Account-wide Reputation

Community WoW Community Council
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This is a discussion that has been created before on the forums, including posts here in the Community Council section that have brought up the subject for QoL improvement. Additionally, I’m seeing a desire for account-wide reputations more in Discord communities and Twitter since the expansion announcement. Now that we have high hopes for 10.0 and beyond, and we have seen some of the things in store for us as a player, why not touch upon the subject again?

What is preventing us from having account-wide reputation? We get other aspects of the game unlocked for alts once we complete the requirements on our mains, so one would think that this could be applied to reputation gains as well.

Initially, I was thinking that opposing faction reps should be locked still and not account wide (Alliance to Horde, etc), but with cross-faction play being more developed in 9.2.5 with potential expansion in 10.0, I don’t see why it would need to be locked for those of us who choose to participate in cross-faction play.

What benefit would this have?

  • It’s a time-saver. Think of the time an individual player could save by only having to grind out exalted rep on one (instead of 2, 3, or more) character? It opens the door to alt-friendliness and allows that time that would be spent re-grinding rep on something else the player chooses (transmog runs, m+, questing, etc).
  • It allows players to benefit from all the hard work they already put in on their main. It is annoying that a main can gain power and spend hours (and weeks or moths, etc., with gated content) just for it to mean nothing when I log over to a different character. I want the effort of my main to feel MEANINGFUL on my account.
  • It would unlock multiple weapon and armor types across the board for alts. My main is a warlock, so obviously I’m limited to certain weapons and ONLY cloth gear when it comes to the Quartermaster for that reputation. I miss out on other weapons as well as the 3 other armor types, and the thought of re-grinding a rep on multiple classes is headache-inducing.
  • There really doesn’t seem to be a valid reason why NOT to make reputation account-wide. We have account-wide mounts, pets, toys, transmog, and legendaries. Why not reputation?

What are your thoughts? Are there certain reps that you don’t think should be included in account-wide reputation?

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Personally I feel that all reputations in-game should be Account-Wide. There is a lot of reputations I’ve grinded myself that I couldn’t bear to grind all over again on my alts.

Back in Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard had implemented a catch-up mechanic that was added late in the expansion. This catch-up was purchasable off of a vendor and it unlocked greater reputation gains for all of your alts.

However, This mechanic has since been removed from all Mists of Pandaria reputations. As to why it was, I’m not sure, But I wish it wasn’t. As for all new Factions added in each expansion, I do wish they would all be Account-Wide.

Largest reason why is because many Factions have patterns for many different professions that your main not have, But your alts would. This would make it easier for your alts to get the profession patterns they need to progress their professions.

As for any other rewards such as mounts, pets, toys, etc, That are currently Account-Wide - There is really no reason at this point to have rep gated to a single character and then have to have all of your alts re-grind it.

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This is the same reason i would mention. I’m so sick of zereth mortis after doing it with 4 alts only for the legendary upgrade recipe. It is so much time and it’s boring and no fun to do the same thing over and over.

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Reputation isn’t super comparable to pets, toys, transmog and legendaries, it’s less so a collectable and more of a progression or currency system. There are also some factions that give you negative reputation with other factions (aldor/scryer for example) so that would have to be reworked entirely to make reputation account-wide. And while that is an old system from an expansion that isn’t very relevant anymore, it’s still something that would have to be done.

The main argument against making reputation account-wide is that it’s going to take a lot of resources to do so, and there’s plenty of little fidgety things like the aldor/scryer thing I’ve mentioned that needs to be solved. Personally, I don’t really want faction splits go away, I like that one of my characters works with the Aldor and another with the Scryers, and it’s something that I think would’ve been cool to see again in the future.

There’s also some other things to consider. How about rep gains - are you going to be able to complete each world/daily quest only once per account to get reputation now, or are you going to have to do all the world quests on all your characters in order to get the rep? Does this apply the same way to every faction, or are some exempt from this rule and others aren’t? With over 100 factions in the game, that’s a lot of stuff to consider.

All that being said, I do want reputation rewards to be unlocked account-wide, and I would like strong reputation catchup for alts. By simply making it so that you can get all of the rewards if you’ve unlocked exalted on one character, you no longer need your alts to farm all the way to exalted to reap the rewards. Whether that is by making items on the vendor BoA or unlocking everything on the vendor account-wide. This is a much easier solution than making all reputation factions account-wide.

What exactly is the point of having reputation on alts if you are exalted on your main then? Well, I think it’s something completionists can work towards if they really want to, and with sufficient catchup systems that’s not even going to be too bad.

But going into Dragonflight, the devs have said in several interviews now that they’re looking ahead to new forms of reputation with the renown system in mind, and I wouldn’t mind seeing where that is going. I would advocate for more alt-friendliness in the new system, a big problem with renown in Shadowlands was that it locked important player power behind it, so a catchup system was required for that. If renown is reputation 2.0 in Dragonflight, I hope it’s going to be more alt-friendly than what we have now.

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