I think it has more to do with the flow of the game really, if there was no kingdoms gooing from warring to growing the growth tier would be gone a long time ago, if no kingdoms goes from growing to warring the warring tier would still be fine as it is arround 90% of all kingdoms to one extend or another.
If a kingdom goes from warring tier to growth tier that becomes a success story regardless of how they finnish, if a growth kingdoms goes from growth tier to warring tier that kingdom must be doing poorly and clearly should up their game, even if they take ww crown.
Such is the mentality of many Utopian players I believe and that is wrong, the ww and honor charts are simply different goals from nw and acres, and neither tier got any business pointing fingers of the other.