There are too many problems with penalizing killing of lower level players.
- Many lowbies can kill a higher player, especially if he can't fight back. If you want to track who attacked first, things get extremely complicated very quickly. What if the low level leaves combat (vanish, FD)? What if a low level heals another low level who is fighting a high level? What about groups? Will potential valid low level kills have to be tracked for every single player on every single lowbie? Etc...
- Mages AoE all the time... if a lowbie runs into it, should the mage be penalized? In a large battle, should mages have to check every single member of the enemy mob before launching an AoE assault?
- In a large scale battle, a level 30's DoT, flare or farie fire is just as deadly to a rogue as a level 60's... stealth is essential to survival as a rogue. Will the said rogue be unable to retailiate against low level unstealthers?
- Players auto change targets after a kill... one hit can kill a lowbie... A high level surrounded with low levels would be able to greif the unsuspecting. Similarly, it would make the honorable kill much more difficult to target (whereas he can snipe from behind his "wall o dishonor".
Also - claiming that honor without dishonor is meaningless is an invalid argument. Its like saying "gaining experience from killing monsters is meaningless without a way to lose experience"... I think many people misunderstand "honor"... Honor is about being honored with your faction (as a successful fighter), not being "honorable".