Blizzard Official Warbands Preview in The War Within

17.04.2024 - 18:09 / wowhead.com

Blizzard released a massive blue post giving an official preview on Warbands, one of the main features of The War Within!

Get a closer look at the new Warbands System with the World of Warcraft development team.

With public access to The War Within test phase just around the corner, we want to share more details about what’s in development for Warbands.

What are Warbands?

The new Warbands system being introduced in The War Within will encompass all of the characters on a player’s Battle.net account as well as the items, collections, and progression they share.

It’s important to note that your Warband is limited to characters within a single region (i.e., Americas, Europe, Korea, Taiwan) but spans every realm, faction, and even subscription you may have within that region

Many aspects of World of Warcraft have been shared across your account for a long time—essentially a Warband. This includes your collection of pets, mounts, transmogs, heirlooms, and more. With the release of Warbands, we are significantly expanding what additional aspects of the game have Warband integration. To name just a few changes:

• New reputations and Renown tracks will be Warband-wide.
• A new Warband bank will allow you to easily store and share items between your characters.
• The ability to collect most item appearances with any character in your Warband, regardless of their ability to equip the gear.

Goals of the Warband System

Before getting into the details of each change that players will experience with Warbands, we want to share the main goals we are aiming to accomplish with the system’s introduction:

• Make playing alternate (alt) characters easier and more enjoyable – Data shows that many players already have an alt or two (or ten) and enjoy playing them, so we want to make playing them even better.
• Switch between characters without falling behind – There will always be a lot of character-specific progression in World of Warcraft, such as high-end gearing, but wherever it’s appropriate, moving progression onto your Warband should allow you to freely play multiple characters without losing efficiency or long-term progress.
• Acknowledge the player behind the screen – In other words, wherever possible, we want to celebrate your accomplishments within your Warband, not only on your character, so you can carry those accomplishments with you to whichever character you choose to play.
• Clarify which aspects of the game are account-wide versus character-specific – It hasn’t always been clear which parts of the game apply to your characters versus your account. We've taken this opportunity to clarify these differences in the UI, as well as replacing the term «account» with «Warband» throughout the game.

Let’s get into more details