The old academy ranked you on how many novices you graduated and what they scored, and handed out Honor Buffs accordingly. That ranking is gone entirely on the servers running the Renewed Academy System. You earn honor by playing the game instead.
What changed, and why
- Graduating novices no longer counts
- The old ranking was static and rewarded having started early more than playing well.
- Activities count instead
- Points come from taking part in events and hunts across the game, which is also a way of giving existing content a reason to exist.
- Both build types can win
- The spread is deliberate. INT characters have the edge on unique hunting and STR characters in the battle arenas, so the points are distributed across both so neither is locked out.
- It resets every month
- Rankings and points clear at the end of each month. Somebody who was away for exams, a holiday or work is not permanently behind, and a leader cannot become unreachable.
The Honor Ranking
Points build an Honor Ranking, kept separately for each server, and the top of it receives Honor Buffs the way the old ranking did. Because it resets monthly, it is a genuinely contestable ladder rather than a record of who arrived first.