Blizzard has revealed some interesting information on the new Warbands System coming to World of Warcraft The War Within, where we learn not only why they are coming but what perks they bring to the table.
Though The War Within has no set release date as of yet, that doesn’t mean everyone isn’t excited and ready to dive into the upcoming saga. With the release of the Beta testing servers, players have gotten a chance to take on the new areas and Delves before the game goes live this year, and test out all of the new systems.
The Warbands System is being brought to the game to put all of the players characters from one account onto one page, rather than having to sift through countless realms in order to find a specific character. This not only changes the look of the login screen by showing all of the characters around the campfire, but the create character button, realm list, and in-game shop have been moved to the top of the screen as well.
There is also a favorites option so that you can select a few of your most played characters across different realms, or place them there for easy finding if you have to use them for farming or trading gold from one character to the next.
In-game there is now a Warbands Bank tab, which can be found within the bank in a new tab at the bottom of the bankers list where you would find the Reagents bank and the normal bank tabs. You do have to purchase this new Warband Bank tab which runs for about 1,000 gold, and you can also purchase more space but it is going to cost a pretty penny each time as the first addition is 25k gold.
The Warband bank can only house Warband specific items which you will know whether or not you have one as there will be a line of text that specifies it is Warbound until it is equipped. This new tab is accessible from all characters, and makes trading things among the account much easier than it was before.
There are also more features as well, such as certain reputations being account wide rather than character specific, flight paths are now unlocked among every character rather than needing to discover each one on an alt, and Warband wide achievements. One more nifty little customization feature would be the item appearances being usable by anyone within your Warband, meaning characters that wear cloth can still use the transmog of something that is plate.
The idea behind this system is to make leveling and playing alternate characters not only easier, but more enjoyable in general. Being able to switch between characters is nice as is, but not having to redo some of the mechanics such as gathering flight paths or trying to stock up on reagents at lower levels is also a plus.
It’s worth noting that not everything is shared account wide, as there are only Warband-specific things that can be accessed by other characters, so be sure to check first before assuming a reputation or item is account-wide.
There are plenty more details about what to expect from the latest expansion, and saga as a whole, so if you’d like to delve into the realm of what’s to come, take a peek at an interview with the developers to get a better idea of The War Within in all of its glory.
