World of Warcraft is Making a Change to Allied Race Zones

Summary

The War Within adds portals to Allied Race zones, making them accessible to all players.
This quality-of-life change benefits the roleplaying community and offers convenient access to important lore locations.
The Earthen Dwarves are the latest addition to the Allied Races, and the change aims for uniformity across factions.

All World of Warcraft players will now be able to access the starting zones for Allied Races, as The War Within will add dedicated portals next to the Alliance and Horde embassies. Allied Races have been one of the more unorthodox additions to World of Warcraft, initially introduced in Legion as the expansion's final content update. The subsequent expansion, Battle for Azeroth, expanded the selection of available Allied Races significantly.

What makes Allied Races different from the basic options in World of Warcraft is that players must first unlock them in order to create an Allied Race character. With the inclusion of the Earthen Dwarves in The War Within, each World of Warcraft faction has access to six Allied Races, and the Horde and Alliance embassies serve as a hub for Allied Race content. Barring a few exceptions, the starter zones for Allied Races were considered off-limits to regular characters. However, outside of turning in their quest to claim Heritage Armor, players had little reason to return to these exclusive areas.

The recent build for The War Within, as discovered by Wowhead, is making a change to these starter zones by allowing all World of Warcraft players to access them via conveniently placed portals. Though certain zones, such as Telogrus Rift, became accessible in Dragonflight's Patch 10.2.7, this change effectively opens up the rest of the Allied Race hubs to everyone.

World of Warcraft is Adding Portals to Allied Race Zones in The War Within

A strong argument could be made that the Alliance is the bigger beneficiary of this change, as Shadowforge City is a significantly larger zone compared to the other Allied Race hubs. Furthermore, unlike the Allied Races of the Alliance, the Mag'har Orcs and the Vulpera don't have a dedicated starter zone, and instead begin their World of Warcraft journey in Orgrimmar. While this has little bearing on gameplay, the roleplaying community stands to gain a great deal due to this quality-of-life change, as the new embassy portals offer convenient access to important lore locations such as Suramar and Shadowforge City.

The Earthen Dwarves already have access to their own starter hub via the Alliance and Horde embassies, and it's likely that this change was made for the sake of uniformity. The launch of The War Within is slated for August 26, 2024, and it's unlikely that Blizzard will make any dramatic decisions in the beta beyond class balance and quality-of-life changes. Ultimately, the World of Warcraft community is excited about The War Within, as it will continue Dragonflight's philosophy of creating evergreen features and being respectful of a player's time.

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