WoWMar 12, 2020 7:33 pm CT

At long last, account-wide Essences are coming to World of Warcraft

Sometimes I feel like Ion Hazzikostas is trolling me. But today, he tweeted a link to an official forum post that made me as happy as a giddy schoolgirl. Which would be a very terrifying thing to actually see, and I’m glad I can spare you that sight. What did Ion post to his twitter that has me so excited?

Oh, not much, just that account-wide essences are coming to World of Warcraft next week, that’s all.

@ACCTWIDEESSENCE And now your watch is ended.https://t.co/Jzy6SvPjWX

— Ion Hazzikostas (@WatcherDev) March 12, 2020

Now, the forum post he linked to features CM Kaivax explaining how this is all going to go down. It should start as of next week’s maintenance, and what’ll happen is, once you’ve unlocked Rank 3 of an Essence, MOTHER will allow you to acquire that essence on another character who doesn’t currently have it. So it’s not as simple as, “Every Essence you have is on all of your characters” — you do still have to work to get those Essences up to Rank 3, and then you’ll need to buy them on your alts. Still, it’s a significant improvement over the current system where you have to get all of the same Essences on every character, and none of them overlap in the slightest, so that when you get that new alt up to 120 she or he starts with practically nothing.

MOTHER will basically become a vendor, using the new soulbound currency, Echoes of Ny’alotha. This currency drops from Horrific Visions, the Assaults, killing bosses in raids, doing Mythic + dungeons, and Season 4 PVP. You can turn it in to MOTHER to buy any Essence that you’ve already earned Rank 3 in on any character. As Kaivax explains it:

Originally Posted by Kaivax (Official Post)

Building on a great deal of feedback and discussion, we’re working on an update to the game. With the next regularly-scheduled weekly maintenance in each region, players who have earned a given Rank 3 Essence on one character will be able to directly obtain that Essence from MOTHER on any subsequent characters.

When playing an alt character that is missing Essences that have already been earned on a different character, most ordinary Visions of N’Zoth activities, such as Horrific Visions, Assaults, raid bosses, Mythic Keystone Dungeons, or BFA Season 4 PvP, will award a new soulbound currency – Echoes of Ny’alotha. These Echoes can be brought to MOTHER in the Heart Chamber, and exchanged directly for eligible Rank 3 Essences. While ordinarily each specific Essence must be learned in order to unlock it for other characters via MOTHER, all Essences associated with Nazjatar and Mechagon reputations will be available if any other different character has earned any of the Essences available from that reputation.

Our goal with this update is to preserve the efforts that players put into unlocking a given Essence through its associated activity the first time, while offering subsequent characters far more flexibility in pursuing that goal. We’ll have additional details in a forthcoming hotfixes updat that goes out around the same time as maintenance, but we wanted to let the community know ASAP that this change is in the works.

As always, thank you for all your feedback on this topic!

If you’ve been trying to keep more than one character current, getting the proper amount of Essences is a pretty big pain, and I’m very excited for this change. I have a character who is close to hitting 120 and I’m looking forward to not having to go through all the effort of getting Essences all over again. I hope this means that Echoes of Ny’alotha will be account bound, but even if they’re not and I have to grind them up on the character who needs the Essence, it’s still a huge step forward. I won’t lie, I would have preferred a more straightforward system where the Essences just unlock, but if Blizzard wants to do it this way, at least it’s something.

Seriously, I’m so happy they made this change and I’m looking forward to next week.

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