World of Warcraft Newbie Guide 14: From Hated to Exalted - Understanding Reputations

While doing the various leveling activities, you will typically gain money and experience. However, when you finish objectives such as completing a quest, you may notice you gain something called "reputation." This is shown by the name of the "faction" indicating an increase or decrease in your chat window. But what is reputation and how does increasing this reputation with a faction benefit you?

The Reputation Window

Opening the reputation window can be done by pressing U or opening the character window with C and clicking the Reputation tab at the bottom. The reputation window will look like the picture below:

From here you can see every faction you've met so far and your current standing with them. While I will go through standings shortly, there are some additional things worth knowing about managing reputations from this window. For instance, you can click on any of the reputations to bring up a small pop-out window. For this example, I clicked the "Stormwind" reputation:

From here you can see a brief description of the reputation and can manage reputations with three different options.

Firstly, you can sometimes check off At War. This will allow you to attack members of that faction. It's not possible to fight every single faction and killing members of a faction can cause you to lose reputation with them. If a faction hates you enough, you will automatically be at war with them and cannot uncheck the option until you raise reputation with them.

Secondly, you can mark a faction as inactive. You will continue to gain (and lose) reputation with the faction, but it will put it into the "Inactive" section of the reputation window which is minimized automatically. This is a good option for faction reputations you don't want to track. Unchecking the option will put the faction back in the proper section.

Finally, you can show a faction's reputation with you as an experience bar. This will show right above your experience bar and is a good way to track a faction you're interested in. You can remove the experience bar by unchecking it. Only one faction's reputation can be shown as an experience bar. The experience bar color is denoted by your current standing with the faction.

Reputation Tiers

When gaining (or losing) reputation, you will eventually fill out (or empty) the reputation bar. When this occurs, you will receive a chat message saying a reputation is more friendly (or unfriendly) with you, stating your new standing with them. These "standings" are split into multiple tiers, which can give special rewards or penalties. Each tier requires a specific amount of reputation to either advance or decay to another tier. These tiers are as described below, noted by color:

• Hated: Factions that are hated with you will attempt to attack you on sight. You will always be at war with them until you manage to increase your reputation with them, though you cannot interact in a friendly manner with members of the faction. To advance to the next tier, you need up to 36,000 reputation.
• Hostile: This is a reputation tier similar to Hated. It requires 3,000 reputation to advance to the next tier.
• Unfriendly: Factions that are unfriendly with you refuse to interact with you in a friendly manner. However, they will not attempt to attack you. It requires 3,000 reputation to advance to the next tier.
• Neutral: This is the reputation tier factions will typically be at when you first meet up with them. Members of the faction will interact with you. It requires 3,000 reputation to advance to the next tier.
• Friendly: Factions that are friendly with you offer a 5% discount. It requires 6,000 reputation to advance to the next tier.
• Honored: Factions you are honored with offer a 10% discount. It requires 12,000 reputation to advance to the next tier.
• Revered: Factions that considered you reverent offer a 15% discount. It requires 21,000 reputation to advance to the final tier.
• Exalted: Exalted is the final reputation tier and offers the best rewards (if there are any). You also receive a 20% discount with the faction. Maxing out the exalted reputation requires 999 reputation (making it 999/1000).

Gaining Reputation

Gaining reputation is a core aspect of World of Warcraft. From the starting zone onward, you have been gaining reputation with factions. However, there are many more ways besides the ones I mentioned at the beginning of the article. Some of these are beyond the scope of what I have covered in this series so far, so if something doesn't make sense, don't be too worried.

• Quests will almost always give reputation. There are some repeated turn-in quests designed specifically to get reputation up. At higher levels, daily quests are a reliable way to increase reputation with some factions.
• Completing battleground objectives (for Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley) will increase reputation with the factions tied to those battlegrounds. This allows access to some specific PvP rewards related to those factions.
• Certain enemies can grant reputation to a faction when killed. Be warned that in some cases these NPCs are tied to another faction, causing you to lose reputation with that faction.
• Some dungeon monsters can grant reputation in the same manner. Wearing specific tabard slot items grant reputation from all dungeon monsters (such as capital city tabards, which are purchased from quartermasters in those cities).
• Items, often called commendations, can award reputation with a certain faction when used. These are consumables that can be purchased from vendors or looted.
• There are other miscellaneous activities that can also award reputation, ranging from looting objects (harvesting crops, etc), performing profession activities, and gaining "spillover" reputation as a result of gaining reputation with an associated faction.
• A classic example of spillover reputation is gaining reputations with your Alliance or Horde reputations. For instance, gaining a reputation with a faction like Stormwind or Orgrimmar will also increase reputations with all the other factions part of the Horde or Alliance by half the amount (up to a cap).