An Account-Wide Future

The Mists of Pandaria press tour is coming up in about a week, which is pretty exciting, as we haven't really heard anything about Mists since Blizzcon. Despite the somewhat silly-sounding name, I'm excited to play a Pandaren Brewmaster Monk (mostly the latter two, though I have nothing against our new Panda overlords as long as we actually get to see the Worgen do something over in Pandaria.)

One of the big things coming is the pet battle system (or "WoWkémon,") which could prove an interesting diversion. One of the major things that is coming with that feature is the new fact that your non-combat pets will now be account-wide, rather than per-character. So presumably that means that I will be able to pull out a Sen'jin Fetish on my Alliance characters.

So far, we only know for certain about non-combat pets being made account-wide. Frankly, with the Wrath-era redesign for pets and mounts, it seems like it would be very easy to just flip a switch on an account-wide basis. It also seems that you could do the same thing with mounts and achievements.

Now, there is a difference between mounts, achievements, and non-combat pets. NCPs, to coin an acronym you'll probably confuse with NPC, have no in-game value other than looking cool (actually, they helped dps track me when I was kiting the ooze on Rotface, but that's a pretty unusual example.) Mounts vary in quality (or at least at the required riding skill) and achievements range from pure fluff to serious indications of how well you've been able to play your character.

Let's start with mounts. I would say that, for the most part, mounts should be account-wide. One could put in a few restrictions, such as disallowing the use of an epic flyer until you got epic flight, and of course limiting class or profession-bound mounts (as well as race/class specific mounts - my two Paladins should probably stick with their Charger and Greater Sunwalker Kodo respectively.) And of course, we can't have Worgen going around riding Orcish wolf mounts, or Blood Elves riding around on rams, so you'd want it make it faction-specific as well.

There are a couple areas where this becomes slightly troublesome. For instance, after saving up a huge amount of gold (more than I needed, actually, but to leave myself with a big cushion,) I put together a Mekgineer's Chopper for my main, Jarsus. If mounts go account-wide, does Darsino, the undead rogue, get a Mechano-Hog? I mean, I would love that, but they are technically different mounts, even if they are equivalent of one another. Would Blizzard include a work around or just say "tough, make or buy a Mechano-Hog on one of your Horde toons?

One area I definitely think they should make mounts account-wide is holiday mounts. They have such a low chance to drop, and sometimes you get the Headless Horseman's Steed on a druid, of all things, when clearly it should be on that aforementioned Undead Rogue (obviously) but it's so luck-based that you haven't gotten that freaking mount in years... (drinks some water.)

Achievements get into a different area. Obviously, things like "get to level 60" should probably be restricted to the character itself, but then more frivolous ones like "Blastenheimer Bullseye" don't really say anything about your skills or that particular character, but that you lucked out and got just the right amount of lag that one time.

The trickiest place, I think, is the real power-level achievements. Jarsus proudly wears his Kingslayer title, that he totally got before Cataclysm came out, and not at all the following weekend at level 83 or so (In fairness, we had been working on the Lich King for over a month at level 80.) I like to think he shows it off to make Varian nervous (he's a staunch pro-democracy kind of Paladin.) But yeah, Jarsus killed the Lich King, so it he's recognized with a title commemorating that fact. But when I start up (insert future Pandaren Monk name I have yet to come up with) and he's running around with three abilities total in his spellbook, is he going to also be known as the Kingslayer? Pretty impressive for a guy who's never even been to Northrend. Frankly, even as much as I want that title on Darsino (and perhaps most appropriately Lorconis, who was killed and raised by the Scourge not once but twice, and has got to have one hell of a grudge) it seems like I'd be cheating if I didn't go there and kill him with that particular toon.

Still, in the long run, there's a certain way of looking at it. On one's Xbox 360 (which, unless I'm mistaken, was the origin of, or at least popularized, achievements in video games,) it doesn't matter which save file you're working on - the achievements are bound to your gamer tag. Unless you're sharing an account, those achievements do reflect that you've gone and done the things that they say (even though someone who has gotten Kingslayer on a DPS toon might not know all the tricks for tanking the Lich King.)

What's most likely, I think, is that we'll be getting an "account-wide" tab in our achievement page. Like the "Guild" achievements, these would be separate, but there could be some cross-over. Getting one of every class to the level cap (the Priest is 81! I'm almost there! I think the Monk will probably go quicker) is one they've already mentioned. Not sure how the dungeon and raid achievements will go, or what kind of rewards we'll see (I'd actually love to see an absolutely insane flying mount for the all classes achievement - like one that has elements of every single class.)

There's another area, and this would probably be the most controversial, in which you could make things account-wide: Justice and Valor Points. I have a core group of characters who have got basically everything they could ever want from the JP vendor (and Jarsus is closing in on getting the last few pieces for VP, at least for his main spec.) On one hand, allowing one to share JP across all your toons would make gearing up a fresh 85 way, way easier (for one thing, farming JP on a tank would go much quicker, with an almost-always instant-queue.) On the other hand, while the VP-->JP conversion that comes with each major patch is meant as a way to allow new toons to catch up, it's still probably a good idea for someone to figure out how to play their class at the max level before they jump into Raid Finder (especially tanks and healers.)

While I don't think they can truly make everything account-wide (though reputations would be nice) overall I think there's a lot of potential in the "account-wide" future. I'm lucky that I found tanking so enjoyable, because there's always a spot for my main to come on raids with the guild, and I'm always there when we're downing new content, but our guild leader's main is a hunter, and we nearly always make him bring his priest. While I'm not sure he cares all that much about achievements, I'm sure he'd appreciate it if he could display all the cool titles and achievements he gets on the priest when he's doing the pew-pewing that he loves.