Beware: WoW’s “Welcome Back” Gift Comes With A Few Major Downsides

If you’re a returning player to World of Warcraft’s “retail” (read: not Classic) version, you may have been offered a “Welcome Back” gift. It’s a nice gesture; a package that contains a whole set of class-appropriate armor, a set of bags, and a clean Quest Log, as well as a teleport back to your capital city (either Stormwind or Orgrimmar). So what’s not to love? Well, a few things, apparently.

WoW’s Welcome Back Gift – A Word of Warning

The Welcome Back Gift currently restricts your ability to earn your race’s Heritage Armor when used, and completely resets your UI and action bars. Despite being redeemable by any character from level 10 – 60, the gift apparently exhibits a known bug that prevents the unlock of the cosmetic Heritage Armor on that character.

Related: How to Unlock Heritage Armor in WoW Dragonflight

Basically, the game treats the character as if they’ve used a boost or Faction/Race change. Something about the way the Welcome Back gift is coded must be flagging one of the Heritage Armor restrictions. We don’t have an update as far as a fix quite yet, but I’m hoping to hear more in the future since Heritage Armor is a very hefty unlock for those willing to level up a character from scratch.

As far as the UI and action bars – this is probably a misguided but well-intentioned way to get players starting “fresh,” similar to the wiping of the Quest Log. Nothing kills my drive to play after a long break like logging in to a jumble of AddOns I can’t remember how to use mucking up my screen, and action bars clogged with every ability in the book.

So, if you’re jumping back in (after 60 consecutively logged-out days) and thinking about the Welcome Back Gift, just keep these things in mind. If you don’t mind a clean slate and already have (or just don’t care about) Heritage Armor, go for it! If not, maybe give it some thought. Speaking of cosmetics, check out this month’s Trading Post offerings!