World of Warcraft gender changes will be free in Shadowlands

News
By published

Blizzard is removing the real-money charge for changing your character's gender

(Image credit: Blizzard)

World of Warcraft's upcoming Shadowlands expansion will remove the $15/£13 charge to change your character's gender.

Right now, the only way to change genders is to buy an Appearance Change from the Blizzard store. But you can change just about everything else about your character's appearance from the barber shop for in-game currency. In a conversation with Eurogamer, executive producer John Hight acknowledged the problem there and says Blizzard plans to make changing your character's gender free in Shadowlands.

"A long time ago, we had the ability for players to go in - it was actually a paid service - and change their character. Much of that is now in the barber shop in the game," he said. "And as we were adding things up in Shadowlands, we realised, 'Gosh the only way you can change your gender in World of Warcraft is to go through this paid service.' And we felt like that's not the right message," Hight said.

Apparently, it's not something that can happen overnight, but it's an update Blizzard is embedding into the Shadowlands expansion, which is scheduled to launch some time in the Fall of this year.

This comes with the context of a new Shadowlands NPC, Pelagos, who is seemingly the first transgender character in World of Warcraft. Blizzard essentially confirmed as much in a post on the WoW forum explaining why the character's pronouns had changed. "Pelagos, who presented as a woman in his mortal life, chose to be a man in the Shadowlands," reads the post in-part.

Yet another update we can't wait to see implemented in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

Jordan Gerblick
Jordan Gerblick
Staff Writer

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.