You’ll be able to unlock transmog for all armor classes on all characters in WoW: The War Within

One of the most welcome bits of news to emerge from the WoW: What’s Next panel at BlizzCon 2023 is that we’ll finally be able to collect transmog options on characters that can’t equip them. This perk appears to come exclusively with the new Warbands feature, which will allow players to share gold, reputation gains, items, reagents, achievement progress, and currencies with their alts. While the specific details are still murky, it may have something to do with the common “bank” that will be shared across characters, and/or gear that is designated as warbound rather than soulbound (i.e., specifically intended to be shareable with the alts in your Warband). The latter does raise the unfortunate prospect of transmog restrictions really only being lifted for gear from The War Within onwards, but it’s so early that it may not be responsible to speculate.

Transmog restrictions have long been a sore point with players. At present, whatever character you’re playing is restricted from gathering transmog options on other armor classes (e.g., Priests can’t collect mail options, Hunters can’t collect leather, and Druids can’t collect plate). In addition to armor restrictions, you also can’t collect weapon appearances on a character that can’t equip them. Famously, this has led to a number of agonizing runs for players who had the bad luck to get the Tusks of Mannoroth (a 0.3% drop chance) on a non-plate class, or the Warglaives of Azzinoth on classes that can’t use it. Yours truly also happily put Thunderfury together years ago … on her Druid. Such is life.

Blizzard did specify that soulbound gear will remain soulbound, and that current transmog restrictions on weapons that don’t share animations will continue to apply (e.g., you can’t transmog wands to maces). However, they’re looking at easing weapon restrictions on classes, particularly because there’s a lot of cool options on the Trading Post that are unattractive to characters that simply can’t use them. My Druid may be able to collect Thunderfury some day after all.

More details may become available at the World of Warcraft: Deep Dive panel later today, and we will update if so.

Update

Blizzard clarified in the Deep Dive panel that transmog restrictions will be lifted from older drops as well. You will be able to run older raids and your alts will get appearances from the drops, even if the original character couldn’t use or equip them.