World of Warcraft has just seen the biggest changes since Cataclysm

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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. It’s the final 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 biggest changes to the game that World of Warcraft has seen in the last 10 years.

First and foremost, there is of course the big feature of the war pack – but there are also many small innovations that contribute to a more rounded and better gaming experience.

WoW: Pre-Patch 11.0 – Trailer for the new pre-event of The War Within

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The Warband changes WoW forever

The big new feature is the Warband, which represents a clear paradigm shift in World of Warcraft.

The little sentence “Almost everything is now account-bound thanks to the Warband” reads almost like a banality. A small improvement in the quality of life that makes everything a little more pleasant.

But that’s not it. This is almost a 180° reversal of what World of Warcraft has done for the past two decades.

There are many small functions that together make up the big change:

  • Almost all relevant resources and currencies can be moved back and forth 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 everyone benefits.
  • Quests only need to be completed once per account, then you can hide them – if you want, you can play them multiple times.
  • Every character can now unlock all items as transmog, so your warrior benefits if the mage finds a plate armor.
    • The Warband not only looks cool – it also changes a lot of the game.

    Suddenly it’s no longer just a matter of individual characters. There’s no need for multiple characters to complete the same quests over and over again. There’s no need to earn a special reputation reward multiple times just because you want to change characters.

    For some, the downside may be that you now “have to” spend less time in the game to progress well on twinks. But if you think about it, that really just means:

    You can now use the free time to do things in the game that really bring you joy.

    The end of classic mounts

    One change that many may have missed concerns mounts in World of Warcraft. Players are used to unlocking “normal riding” first, then fast riding (and so on). But Blizzard has also overhauled this system, removed a few steps and even increased the speed of riding. The changes in detail are:

  • The riding skill for 60% mounts is no longer required.
  • Skilled riding is now available from level 10. Mounts have a speed of +100%.
  • Experienced Riding is now available at level 20. It allows the use of flying mounts with a speed of +220%.
  • Masterful riding is available at level 30. This allows the use of flying mounts with a speed of +420% – i.e. 100% faster than before.

    • What sounds like a small adjustment actually means that you can progress much faster even at early levels and overcome the tough first levels even faster. This – together with the XP reduction up to level 70 – ensures that new characters can catch up to the endgame much faster and everything just feels “faster”.

    With these changes, World of Warcraft has taken a gigantic step towards becoming a “modern MMORPG” and has laid the foundations for the game to not only be able to keep up with the modern MMORPG market for the duration of the World Souls saga, but also to survive afterward. Now all that’s missing is housing.

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