hard, taking work and commitment. It should not require comrpomising your family and work life to do it. The grind isn’t the problem, the single, contiguous honour requirement to advance is the problem.
No, they weren’t. Grand Marshal in both systems did not require skill and it was nothing to be in awe over. Anybody who got that title is someone who played the game more than is healthy. This is not something to be proud of, it’s just something you did. I’m not proposing to change that either, under what I proposed you still have to invest a large amount of time in the game to achieve it. Longer, in fact. You just have the option to do it in smaller increments.
Are you defending botting and AFK’ing in Battlegrounds and think that this is an acceptable method of achieving PvP rank?
You guys really like your argument from extremes, don’t you? 
Here’s another example…
This is tantamount to “My seatbelt itches sometimes, why should I have to wear it? It’s an outrage that I will get a ticket if I don’t!”
Like seriously guys, calm down. Nobody is going to punish you for AFKing in a BG for 60s to go to the bathroom and if you get reported for AFK one time to deal with an emergency, it’s not a big deal. However, if you’re constantly AFK or emergencies keep cropping up, you not only deserve your ban but you should maybe rethink how much you play WoW.
Furthermore, nobody is suggesting that you be able to advance in 20 minute incremements of gameplay. That much should have been obvious to anyone with the literacy skills of a middle schooler.
It’s amusing that your sense of superiority over the fact that you can play the game for 8+ hours a day over those who can’t is so under attack that you resort to these tactics. Like, just play the game and let others do the same. It’s fine, you’ll still get your gear way faster than anybody else.
Sheesh, lol.
Aw man, this guy has a point. I’ll get to work!
It was never an “oh my god, its a grand marshal.” It was more of a they have more time to commit to the game then I do… what other achievement in the games history could you spend 5 or so hours a day working on for months upon months and no matterr how skillful or lucky you’re you will never achieve it.
That’s a manifestation of the new honor system which you said was a step in the right direction. Which goes to show that many players ask for things when they have no clue what the ramifications of it will actually be.
The only issue here is that a lot of people can’t stand the idea of not having everything in the game accessible to them. It’s ok for MMOs to have long grinds for extreme power. They’re build for such a thing. That’s all the more true in this situation since wow already has versions where everything is accessible without such a grind. It never made any sense to eliminate such a grind from every version of wow.
Clearly, it was just the streamers complaining that they needed to do the r14 grind because that’s what people wanted to see, and it was too much.
I setup some ways to do this months back, but most players squaked at the idea of actually needing to play objectives other than AFK in AV.
So disappointing. I’m all for reforms to how gear is distributed and rewared in PvP. I think this is something Blizzard could really take a good hard look at and modernize. People would freak out because changes, but it would be much better for the game and its players. Even the few in this thread chest thumping about how awesome they are for spending 40+ hours a week on PvP would either get over it, or move on… fine by me.
With that said, I know changes are touchy in Era. That’s why I made the proposal I did above. Making it require more honour with with smaller breakpoints is close enough to what we have now, but still an improvement. Actually cracking down on AFK and punishing it is also what we’re supposed to have now, but it’s not enforced, so not a change to ask for that to be improved.
It’s disappointing that you saw actual backlash from people who openly advertise they just want to AFK in AV though. Heaven forbid we actually play the game we’re paying for…!
I don’t think the issue is so much that people fear improvement. It’s that they don’t trust this iteration of Blizzard’s capabilities. “No changes” is effectively “No changes by this company that own’s Blizzard’s name and licenses”. Without a complete mastery of knowledge on what makes classic era tick, one can pull levers that affect other areas of the game, making it much worse. We saw a lot of this in SoD.
What I would do is change the system fully.
Any player zoning into BG’s would have a PVP unique set that can only be used in BG’s that they can keep in bags, this set would be the present blue set and would come with no enchants, so the player would have to source them…
The weapon they would be issued is the Pre-Buff version (pre 1.11) PVP epic weapons.
The first Rank set they would get is the Pre-Buffs Epics (pre 1.11 epics) This would be at Ranks 7,8 and 10 for weapons R11 would unlock or replace your standard issue weapon for open world / raid / dungeon use.
R12, 13 and 14 would remain the same.
A few R14 weapons would be added, namely spell damage sword / Mace (1hand) that mirrors stats of R14 spell damage dagger. Also a shield with + healing and another with + damage would be also had on vendor.
Exalted in BG’s would grant you updated gear Level 88-92 (based on naxx T3) 2 armor items per BG Exalted AV = boots / Gloves, WSG = Chest and Legs, AB = Helm and Shoulders. Your R14 PVP armor rewards must be turned in to claim these; and these would only be unlocked Post naxx loot drop AKA Phase 6.
Naxx equal weapons would also be claimed at PVP vendor but req R14 and 3X exalted (all BG’s exalted). Item level 89 IE comparable to Gressil / Might of Menithil.
But see while this would work and would get all the BG’s far more active than just AFK in AV, the players would QQ because “OMG THAT’S TOOHARD”
Titles, achivements, mounts, etc cosmetic rewards I 100% agree with you on. But gear that makes the game fair shouldnt be inaccessible.
This is a valid point, it’s just not valid for a game that’s supposed to be a museum for a 20-year-old game where such concepts aren’t made anymore, outside of it. This is an oasis for people that enjoy long grinds for great power rewards.
Your argument has a better place in talking about the development of classic+. I would still disagree with you there, but at least that would be the proper venue to discuss such a fundamental shift in classic.