Dual encoding for factionFilter (int 1=Alliance / 2=Horde
OR token "alliance" / "horde"). titlePrefix as plain
JSON string — round-trip preserves the spaces and
hyphens in titles like "Knight-Lieutenant" exactly.
honorRequiredWeekly + honorRequiredAchieve serialize as
plain uint32 — vanilla rank thresholds top out around
1,000,000 lifetime RP, well within uint32 range.
All 3 presets (alliance/horde/high-tier) byte-identical
roundtrip OK. CLI flag count 1281 -> 1283.
Novel replacement for the hardcoded 14-rank vanilla WoW
PvP ladder (Private through Grand Marshal Alliance,
Scout through High Warlord Horde). Each entry binds one
(factionFilter, tier) combination to its display name,
weekly RP threshold to maintain rank, lifetime honor
for first-time achievement, title prefix for player-
name display, and tier-set gear reward.
The vanilla rank-ladder system used a weekly RP-decay
mechanic that punished any week without play with rank-
loss; this catalog stores both the weekly threshold
(maintenance) and the lifetime threshold (achievement)
since both are needed for accurate rank-progression
simulation.
Three preset emitters spanning the rank ladder:
makeAllianceRanks (7 lower-tier ranks Private through
Knight-Lieutenant), makeHordeRanks (7 mirrored Horde
titles Scout through Blood Guard with identical honor
thresholds — factionFilter disambiguates the shared
"Sergeant" title), makeHighRanks (8 high-tier ranks
across both factions Knight-Captain through Lt.
Commander, tiers 8-11 with the iconic legendary
battlegear shoulder unlocks).
Tier 14 (Grand Marshal / High Warlord) intentionally
omitted from presets — it's the legendary top-rank
that historically required dedicated 24/7 grinding.
Catalog supports tiers 1..14 in the schema; consumers
extend as needed.
Validator's most novel checks: per-(faction, tier)
tuple uniqueness — two ranks at the same tier for the
same faction would tie at runtime when the rank-
progression UI looks up "what's tier 5 for Alliance?"
Plus per-faction honor-threshold monotonicity — a
higher tier requiring less honor than a lower tier
would let players "downrank" by gaining honor, which
is a content authoring bug.
Format count 121 -> 122. CLI flag count 1276 -> 1281.
