Throughout the progress leading up to the release of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands in this Fall, there’s been a great amount of discussion over what sorts of features from the current iteration should be kept and which should be removed.
Among these many discussions, one of the things that has been discussed the most has been the need for some progress to remain account-wide. This was most prominent during the discussion around Battle for Azeroth’s Azerite Essences.
In the current iteration of World of Warcraft, Essences are an extremely powerful core piece of a character’s loadout. However, they also typically take quite a bit of grinding to get, with each having their own unique way to be obtained.
Some require the player to complete time-gated tasks such as reputation grinds or limited endgame content. Others send players on Azerite Expeditions, into PvP settings, or any other list of areas.
While the grind can be obnoxious on one character, repeating the same time-gated grind on an alt is so unspeakably frustrating and monotonous that most chose not to do it. In response, Blizzard finally implemented a form of account-wide essences, allowing players to purchase an essence that they had reached rank 3 on with another character.
Game Director @WatcherDev has clarified on Twitter that Legendary Power Recipes will be unlocked account-wide!https://t.co/yQX1aw15Vb pic.twitter.com/0NmhN6vRiv
— Wowhead💙 (@Wowhead) July 9, 2020
Thankfully, it seems that this lesson is being kept in mind moving forward into the Shadowlands. As discussions around Legendary Power Recipes has already begun to kick up, game director Ion Hazzikostas took to Twitter to clarify the obtaining of these Recipes.
“Reading the responses here is interesting. What would folks prefer?” Hazzikostas wrote in response to Wowhead via Twitter. “Currently, if you want, e.g. the Sun King Pyroblast legendary, you get the recipe from a specific source (say a Nathria raid boss drop), get a cloth base item from a tailor, and go craft the legendary.”
Hazzikostas went on to mention that “Recipe unlocks are account-wide, including generic powers (a la Prydaz or Sephuz-type effects from Legion), so alts automatically have access to them from the start.”
In short, this is a direct announcement that Recipe unlocks will not be kept behind the same gating that the Essences of Battle for Azeroth were originally stuck behind. This will be a massive step towards making the game more comfortable for alts.
This also might be more important now than ever, as players will have the choice of four separate Covenants to join, likely meaning that the average player will have several alts to experience each Covenant properly. With the game becoming more alt-friendly in general, it’s a massive step in the direction that will likely make the most players happy.
