Warbands will add account-wide reputation (with a few caveats) in The War Within

One of the big features coming with World of Warcraft‘s next expansion The War Within is Warbands, a new layer of account organization that will make many aspects of character customization and progression account-wide. Probably the most impactful change will be to reputation, as players will no longer need to determine which characters to focus on a given faction for profession or power reasons. While this change will go live for most The War Within and Dragonflight factions, over time the functionality should be extended to all expansions — with a few exceptions that’ll be discussed below.

Obviously this change will provide the greatest benefit for players with a full stable of characters. For example, if an important Alchemy recipe unlocks at Renown 15, any Alchemist alt will be able to purchase it when your account reaches that Renown level. Even those who only play a couple of characters will find it easier to switch characters for activities without feeling like they’re falling behind on their progression. It’ll also remove odd tactics for gaining reputation from the game — when the Emerald Dream launched, it actually made more sense to level an alt to Renown 10 first via the Campaign, then by virtue of the rep bonus provided “slingshot” your second toon to Renown 13 or even 15 by completing the same quests.

Those who don’t have many alts won’t have to worry about falling behind, either. For quests that reward experience, only the first character on the account that completes it will receive a reputation bonus for it while subsequent ones will get resources in its place. Narrative progress isn’t shared — if you want a different character to play through the Campaign, they’ll still need to complete all the quests to catch up to your main — but if you change your mind as to which toon you want to keep going with, it’ll start collecting the reputation rewards once it surpasses the previous main’s progress. Where this will really benefit players is with factions such as Soridormi and Azerothian Archives, where the bulk of the reputation is gained through weekly quests or events. Now you won’t need to dedicate a character to these factions to unlock higher renown faster.

When The War Within prepatch goes live, it will include Warbands. Conversion will be a straightforward affair, with all characters on your account having their Renown set to the highest level you’ve gained on any toon. So if you’ve unlocked Dream Wardens Renown 20 on one character and Loamm Niffen Renown 20 on another, the characters will be Renown 20 with both factions once the Warband is implemented. If none of your characters have reached the maximum Renown for a faction, the system will not calculate cross-character totals but instead still take the highest reached. For example, if you have four characters that have each reached Renown 5 with the Valdrakken Accord, that is the Renown your account will be set to — the fact that they’ve earned enough reputation combined to reach Renown 20 will not be considered.

All of the reputations shared by Warbands

Here is the full list of Dragonflight reputations that will be shared across your Warband:

• Renown
  • Dragonscale Expedition
  • Maruuk Centaur
  • Iskaara Tuskarr
  • Valdrakken Accord
  • Loamm Niffen
  • Dream Wardens
• Standard
  • Wrathion & Sabellian
  • Cobalt Assembly
  • Artisan’s Consortium
  • Azerothian Archives
  • Soridormi

Of those listed, Cobalt Assembly is probably the one that players will most appreciate as there are a significant number of items locked behind high reputation with this faction. But some reputations won’t be shared: Winterpelt Furbolg and Glimmerogg Racer won’t be account-wide due to the nature of the “fantasy” of those factions. Thankfully most of the rewards are accountwide to begin with, although Tailors may begrudge having to get their Winterpelt reputation to Revered to unlock a desirable Reagent Bag recipe.

As prior expansions get added to the Warband feature there will continue to be factions that remain character-based instead of accountwide. Some of these make sense, such as the conflicting Aldor and Scryer factions from the Burning Crusade. Similarly it should be expected that the Frenzyheart Tribe and Oracle factions in Wrath of the Lich King will require individual reputation gains. Also mentioned as an exception will be the Shadowlands Covenants which makes sense as the choice of Covenant — while controversial at the time — is still important to how the story is progressed. Fortunately the ability to change Covenants relatively painlessly remains in place.

Players have been clamoring for accountwide reputation for a long time, and the ability of Warbands to finally provide it makes it one of the most anticipated features ever added to the game. While there will likely be a little grumbling and some issues with the conversion, it’s hard to see how this feature won’t be universally appreciated.