Tuesday, November 12, 2013

I am the Master of my Domain: Garrisons in Warlords of Draenor

First off, if you don't get the Seinfeld reference in the title, I feel sad for you.

For ages, people have been asking Blizzard to add player housing to World of Warcraft. Here we are, Azeroth's greatest heroes, having triumphed over the Lich King and Deathwing and Kil'jaeden, and yet we're all, technically speaking, a bunch of homeless bums.

But Blizzard's constant refrain has been that they only want to do player housing if they can make it interesting - something more than just a little phased or instanced area where you get to look at static stuff.

As I've argued before, Sunsong Ranch was really the first player housing in the game. It served a pretty simple purpose: allowing people to literally farm resources if they were sick of flying around all the time. It also tied in deeply with the complex cooking changes that required many different kinds of vegetables.

As of 5.3, we might own Sunsong Ranch, but it doesn't really feel like a home. It's more of a little getaway, where we can escape the violence and bloodshed to just work on our green thumbs.

The thing is, at this point, we're really respected within our factions. People are excited to know that we've arrive on the battlefront, because we tend to turn the tides. Isn't it time we were given some kind of command?

With the Garrisons, we get to command our own base, establishing a stronghold on Draenor. We effectively become quest-givers ourselves, sending out lesser aspiring heroes to complete tasks that will help the war effort.

To recap what you'll be able to do with the Garrison:

You will begin with a few plots of land of varying sizes. These can hold different buildings, which serve various functions. You Garrison will attract various followers (who we can imagine to be likeminded adventurers who see your town and think "hey, a quest hub!") You will then be able to send these followers on various missions, from quests to scenarios to dungeons to, finally, raids. As they do these missions, you'll gain resources with which to build more of your base, and in the meantime, your followers will level up and potentially gain new gear for themselves.

It looks to be a very deep system (this is Blizzard, after all,) but the benefits are pretty tangible for yourself as well. As the followers go on more challenging missions, the chance that they will bring you back gear gets higher and higher. Sending them to dungeons will guarantee a blue piece of gear (though whether this is an actual boss drop or some kind of randomized item is unknown,) and presumably they'll bring back epics from raids.

Going further, while many of the buildings on your Garrison will be based around managing your followers, there will also be things like a Smithy, or an Engineering Works, or a Mine, that allow your followers to gather resources or learn professions. The idea here is that while you might want to just stick with your own professions, your followers will be able to provide you with a limited version of the other ones. It looks, also, like there will in fact be a farm not unlike Sunsong Ranch on your Garrison, though I imagine that rather than having us use Snakeroot seeds, there will be separate areas to find other resources.

Garrisons will be able to move, setting up in designated areas of each Draenor zone. And rather than really being phased, you'll be able to see your watch towers and walls from far away. Any party members or even raid members that want to see your place - or trade resources with you - can come along to your Garrison as long as you're the group leader.

I expect that this will be one of the most exciting new features of Warlords of Draenor. This ain't some house in the country or a studio apartment in Ironforge. We will all become commanders of our own major fortresses. That sounds pretty awesome.

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