Reputation (also referred to as faction) is a statistic showing your reputation with one of the many factions (such as Orgrimmar and Stormwind) within World of Warcraft. As you do things to help or harm the various factions your reputation statistic will raise and lower accordingly. As your reputation raises and you gain various reputation levels you will be able to access various areas, gain discounts, and unlock quests and items. As your reputation lowers you may lose the ability to interact with NPCs of that faction or might just be outright attacked on sight. Some factions, such as the Steamwheedle Cartel, control neutral cities and gaining their bad side will make the cities near inaccessible.

Since the expansion, The Burning Crusade, there has been a strong emphasis placed on reputation. With Wrath of the Lich King it has become even more important to level up your “rep” with many of the in game factions. For instance, your head enchant and shoulder enchant comes directly from reputation vendors.

You can find your current reputation with the various factions by bringing up the reputation sheet (default key: U) located within your character panel. You can utilize the reputation sheet to organize your reputation list, show a faction as an experience bar, or go to war with a faction. If you check the “At War” then you will go to war with that faction  and be able to attack members aligned to that reputation even if they’re friendly with you.

Gaining Reputation

There are many ways to gain reputation. The following is a short list of the generic methods used to gain reputation. Each faction is unique in how you gain reputation with them so it differs from faction to faction. Be sure to look up the faction you intend to raise or lower your reputation with before setting out to do so.

You can generally gain reputation by:

• Killing enemies aligned to an opposing faction. Certain NPCs may be of an opposing force but may not grant reputation. Not all enemies of a faction will give you reputation so be sure to check it out first.
• Questing for a faction or doing dialy quests for them. Doing a quest for a faction’s NPC will often raise your reputation with that faction in large quantities.Turning in items. Example would be the Darkmoon Faire which has you turn in crafted items for reputation or the Sons of Hodir who accept Relics of Ulduar for rep.Some factions have their own unique ruleset (for instance the battlegrounds will give reputation for completing certain objectives).
• Championing a faction. You can champion some factions in WotLK by wearing special tabards in heroic instances. This converts all reputation gained to the selected reputation on your tabard.

Losing Reputation

You often lose reputation faster than you can gain it and it’s not hard at all to tank your reputation with one or more factions. Doing quests for an opposing faction or killing a faction’s NPCs are generally the only two ways to lose reputation and some factions don’t even allow you to lose reputation (for instance the Alliance and Horde factions and their respective PvP factions).

You have to be careful if you’re trying to raise a faction to a certain point. If you kill something belonging to a faction you’ll often lose two to five times the reputation with them then you gain with the other faction. As an example, if you kill a Magram centaur then you’ll gain 20 reputation with the Gelkis Centaur but loose 100 for the Magram.

Reputation Levels

There are eight levels of reputation. At Hated and Hostile you will be attacked on sight by any members of that faction. At Unfriendly you will not be able to interact with any members of that faction but they will not attack you. At Neutral you can begin talking to and trading with members of that faction. Once you hit Friendly then all of the members of that faction will have their overhead names changed to green. At Honored you will gain a 10% discount on all items that the faction sells.

The Revered and Exalted reputation levels do nothing for a faction if that faction doesn’t have a reward for it. Likewise Honored is pointless if that faction doesn’t sell anything. Those rules are followed by all factions.

Each faction governs what each level grants you and some factions even go so far as to caps on how low or high you can go and some factions have no way to lower or raise their reputation. Each faction is unique and different.

Reputation Points

The following is a list of how many points you will need to gain a level. This list assumes you are at the very start of a reputation. Each level resets how many points you have to zero and it is shown on the reputation window as: Current Reputation Points / Needed Reputation Points to Level.

To get from Hated to Hostile you will need 36,000 reputation points.

To get from Hostile to Unfriendly you will need 3,000 reputation points.

To get from Unfriendly to Neutral you will need 3,000 reputation points.

To get from Neutral to Friendly you will need 3,000 reputation points.

To get from Friendly to Honored you will need 6,000 reputation points.

To get from Honored to Revered you will need 12,000 reputation points.

To get from Revered to Exalted you will need 21,000 reputation points

Exalted is the highest you can currently go while Hated is the lowest you can currently go. You often start at Neutral with most friendly factions.

Well that’s reputation in a nutshell. Head on back over to our Reputation Guide Portal to find out more about reputation and how to gain reputation with different factions.