WoW has no separate Renown button on the action bar — the Renown track opens from the Reputation tab of your character panel. Open your character sheet, click the Reputation tab, expand the Major Factions header, and click a faction's Renown button. That opens the full track with every level, its rewards, and how much progress you still need.
The click path, step by step
- Open the character sheet (default key C), or click your character portrait in the micro menu along the bottom of the screen.
- Switch to the Reputation tab at the bottom of that window.
- Find the Major Factions group. Expansion factions that use Renown live there; older factions still sit under their own headers with classic reputation bars.
- Click the faction's name to select its row — the Renown button appears on that row.
- Press it. You get the full track: numbered Renown levels, reward icons, what is already claimed, and a preview of everything still ahead.
Quick facts
- Renown replaced standard reputation bars for expansion Major Factions from Dragonflight onward; Shadowlands used it for Covenants first.
- Not every faction has a Renown track. Old-world and older-expansion factions still run Friendly to Exalted.
- The button only appears for factions you have actually unlocked, usually through the expansion's story campaign.
- Renown levels do not reset when a patch lands — you keep what you earned, and new levels get bolted onto the top of the track.
- Renown rewards are claimed automatically as you hit each level; the panel shows anything you have not picked up yet.
Why can't I see the Renown button?
Three usual causes. First, the faction is not a Renown faction at all — you are looking at a classic reputation bar, which has no button. Second, you have not unlocked that faction yet; until the intro quests are done it either does not appear in the list or shows greyed out.
Third, an outdated UI addon is replacing the reputation frame and swallowing the button. Disable addons that touch the character panel or reputation display, reload, and check again. A stale addon after a patch is the single most common reason the button vanishes.
Is Renown shared across my characters?
For recent expansion Major Factions, yes — modern WoW tracks that progress across your account rather than per character, so an alt starts at the Renown level your main already reached. That is why a fresh alt can walk straight into rewards that took your main weeks.
Older reputations that use the classic Friendly-to-Exalted scale do not all behave that way, so check the individual faction rather than assuming.
Renown vs reputation — what's the difference?
Reputation is the old system: one long bar per faction, six or seven named standings, rewards gated behind vendors once you reach a threshold. Renown is levels instead of standings — each level pays out immediately with gear, cosmetics, currency, recipes or a mount, and the panel shows the whole reward list up front.
Practically, Renown is more transparent. You can see exactly which level holds the thing you want before you commit weeks to farming it.
What's the fastest way to gain Renown?
Weekly content carries most of the load: the faction's weekly quest, world quests tied to that faction, and any event or activity the current patch flags as bonus reputation. Reputation-boost items and the expansion's rep-gain buffs stack on top of that.
If you are catching up late in a season, look for the catch-up mechanics Blizzard adds in later patches — bonus rates for accounts already at high Renown make alt tracks move several times faster than they did at launch.
If the grind is the part you would rather skip, PewPewShop's Reputation & Renown help starts from EUR 19 — vetted human players, coaching and play-together progression, no bots and no cheats. Handy when you want the level 20 reward this week and only have two evenings to play.