Conquest cap Skyrocket?

This thread in the Arena forum explains a recent change to Conquest catch-up in more detail: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/16952585152

As of this week’s reset, we’ve made a change to how the Conquest catch-up cap is calculated that should result in a 50% increase to the catch-up portion of the cap. We’re making this change because, while we still want there to be an incentive to play early and often, the amount of Conquest that a player could earn via that catch-up cap didn’t feel like enough once the PvP season had been active for a while.

To elaborate, the formula used to calculate a player’s catch-up cap is now:
<Number of weeks passed in the season> × 1500 - <Total amount of Conquest earned this season>

That number is then added to the weekly total cap of 1700. Note that, as of this post, Warlords Season 1 has been active for 18 weeks, which means the maximum possible catch-up cap for a player that has not earned any Conquest points this season is 28,700 Conquest.