account-bound
Latest
Guild Wars 2 signals end of armor repair costs
The latest developments in Guild Wars 2's upcoming April feature pack will improve the quality of life around Tyria, as the game will be ending armor repair and sharing gear and WvW XP across accounts. The team said that it feels as though the loss of time is enough of a death penalty that it will be removing the costs for armor repair when the patch lands. Because this will take out a goldsink, the team is also reducing the coin dropped by champion loot bags. Legendary gear, ascended items, and World vs. World XP will become account-bound rather than character-bound come April as well. This means that players can character hop and retain their progression and expensive items instead of getting them individually.
What are heirlooms and how can I get them?
If you're new or recently returned to World of Warcraft, you've probably heard mention of heirlooms. This stellar leveling gear binds to your account rather than your characters -- so you can mail it to your alts -- and levels as you do, getting better as your character advances through the game. And best of all, heirloom gear often grants you an experience bonus for equipping it -- typically 5% or 10% bonus experience for each piece of armor. What that means is faster leveling with no need to worry about hunting down the best gear along the way. Because heirlooms are targeted squarely at level 90 characters leveling alts, you might not have put much thought into them -- but we're here to tell you that you don't need to wait until level 90 to pick up some heirloom gear for your character. If you know where and how to get it, you can grab a few pieces as you advance -- and with the sizable benefits they offer, you'll probably be glad you did. But whether you're a new character leveling up or a long-time level 90 thinking about a new alt, we'll walk you through what's available and where to find it.
Cross-realm account-bound mail now live, mailing rules
It's time to roll that new alt! Those of you playing on multiple realms -- or those of you who want to -- have reason to rejoice today, because with patch 5.4.2 you can now mail account-bound items between realms. This is at least true on North American realms and Oceanic realms -- European realms can expect the feature to pop up tomorrow after the patch. The process isn't much more complicated than sending items on a single server: just send your mail to "charactername-servername" -- without the quotation marks, of course. If your server name has spaces in it, skip the spaces. (So "The Venture Co" server would be "theventureco" for mailing purposes.) Bashiok explains the syntax: 5.4.2 is live and brings true account-bound items. Cross-realm mailing syntax is name-nospaceserver. Ex.: joeyjoejoeshabadujr-theventureco - Bashiok (@Bashiok) December 10, 2013 Like any mail you send to yourself, once you've clicked "send," the item immediately appears in your mailbox. And though heirlooms are the most obvious items to mail from character to character, there are a number of items that fall into the account bound category, including archeology items, Timeless Isle armor tokens, and more. However, you still can't send cash or non account-bound items, so your gold stash is tied to your server.
Patch 5.4.2 PTR Patch notes
Patch notes for patch 5.4.2 have finally been released, confirming at least some of the new features we can expect to see in the next Mists patch. Keep in mind that 5.4.2 is not a content patch -- there will be no new content to play through, no new raids, scenarios or dungeons added. However, 5.4.2 is adding several new features that players have been clamoring for for quite some time. The Cross-realm raid browser now has new categories for Mists of Pandaria world bosses -- the Celestials and Ordos, as well as Flexible raid difficulty for the Siege of Orgrimmar. Players will finally be able to mail account-bound items to characters on different realms. At the moment, the official list of patch notes is pretty short. Follow after the break for the list, which will likely get more updates as the patch nears completion.
Guild Wars 2 to make World XP account-bound
ArenaNet is pleased with the community embrace of World XP in Guild Wars 2's WvW and has announced that it will be making this XP account-bound in the near future. "As we begin to roll out our new core horizontal progression system of continually-expanded skills and traits, we felt there was no longer a need to have a character-specific progression system unique to WvW," the devs posted. "The skill and trait system will provide game-wide horizontal character progression for all players." When the change is implemented, every account will pool earned World XP, and that pool will determine world rank and world ability points. Players can then take those world ability points and dole them out to various characters as desired.
