Preview of Official Warbands in The War Within by Blizzard Entertainment

The Warbands System: A Comprehensive Overview

Blizzard recently released an extensive blue post providing an official preview of the Warbands system, one of the main features of the upcoming expansion, The War Within. This new system aims to enhance the gameplay experience for alternate characters (or alts) and make playing multiple characters more convenient and enjoyable. In this blog post, we will delve into the details of the Warbands system and explore its various features and objectives.

What Are Warbands?

The Warbands system, set to be introduced in The War Within, encompasses all characters on a player's Battle.net account, along with their shared items, collections, and progression. While the Warband is limited to characters within a single region (Americas, Europe, Korea, Taiwan), it spans across realms, factions, and even subscriptions within that region. The Warbands system expands upon the existing account-wide features in World of Warcraft, such as pet and mount collections, transmog appearances, and heirlooms, to name a few.

• Goals of the Warband System

Before delving into the specifics of the Warbands system, it's essential to understand the primary objectives it aims to achieve:

1. Make playing alts easier and more enjoyable: Many players already have alternate characters and enjoy playing them. The Warbands system aims to enhance the alt experience and make it even better.
2. Switch between characters without falling behind: Character-specific progression has always been a crucial aspect of World of Warcraft, but the Warbands system allows players to freely switch between characters without losing efficiency or long-term progress.
3. Acknowledge the player behind the screen: The Warbands system celebrates the player's accomplishments within their Warband, not just on their individual characters. These achievements carry over to any character they choose to play.
4. Clarify account-wide vs. character-specific aspects: The Warbands system aims to clarify which parts of the game apply to characters or the entire Warband. The UI has been updated, replacing the term "account" with "Warband" throughout the game.

Warband Conversions

One of the main tasks of the Warbands system is to convert character-specific aspects of the game into Warband-wide features. This conversion process is automatic and occurs upon a player's first login after The War Within pre-expansion patch goes live. It may take some time for the system to process the Warband data, so players are advised to be patient during this initial login.

• Warband-Wide Reputation

Upon the release of The War Within, most new and many Dragonflight reputations will become Warband reputations. In this new system, any progress made on one character's reputation will be shared with all characters in the Warband. Rewards, however, will vary depending on the character. While some rewards are unlocked for all characters in the Warband, others remain character-specific and need to be collected individually. The reputation progress displayed will be the highest achieved by any character in the account, ensuring a fair representation of progress across all characters in the Warband.

Not all reputations will be converted to Warband-wide, as some reputations do not fit within the fantasy of sharing across characters or involve character-specific choices. For example, reputations like Winterpelt Furbolg and Glimmerogg Racer won't be converted as they don't align with the Warband system's vision. However, Blizzard plans to gradually convert older expansions' reputations over time.

• First-Time Quest Rewards

The introduction of the Warbands system also brings a new concept with quest rewards. On the first completion of a quest by a character, they will receive a bonus quest reward. Additional completions of the same quest by other characters in the Warband will yield different bonus rewards. The bonus rewards may take the form of reputation, currency, or other valuable items.

• Elimination of Diplomacy Racial

The human racial ability, Diplomacy, which grants a 10% bonus to reputation, is being removed due to its character-specific nature conflicting with the Warband-wide reputation system. Instead, Blizzard intends to replace it with a new ability that will benefit all characters equally. Further details regarding this replacement will be shared in the future.

• Warband Achievements

Achievements have always had an account-wide component in World of Warcraft. However, the Warbands system aims to consider all achievements as Warband achievements. Character-specific achievements will be completed for the entire Warband and will no longer require repetitive completion on different characters. Rewa