The reason for the hotfix is not Blizzard taking the screenshots as fact. The hotfix was literally taking this page and copy pasting the honor values.
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Honor_point_(pre-4.0.1)?oldid=511410
Earning Honor Points
Honorable kills
Honorable kills is the simplest method of earning honor points. Kill a member of the opposing faction and you will recieve a number of honor points, depending on your level, their level, any diminishing returns (see below) and if you are in a party or not.
There is a diminishing return on multiple kills of the same player, which will reduce the honor received by 10%. After 10 kills that particular opponent will no longer yield any honor points when killed. This factor is reset daily, when the honor calculations are run on the servers.
Racial Leaders
Killing racial leaders or of Capital Cities also gives a significant number of Honor Points when killed, however these are often challenging, as you will have to deal with a significant number of opposing faction members as well. Usually best attempted in raid groups.
Objectives
Many objectives exist in both Battlegrounds and in World PvP that yield honor points.
Warsong Gulch
- capturing the opponents flag, rewards 40 honor (at level 60)
- winning the match, rewards 20 honor (at level 60)
Arathi Basin
- Collecting multiples of 330 resources (at 330, 660, 990 , …), rewards 20 honor each (at level 60).
- Winning the match rewards 20 honor (at level 60).
Alterac Valley
- Killing Enemy General (56 honor)
- Killing Enemy Captain (14 honor)
- Killing Enemy Lieutenants (14 honor)
- Killing Enemy Commanders (14 honor)
- Killing Enemy Tower Commanders (14 honor)
- Destroying an Enemy Tower (14 honor)
This is the reason why the hotfix did exactly what it did.
This is also why all of the screenshots from TBC had higher values as “Per kill Honor” was 20.9 honor per kill at level 70 instead of 14 honor per kill at level 60 regarding Bonus Objective honor calculation.
But you see…prepatch HK honor was simply using the ranking system and dividing the honor by a factor of 10.
https://vanilla-wow-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Honor_System#CP_for_Honorable_Kills
Post 1.8 CP+ numbers divided by 10 was your prepatch HK number.
Rank 1 - 198 (20)
Rank 2 - 210 (21)
Rank 3 - 221 (22)
Rank 4 - 233 (23)
Rank 5 - 246 (25)
Rank 6 - 260 (26)
Rank 7 - 274 (27)
Rank 8 - 289 (29)
Rank 9 - 305 (31)
Rank 10 - 321 (32)
Rank 11 - 339 (34)
Rank 12 - 357 (36)
Rank 13 - 377 (38)
Rank 14 - 398 (40)
The 3 digit number was the original vanilla value for an HK, the number in parathesis is the amount you got on prepatch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsgImO4Dh7U
This video proves this information hands down.
Every single kill in this video can be matched alongside this ranking list.
Everything from The HWL kill giving 40 undiminished honor at 13:25…
At 2:05 we have +27 on a rank 11 because he was killed twice (-20%) already…
2:20 stone guard kill for 26 honor undiminished.
THAT’S WHY WE DIDN’T HAVE AN ISSUE GRINDING IN PREPATCH.
This is why we knew the grind wasn’t insane but didn’t remember exactly what it was that didn’t make the grind insane. Instead we are going off of 2.4.3 brackets which put us in a lowbie bracket while also giving us the normalized 14 honor per kill as a level 60 as our HK honor when it shouldn’t have been that way.
So 19.8 honor to 39.8 honor per kill is prepatch accurate. This value is divided across the players that are close to the kill when it happens.
What is happening right now is that a flat 14 honor per kill is being divided across the players that are close to the kill when it happens.
And since Diminishing returns WERE active during the TBC prepatch, this is why there wasn’t an HK farming meta as the kills diminished naturally through extended gameplay anyway.
TLDR - Take the Vanilla honor system, divide it by a factor of 10, that’s how much HK honor we were getting per kill during the prepatch. That information is backed up by the video I linked and there are tons of kills in the video that reinforce this…at least half of them are solo kills.