Plunderstorm returns in 2025 with new rewards — but earning them may be less tedious

Among the other features that we have to look forward to in World of Warcraft‘s upcoming patch 11.0.7 is the return of divisive PVP-only mode Plunderstorm. This mode, for those of you who didn’t experience it, was a separate game mode entirely from modern or Classic WoW; it was an all-out PVP battle royale in the Arathi Highlands where players competed to pick up powers from defeated NPCs and players, hunt down or avoid each other, and ultimately gather the game’s reward metric — Plunder. In the original Plunderstorm, gathering Plunder in and of itself wasn’t actually anything other than shorthand for a Renown rank; gathering Plunder would slowly boost you up the forty ranks of Keg Leg’s Crew, a Plunderstorm-only Renown.

However, one of the major issues with the rewards from this event is that a lot of the best stuff — the mount that wasn’t just a recolor, the impressive weapons, the really cool pirate outfit — was towards the end. It made sense at the time — players were highly used to Renown ranks granting increasing rewards, and you were working your way up the ranks of a pirate crew — but it led to things like figuring out the best ways to not actually PVP in the PVP mode. When players are figuring out ways to do an end-around on your content, something may have gone wrong.

Luckily, Blizzard may have found a solution to this issue, and allow you to only do exactly as much Plunderstorm as you want to do for the rewards you want. Datamining from Wowhead has revealed that not only is there a currency (the aptly-named Plunder), which you can spend directly on rewards in the Plunderstore! Now, while we don’t know some of the nitty-gritty — like how much in-game Plunder will translate into Plunder currency — they do point out that the amount of Plunder required to hit Renown 40 was around 100,000, while the amount required to buy all the new items this time around is 39,000. This means that if the amount of Plunder earned in each match is the same and it’s a 1-to-1 ratio of in-game score to post-game currency, you’re looking at well under half the time in game to collect everything… but it also means that if you’re not driven to collect absolutely everything, you may be able to spend way less time in Plunderstorm earning a bunch of rewards you don’t care about (sorry, Swabbie set) in order to get straight to the bits that you do want.

For example: let’s say all you wanted was the cool new black-and-purple Plunderlord’s Stormridden set. The most expensive piece is, amusingly, the Tricorne at 1500 Plunder; the shoulders and chest are 1000, while the other pieces are 500 apiece. This means the total cost for the pirate set is a mere 6000 Plunder (and let’s be real — you probably don’t need to buy the wrists; you can save yourself 500 Plunder there).

The idea that you might be able to prioritize the exact rewards you want and play Plunderstorm exactly as much as you want is actually a huge jump towards player agency on Blizzard’s part, and this news went a long way towards making me ready to don my tricorne and Fire Whirl my way towards victory — or at least a defeat of my choosing — to get decked out like a cool storm pirate yet again.