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Warlords Alpha Build 18471 Garrison General Updates and Feedback

by - 10 years ago

BIG changes to the Garrison between builds, so let’s dig right into it.

The initial area you have to work with for your starting garrison is much smaller than it was in the previous build, and this is actually reflected in the Horde build as well in Frostfire.

  • The garrison at level 1 is much more walled off, and only has room for your Town Hall, a single large plot (which is still automatically slated to become your Barracks via questing), and a single small plot. The farm, mine, and fishing shack are all nowhere to be seen. (Horde version has those buildings removed, but the NPCs are all still there.)
  • Upgrading to level 2 seems to be a much more straightforward endeavor: once you’ve filled all your plots, you can upgrade. There’s nothing that indicates this (I just came across the option in the Architect UI) but it makes sense. Notably, the location goes from being called your Outpost to your Fort in the upgrade, and also grows to the size of what the Horde garrison looked like in previous builds. Farm, Mine, and Fishing Shack are now visible, and Mine has its unlock quest when you ding 92.
  • There’s an Alchemy quartermaster standing around, even before you build your Alchemy Lab. I strongly suspect that all of those quartermaster items from Build 18443 are involved. More on this later.
  • Your buildings now have a 1-hour build time and a scaling Garrison Resources cost to build: Small buildings are 150, Medium are 250, Large are 350. Your Barracks, however, you get to build effectively for free.

Professions

The Work Order UI has changed to be more clear about what you’re doing. However, while text states plainly that having a follower improves your daily haul, there’s actual nothing in the proper UI that allows for follower assignment, so it can’t be tested. Only the Fishing Shack appears to have the button to add a follower in the Architect UI, but since I haven’t got a follower who has Fishing, and/or because the UI is broken, I can’t test to see if this works.

One notable change to Alchemy (since that’s the only profession that’s testable at this point): the Secrets of the Master Alchemist currency that you earn from follower missions and spend on alchemy recipes has been renamed to “Secrets of Draenor Alchemy.” Also, you can buy the baseline recipes for gold from your Alchemy vendor, while your greater flask recipes all require five of these secrets. There’s also an option to spend your secrets on a small bag of gold, which in four tests didn’t result in more than 10 gold.

Having follower missions gate ALL recipes was a bad move, so I’m glad to see that concept gone. However, the return on secrets after you’ve bought all of the greater flask recipes feels really trivial and barely worth the click to get the small bag.

Meanwhile, level 92 opens up the quest to establish your mine. Aside from an excessively buggy spawn rate in actually clearing the quest (respawned goren were literally spawning on top of me before I could kill the previous batch), the end result is that there are a bunch of mining nodes in there that you can tap. It appears to vary between Blackrock Ore and True Iron, and there appears to be a chance for Rich nodes to spawn as well.

Easter Eggs

Imma just leave this here.

Bugs

  • Alliance does not appear to have a Blueprints vendor. Meanwhile, the Horde blueprints vendor still has all of the same building blueprints he had before, but even if you have the proper amount of gold and the right level, you’re still locked out of actually buying them from him.
  • The Alliance garrison has a number of surveyor NPCs standing around with theodolites (or scopes) that are clickable objects. Clicking on them takes you to a fixed bird’s-eye view of another point in the zone, but there doesn’t seem to be anything you actually do with it at this point. Once you upgrade to Level 2, all of these NPCs disappear.
  • Alliance farm plots seem oddly placed.
  • Water in the pond north of the Garrison is missing. You can see schools of fish and flowers floating in empty space, and while some of it is swimmable, most of it isn’t. The same underwater cave from the Horde garrison is also there, but sadly has no resources cache.

SPOILER WARNING

If you don’t want to know who your Mission Specialist and Architect are for your garrison, you may want to stop now.

REALLY SPOILERS HERE GUYS

Regarding our architect: Horde gets Gazlowe, while Alliance gets Baros Alexston. Baros will have some familiarity to the Alliance from old school quests, and while Gazlowe has a higher profile, there really isn’t anyone on the Alliance with any history that you could use, so Alexston is a good choice. The only complaint I’ve got here in terms of parity is that Gazlowe has unique voice emotes, where Alexston does not.

Regarding our mission dispatchers: Horde gets High Overlord VAROK SAURFANG.

Let me let that sink in again.

Alliance gets a Gilnean in human form that we’ve never heard of, named Lieutenant Thorn. I’m much more okay with having an unknown in this role, because the role of “person who delegates quests” is something you can give to anyone. Giving it to Saurfang feels like a waste of Saurfang’s notoriety. Yeah, it’s cool to see the dude again, but setting up this garrison feels like a job you’d give to Saurfang. I’m thinking more players who are familiar with the guy are going to think our toons are working for Saurfang instead of the other way around.

At the same time, if it’s somehow important to keep Saurfang in the role of Horde Mission Specialist, then having Lieutenant Thorn be his opposite number in the Alliance just doesn’t feel fair. She’s got no history. Give us someone we’ve heard of before, even if it’s not someone who can match Saurfang’s cult of personality. Shandris Feathermoon. Darius Crowley. Actually, Lorna Crowley would be a great choice if you really want to keep it as a human Gilnean lady. But some kind of named Alliance character that players have some familiarity with feels like a requirement when the Horde gets Saurfang.

I just don’t feel like the current state has parity to it. Either put Notable NPCs in as the Mission Specialist for both factions, or put nameless functionary NPCs in for both.

A bigger post focusing on building changes and follower additions is coming up shortly.

 


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


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