World of Warcraft has changed its direction – forever. The biggest step the MMORPG has taken in decades.
It’s a wild time for World of Warcraft right now. These are the last days of the “Dragonflight” expansion, but the big Pre-Patch 11.0 has already ushered in the era of The War Within and brought the most significant changes to the game that World of Warcraft has seen in the last 10 years.
Foremost is of course the big feature of the Warband – but there are also many small innovations that contribute to a smoother and better gameplay experience.
The Warband Changes WoW Forever
The big new feature is the Warband, which marks a clear paradigm shift for World of Warcraft.
The small statement “Almost everything is now account-bound thanks to the Warband” reads almost like a triviality. A minor quality-of-life improvement that makes everything a bit more pleasant.
But that’s not all. This is almost a 180° turn from what World of Warcraft has done in the last two decades.
These are many small features that together make for a big change:
- Almost all relevant resources and currencies can be transferred between characters.
- The account has a shared bank that all characters can access – from anywhere.
- Reputation is account-wide, every character can work on it, and all benefit.
- Quests only need to be completed once per account, then they can be hidden – anyone who wishes can play them multiple times.
- Every character can now unlock all items as transmog, so your warrior benefits when the mage finds plate armor.
Suddenly, it’s not just individual characters that matter. There’s no need for multiple characters to complete the same quests over and over again. There’s no need to earn a particular reputation reward multiple times just because one wants to switch characters.
For some, the downside may be that you now “have to” spend less time in-game to make good progress on twinks. But when you think about it, that actually means:
You can now use the time saved to do things in the game that really bring you joy.
The End of Classic Mounts
A change that many may have missed concerns the mounts in World of Warcraft. Players are usually used to unlocking “normal riding”, then fast riding (and so on). But Blizzard has also revamped this system, removed some steps, and even increased the speed of riding. The changes in detail are:
- The riding skill for 60%-mounts is no longer required.
- Riding skills are now available starting at level 10. Mounts have a speed of +100%.
- Riding proficiency is now available starting at level 20. It allows the use of flying mounts at a speed of +220%.
- Master riding is now available as early as level 30. It allows the use of flying mounts at a speed of +420% – so 100% faster than before.
What sounds like a small adjustment ultimately results in you being much faster even at early levels and quickly overcoming those tedious first levels. This – combined with the XP reduction up to level 70 – means that new characters can catch up to the endgame much more quickly, making everything feel “snappier”.
With these changes, World of Warcraft has taken a giant step towards “Modern MMORPG” and laid the groundwork for the game to not only keep up with the ongoing modern MMORPG market during the duration of the World Souls saga, but also to endure afterwards. Now all that’s really missing is housing.
