One of the most OP racial abilities in WoW is getting reworked in The War Within

Although racial passives don’t have as much weight in modern World of Warcraft as they do in the Classic version of the game, there is one race that has a head-and-shoulders advantage above all others thanks to a passive spell that only they have access to.

Diplomacy, the Human-exclusive racial that causes them to gain 10 percent extra reputation from all sources, is easily one of the best passive effects in all of WoW. In The War Within, however, Diplomacy is being completely reworked, and Humans will lose the 10 percent reputation buff that they’ve gotten used to playing with. 

This change was announced by Blizzard earlier today and is being added to the game due to the emergence of The War Within’s Warband system. Warbands are going to be an account-wide feature that causes nearly everything in the game to be shared by all of the characters across your account. The Diplomacy passive, by nature, is a character-specific effect that is only applied to Human characters and, therefore, is in direct conflict with the account-wide nature of the Warband system. 

“Unfortunately, with Warband reputations, this racial causes problems due its character-specific nature,” Blizzard said in a dev update today. “We don’t want players to feel compelled to play a specific character or race to earn Warband-level rewards more efficiently, so we will convert this race-specific bonus into something new. We’ll share more information on it at a later date.”

At the start of WoW expansions, this racial ability was a major boon for Human players as many early-expansion pieces of gear that were relevant for raids and top-end content were locked behind reputation gains. In many cases, especially in the last three expansions, it was easier for Humans to get the best items faster than other races. This change could theoretically encourage players who were only playing Humans for the extra reputation to make a race change ahead of The War Within. 

It’s not like Humans are going to be losing a racial passive, but they’ll be getting something entirely new. Diplomacy was such a game-changer for many players—especially old content farmers, as well as raiders at the top end of the game. But when The War Within goes live, Human players will need to get used to playing without their bonus reputation gains.