There’s still a lot of confusion floating around about what mounts, achievements, and pets are going account wide. Based on two things:
- Things Blizzard has said
- Actual first-hand beta experience
Here’s what you can expect. Point your friends at this if they ask.
An important note
Account-wide, in this case, truly means account-wide. Heirlooms and other physical items are not truly ‘account-wide’ because of limitations in the mail system in-game. There are no such limitations on mounts, pets, and achievements.
Mounts
- PvP mounts, according to Blizzard, will not be account-wide. The TBC end-of-season drakes and the rated battleground mounts were account-wide for a while, but I would not count on that sticking around until live.
- The definition of ‘PvP mount’ seems to explicitly mean mounts awarded from PvP, not those bought with honor. My warlock’s Frostwolf Howler has been account-wide since the beginning of the beta, and still is.
- Class-specific mounts will not be account-wide. No Monks on Felsteeds, Rogues on Chargers, or Shamans with Swift Flight Form. This does include the Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade.
- Faction mounts will be account-wide for the same faction only, but they will not work across faction lines. If you’re an orc buy a Timber Wolf, all of your Horde characters will have a Timber Wolf, but your Alliance characters will not.
- Profession-made mounts will be account-wide, but if it requires a specific level of skill to ride, like a flying machine, you will be unable to ride it unless you have the requisite skill. (On the other hand, this means if you have multiple engineers or tailors, you only need to craft one set of flying machines or carpets.)
- Guild rep mounts will be account-wide. They were briefly not account-wide, but Blizzard reverted this change the very next build.
Achievements
(Disclaimer: It’s really hard to test some of this based on the fact that Blizzard still doesn’t copy achievement histories to the beta; it seems to generate a new one on that server. That said, this is what they’ve told us.)
- Achievements, in general, will be account-wide.
- Feats of Strength, in general, will be account-wide.
- New achievements are being added that have to be account-wide because of what they require you to do. Examples include Double Agent and Quintessential Quintet.
- Achievement progress for meta-achievements will be account-wide. A meta-achievement is an achievement whose completion requires you to complete other achievements - examples include For the Children or Explore Kalimdor
- What does this mean? Well, if you’ve got, say, one character who has completed half of the requirements of For the Children and another who has completed the other half, when account-wide achievements go live, you will complete For the Children.
- Achievement progress for normal, non-meta achievements will not be account-wide, with one known exception. Examples include Explore Thousand Needles and Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare (10 player).
- What does this mean? Let’s say you’ve got two characters, Joewarlock and Joepaladin. Joewarlock has 4 dwarves in his Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare progress bar, and Joepaladin has 7. When account-wide achievements go live, you will not have 11 - Joewarlock will still have 4, and Joepaladin will still have 7.
- I mentioned there was one exception - honorable kill requirement achievements (such as 250000 Honorable Kills). These are tallied collectively across your characters.
Pets
- We now have details on the account-wide pet process. Of note: the Guild Page, Guild Herald, Argent Squire, and Argent Gruntling will not be account-wide. Also, pets only summonable by one faction (such as Horde/Alliance Balloons and your faction’s version of the moonkin hatchling) will appear in the panel but be greyed-out.
- If you are planning to get into Pet Battles, you will only have to level your pets once. If you level your Murkimus the Gladiator to level 20 on Joepaladin, Joewarlock will have access to the same level 20 Murkimus.
- Shameless plug: I’m giving away a Sand Scarab loot code. You, too, can have one of these babies account-wide.