penalties for dishonorable kills?

What to do about high level players going about and ganking lowbies? How about imposing a debuff which can only be removed by successful honorable kills. Make it a long lasting debuff, so others (both same faction and opposite) can see it and act accordingly. On PvE servers, make the debuff include a longer wait before unflagging. The debuff should also be readily visible - perhaps as a title which appears under their name instead of their usual title.

The debuff might have different effects, depending on how severe the ganking is. It might simply be a label at first, with no game mechanic effect, then something which blocks earning honor points, or prevent you from entering a battleground (like the deserter buff), later the debuff might induce your own faction guards to attack you, and eventually you might even be flagged for free-for-all pvp ... meaning your own faction can attack you. Nothing like a bit of community policing.

But what about the situation of a big battle which has one or two lowbies mixed in, where you can't avoid killing them? QQ more .. read what I just wrote: "be removed by successful honorable kills." Thus, killing the occasional lowbie in a big battle is not a problem, the penalty will clear itself very quickly ... unless there are more lowbies than honorable opponents ... in which case it's not an honorable battle to be in, now is it?

But what about the situation of a big group of lowbies chasing and griefing a high level player? They could make life hell, draining his honor. Well, in theory this could happen ... but given that most high level players don't even frequent zones which have low level players they don't have much to fear... unless they are in that zone intent on ganking some lowbies, that is. If by some chance a raid of lowbies ventured into high level zones intent on griefing some high level player ... well, they'll have their hands full with many high level hostile mobs with their enormous aggro radius.