WoW’s Double Reputation Buff Has Returned

I hope you folks are ready for an unexpected, yet pleasant surprise. Our recurring readers will likely recall that back in April, I reported upon a new development on Azeroth at the hands of Blizzard Entertainment. More specifically, Blizzard enabled two long-lasting buffs to all player characters. One of these buffs, known as “Winds of Wisdom,” passively doubles all experience gained by all characters from any source. This buff has, thankfully, been active since March and seems poised to remain so for the foreseeable future.

That’s not what I’m here to report upon today, however. Rather, I’m here to tell you that the second of these two buffs has returned for the entirety of the month of September. The buff in question is known as “Impressive Influence” which doubles all reputation gained by any character with all factions present in the Legion and Battle for Azeroth expansions. This buff is exceptionally useful if you still need to unlock any playable Allied Races or the ability to fly in Battle for Azeroth.

You could take advantage of the bonus reputation provided by Impressive Influence to unlock flying in Legion content as well, but I don’t see much of a point to doing so unless you absolutely need to fly in the Broken Isles as soon as humanly possible. I say that because the achievement requirements needed to unlock flying in Legion and Warlords of Draenor will be removed in Shadowlands, as I’ve previously reported.

Due to that, I’d recommend focusing on unlocking flying in Battle for Azeroth if you don’t already have it, as its Pathfinder achievement will remain in effect once the new expansion is live. There’s also a bit of a welcome twist on the Impressive Influence buff this time around. In its previous incarnation, the buff did not apply to reputation gained with two Battle for Azeroth factions, namely The Rajani and the Uldum Accord. That limitation no longer applies in this new version of the buff, so you can now easily gain reputation with these factions to your heart’s content for the next month.

I suspect I might know why Blizzard elected to bring back this buff, especially at this particular moment in time. With the release of Shadowlands on the not-too-distant horizon, I’d hazard a guess that Blizzard wants players to be able to maximize their experience and reputation gains throughout the month of September because the expansion’s preceding update (or “pre-patch”) will likely hit live servers sometime before the month is out.

Exactly how the pre-patch may intertwine with the experience and reputation buffs, though, I haven’t the foggiest idea. I readily concede that this is entirely speculative on my part and should, therefore, not be taken at face value. On a final note, dear reader, I’d like to know what you think of this whole situation. Are you glad the Impressive Influence buff is back, even if only for a month? What, if anything, do you plan to unlock while it’s up? Do feel free to sound off in this article’s comments if you’re so inclined!