World of Warcraft confirms the ability to unlock cosmetic ensembles from Renown vendors will be account wide, unlike Covenants in Shadowlands.
World of Warcraft is making the ability to purchase Renown cosmetic ensembles an account-wide unlock in Dragonflight. This is a welcome shift from the system for Covenants in Shadowlandsand is an alt-friendly boon for World of Warcraft players.
This discovery came about due to a bug in the World of Warcraft: Dragonflight beta. Renown vendors for the major factions of Dragonflight offer cosmetic ensembles for each of the four armor types–cloth, leather, mail, and plate. A glitch in the beta allowed all four of these ensembles to be purchasable by a single character, allowing the character to unlock all the faction’s cosmetics for their account, rather than just that of the armor type used by the character’s class.
In a recent forum post, World of Warcraft clarified this was an unintended glitch, and would be patched out in later builds of the Dragonflight beta. However, World of Warcraft said it was making the ability to purchase these cosmetics account-wide in Dragonflight. While buying the ensembles will still require a special currency, a player’s other characters can buy their cosmetic armor sets without having to grind up their Renown on again.
In Shadowlandsplayers interested in unlocking the cosmetic armor sets for each of the Covenants would need to reach a high Renown level on a character who uses each of the armor types. With four armor classes and four Covenants, World of Warcraft players need to repeat the Renown grind 16 times to get all the cosmetics. With the system in Dragonflightplayers only need to grind out their Renown once for each faction, a huge relief for transmog lovers and alt-aholics everywhere.
Players are glad to see World of Warcraft is making this change in Dragonflight. Grinding out Renown on multiple characters simply for cosmetics was not a popular decision in Shadowlandsand few players will be upset to see it go. As an MMO which encourages having multiple characters, such alt-friendly changes are appreciated in World of Warcraft.
That said, some players think World of Warcraft should just keep the glitch and allow a single character to simply unlock all the cosmetics. World of Warcraft cited a concern players may accidentally purchase cosmetic sets their character can’t use. Some players suggested warnings or a buyback option to prevent these accidents, or account-shared currency to alleviate the grind to unlock these cosmetics altogether. As Dragonflight is still in beta, fans will have to wait and see if World of Warcraft will make further changes to this unlock system.
World of Warcraft is available now on PC, with Dragonflight launching later this year.
