Haha, no, not this blog. No, what I'm going to talk about now is Followers. As you know, one of the big conceptual premises of Warlords of Draenor is that you are finally getting the respect you deserve. It was you, after all, who delved into the Black Temple, defended Sunwell Plateau, locked down Ulduar, breached Icecrown Citadel, toppled the Bastion of Twilight, knocked Deathwing out of the sky, and placed Garrosh Hellscream under arrest. As Commander of the Alliance/Horde Forces in Draenor, you get your own base of operations in either Lunarfall or Frostwall, and you get to determine what kind of facilities are built at that stronghold. But beyond that, you also have a bunch of other up-and-coming adventurers who look to you for leadership. Over the course of the expansion, you'll collect a number of Followers - NPCs who obey your commands as you send them out in to Draenor. You can't be everywhere at once, after all, and the Followers will help contribute to your position on this strange world.
Followers can be attained in myriad ways, but when you first create your Garrison, you'll get a few quests that very quickly get you your first three. As soon as you construct your first building - the Barracks - you'll get a quest to go find one of the fellow soldiers who came in with you through the Dark Portal - Qiana Moonshadow, a Feral Druid, for Alliance, and Olin Umberhide, an Arms Warrior, for the Horde. As soon as you get this first Follower, you'll have a quest to send them on your first Follower mission, and this will get you the contract for your second Follower (these I don't remember off-hand.) Shortly thereafter (I think at level 91, which comes pretty quickly,) you'll be sent to Stormshield/Warspear to inspire the troops there. After some quick "tour the town" quests, you'll be introduced to Delvar Ironfist, a Blood Death Knigth (Alliance) or Vivianne, a Fire Mage (Horde,) who will join your troops.
As you quest through Draenor, many of the major quest chains will reward you with a follower. Just like gear from quest rewards, you'll have a chance to get higher-quality followers simply by luck. Most are "green" quality, but some can be blue or even purple quality. However, if your luck is awful or if there's a particular character who you like, but winds up only green-quality, don't despair. Once the follower hits level 100, any further experience they gain will contribute to leveling them to a higher quality. It should be noted that some characters will be guaranteed to be Rare or Epic quality when you get them.
What does the quality mean? Well, followers will have traits and abilities. Normal, green-quality followers will have a total of two, while Rares have three and Epics have four. These abilities and traits will come into play with follower missions.
Over time, your personnel officer at your garrison will acquire various missions for your followers. Usually you'll get missions that are appropriate to the level of followers you have. You can send followers on these missions both to level them up and to get rewards. In order to claim the rewards for a mission, your followers must be successful, and that means picking the right followers for the right missions.
Typically, each mission will have a group of enemies that need to be defeated. These enemies will have their own special "Threats," such as Minion Swarms or Wild Aggression. The followers then will have abilities that can counter these threats. For example, if you have a Rogue follower, they might have Fan of Knives, which will counter the threat of Minion Swarms. Choosing followers that have the right abilities to counter the threats of a mission will significantly increase your chance at success. Essentially, if all the threats are countered by level-appropriate followers, you'll most likely have a 100% success chance.
But you won't always have every single piece of the puzzle. Some of your followers may be too low-level, or you might just not have anyone with the right kind of ability. That's where you'll want to take traits into account.
Traits don't let you completely negate threats, but they can boost your success chance. Many followers will, for example, increase your success chance if you have a member of a certain race in that party (not counting the follower itself.) For instance, a follower with "Humanist" will increase the chance at success if he or she is paired with a human on the mission. Other traits can increase your success based on the terrain, the kind of enemies they are being sent to fight, or the length of the mission.
Some traits don't actually affect the success rate of the mission, but they can affect other things. For instance, "Epic Mount" will cut the travel time for the mission in half, which just means you won't have to wait as long for them to finish (and given that there are some missions that last for several hours, that can be quite nice.)
Additionally, some followers have professions. If you have a level two or higher building that corresponds to their profession, you can assign them to the building to increase the yield of that building's Work Orders. This is affected by character level though, so I'd recommend holding off on that until you get them to level 100, as working followers can't go on missions. They will also grant additional benefits - for example, a follower in your Forge (the Blacksmithing building) will give you a 4-hour buff that prevents wear-and-tear durability damage on your gear and another one that causes your attacks to sometimes summon a big fire elemental to protect you out in Draenor.
Once a follower hits level 100, you will have to increase their power in a different way - gear. If you have the Dwarven Bunker/War Mill, you can place work orders that will produce upgrade tokens to increase the iLevel of followers' weapons and armor. You'll also get these from follower missions on occasion as well (and I could be wrong, but possibly also from the Scrap Yard, which is one of the two Small buildings that doesn't correspond to a standard profession.)
Follower missions can reward many different things. Often it will be bonus follower XP, but you can also get pieces of gear, gold, Seals of Tempered Fate (the latest bonus roll coin,) and even XP for your own character (though this will of course be of limited use at level 100.)
Followers will also aid you during Garrison invasions, which is admittedly one aspect of the expansion that hasn't been quite as fleshed out yet on the Beta. Also, if you have a level 2 Barracks, you'll be able to assign followers with the Bodyguard trait to come with you on your adventures in Draenor - I believe anywhere except instances.
The system is pretty fun, and one thing that's very exciting is that a lot of big names are potential followers. You can recruit Lantressor of the Blade, Admiral Taylor, the Image of Archmage Vargoth (yep, he's still stuck in that tower in Netherstorm) and freaking Leeroy Jenkins.
For anyone who loves completing collections, this should keep you quite busy.
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