The hottest feature of the new World of Warcraft expansion: Warlords of Draenor is set to become the garrison, the home for heroes. Now details about the prestige project that Blizzard aims to excite the fans with have been revealed.
The clear message from the dev blog: The garrison will become an integral part of player life and is deeply integrated into the “normal” hero routine.
At the end of a normal zone quest, it will be possible to decide which building of the garrison should be upgraded. At the end of a quest, the player faces a decision: Does he build a sawmill or would he prefer to upgrade a training arena? The decision immediately impacts gameplay outside the garrison. The quests change accordingly. A sawmill requires different materials than an arena.
But not only will the garrison itself grow with each success, but also the crowd of its inhabitants. So much space wants to be populated. The garrison serves as a gathering place for allies, subordinates, and followers. The hero will slowly gather them in Draenor on his way to level 100. So that he can lead them into battles against the warlords who give the expansion its name.
The “followers” conceptually resemble pets. Each has its own weaknesses and strengths – some are better suited for one mission, while others are less suited.
Finally command someone around without being a raid leader!
According to Blizzard, they are currently working on improving the AI for the followers, so that they can logically go about their tasks in the garrison. The player will have the opportunity to command his subordinates appropriately:
A specific follower must know the location of a building to find his way there. This allows for significantly more natural and dynamic behavior; they also react more realistically to the events around them. Do you want to march through the city with your subjects in a conga line? Thanks to the improved AI and a new player emote, that’s not a problem!
No garrison obligation for slackers
There will be 21 building types; 10 can be built at the same time. In the individual buildings, particularly selected followers will work and provide the estate owner with delicious bonuses, such as better resource yield or access to crafting skills. There are various ways to obtain the blueprints for the buildings: Some are even obtained from the followers themselves.
However, the subordinates do not only provide the player with passive bonuses; the player can also send his gathered followers on missions, which continue even when he is logged out.
But Blizzard does not want to overdo it either. They are aware of the thin line between a great feature and a tedious obligation. Items that followers earn on their difficult missions should be obtainable by slackers in other ways.
We already presented a major special on the garrison and its possible details a few weeks ago. Maybe you should check it out? World of Warcraft: My Mount, My Garrison, My OGER?!
