Favor of the Gods and Testing Gold Items

So, I've been playing for a while in PVE, and I've been wondering...

1) I see guilds battling it out in PVP for the "Favor of the Gods". Does this have any positive/negative effects based on which region controls it or is it just a "flavor" addition? (Morale boosts in PvP for the region holding itor something)

2) I see a lot of people talking about "testing" un-identified items before selling them for 1k to people identifying them for the title. I understand why one would want to test them (wouldn't want to sell a perfect item for 1k), but I don't understand exactly how this testing is accomplished.

Any explanations are greatly appreciated.

1) Favor of the Gods gives the region that has favor access to Fissure Of Woe and Underworld.FoW and UW are 2 high level areas available for Roleplaying characters.

For the pvp players it has no effects at all,winning the favor yourself gives you a chest that spawns a few weapons/shield/offhands and a Celestial Sigil.Sigils are needed ( +gold) to buy a Guildhall.

The other things the pvp players get , but that doesnt matter if they have favor or not is fame , fame is how pvp gets ranked , most of the time a higher lvl rank a player has the better they would be , remember this is not always the case.

By winning the Hall of Heroes , the player(s) also get recognition of course as it takes some skill to win.

2)This one is simple once you know what to look for.
There are certain mods that are worth quite some money, like you said you woudnt want to sell a perfect items, but if it isnt the mod isnt that great of a value it might be interesting to sell it to players seeking the Seeker of Wisdom title.

Ill use a sword with a+30 health mod on it as example.
This sword drops for you and its unid, so you dont know that it has a +30 hp mod on it,atleast it doesnt show it, but if you put it in your hand your health will still raise by 30, even if you cant read the description.If you had another unid sword and your health raised by 10 , you would know you have a +10 hp mod.
This is the same way it is tested for all the other mods that are worth anything.
Most of the time the players go to Isle of the nameless ( on the battle isles)
And take a few skills with them, a stance to test for while in stance mod, a enchant to test while enchanted mod, you could also take skills to lower your health under 50% or just use a vamp weapon then switch back to test for while under 50%.

Hope you understand #2 , if not post again.

Thanks for your reply. I understand what you mean on number 2, and that makes sense. Seems like a lot of work to go through over a gold item, though. I've just been identifying mine and attempting to clean the junk off them and sell them to people.

How would you test salvage items, then? Or is there no way to?