Patch 5.4.2 PTR: Cross-realm Account-Bound mail being tested
Cross-realm zones have been in place for quite some time now, but players have been consistently requesting that the ability to mail cross-realm heirlooms and account-bound items be added as well. While Warlords of Draenor's feature list includes an heirloom tab that should negate the need for mailing heirlooms between servers, that does little to address the feature as it stands right now -- and with many players leveling alts, it's still something players would like to see. Today Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas announced that the patch 5.4.2 PTR is beginning testing for exactly that feature. This process should allow players to move heirlooms between servers, in advance of the changes already planned for Warlords. The feature should work like any other cross-server communication, in that instead of simply mailing to a character name, you would be mailing to "Charactername-Servername." Note that this feature is only for account-bound items like heirlooms -- mailing gold or other items won't work. Players wanting to test this feature should hop on the patch 5.4.2 PTR and mail account-bound items across servers, reporting any hiccups by bug reports or feedback. For more information, check out the official thread on the forums -- and look forward to being able to chuck your heirlooms to your alts in patch 5.4.2.
Blizzard previews new rated battlegrounds PVP mounts
Blizzard is making another big push in patch 4.2 to get players engaged in rated battleground PVP action with the new Vicious War Wolf and Vicious War Steed for the Horde and Alliance respectively. Both new mounts look amazing. Alliance players go a little crazy with Horde heads hanging off the back of their spike-horse; Hordies get to roll around with the skulls of their former enemies dangling as a warning. The really interesting and cool part about these mounts are that they are awarded for 75, 150, and 300 rated battleground wins. That's right -- each time you reach one of those milestones, you are given another account-bound mount for use on one of your alts, with three mounts available total. That is an awesome change that potentially signals the beginning of more account-bound achievement items being earned and shared across players' accounts, as opposed to having to complete each achievement on each character. This is the first step in something bigger, I'm sure of it. Rated battlegrounds have been a touchy subject with Blizzard, since depending on who you ask they are either wildly successful or not being used enough. Gathering 10 people for coordinated PVP is sometimes just as much of a pain as doing it for raiding, and the time commitment can be just as large. With these new mounts, Blizzard hopes to get more people into the rated battleground system and start fighting it out for some cool new mounts.
Heirloom items bound to Battle.net accounts on patch 4.1 PTR
We just posted about the new heirlooms based on tier 1 armor discovered on the patch 4.1 PTR, but apparently there's even bigger news! Wowhead has discovered that as of 4.1, all heirloom items (including the newly added ones) are labeled as "Binds to Battle.net Account," an entirely different label than "Binds to Account." It's too early to discern exactly what this new distinction means, but at the very least, you should be able to mail heirlooms to characters on your realm that are on a different WoW account but the same Battle.net account. It's not known whether or not you'll finally be allowed to mail heirlooms to different realms, but at least you'll be able to mail some heirlooms to that Recruit-a-Friend mule account you made. Pretty cool! We'll let you know if Blizzard gives any official word on what's happening. WoW Patch 4.1 is on the PTR, and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you -- from previews of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new valor point mechanics and new archaeology items.
Breakfast Topic: Heirloom excitement
Account-bound, or heirloom items have a curious place in the game. They're gear intended to get players through the leveling process as quickly as possible, so we don't have to worry about gearing up. They remind me of my mother-in-law, actually, who has the uncanny ability to preserve items from her children's childhood. I mean, it's eerie how almost all of my daughter's clothes today used to belong to my wife when she was a baby. Considering how she's the spitting image of her mother, you can imagine the amusement we get from perusing old albums.In short, heirloom items rock. They rock so much, in fact, WoW.com user James Peripheral wrote in his blog about the very coolness of heirloom items. He mentions how, even at Level 5 (or Level 1 for that matter), a character can look absolutely dapper or "looking like he owns Eastern Plagulands". That seems to be a bonus of account-bound items -- they allow players to skip the clown phase of leveling. What's your take on heirloom gear? We know you all love them (if you don't, you probably have issues...), so tell us about your experience with them. Head on over to James' blog, too, to share your thoughts. Even better, why not write your heirloom experiences in your WoW.com account blog and tell others about them? We'd love to hear your hand-me-down stories.
