Blizzcon 2013: Part 9 - Garrisons

Garrisons are WoW's answer to player housing. As you complete missions and recruit Followers, your Garrison can upgrade with even more features.

Expanding Your Garrison

Players can create new buildings and upgrade their Garrison.

• Players can construct a variety of buildings, which can be upgraded and expanded over time.
  • Small buildings: Alchemy Lab, Smithy, Enchanter's Study, Engineering Works, Scribe's Office, Salvage Yard, Storehouse, Tailoring Studio, Jewelcrafting, and the Tannery.
  • Medium buildings: pet stable, trading post, lumber mill, barn, and inn. Pet stable will let you breed epic pets and there is a special trainer to fight.
  • Large buildings: barracks, infirmary, armory, stable, academy, mage tower.
• Garrisons have three tiers. They level up when you have filled up all of your building plots, which can be small, medium, and large in size. Each size has a different bonus. Tier 2 for example gives you 15% Follower Recovery Time, 5% Passive Melee Buff, 5% Passive Caster Buff, 10% Travel Speed, and 15% Garrison Supplies, 10% Ore Gathering, and 5% Herb Gathering.
• Constructing more buildings improves your ability to recruit and manage followers, as well as your efficiency in completing missions.
• You can upgrade your buildings three times, like Barracks to go on multiple missions, Inns to recruit followers, and an Infirmary to speed up injured Followers. When buildings are upgraded, they become more powerful and visually elaborate.
• Players can also select a specialization for their max level various buildings, which can be changed once per day. Sample Armory Specialization is Striking Blade: Grants the player a Critical Strike buff that persists through death for 4 hours. Visit the Armory to gain this buff.
• There are many ways to get blueprints to learn how to upgrade buildings, from quest rewards to world drops to faction rewards.

Customization and Social Interactions

Players can show off Garrisons to their friends and customize its appearance:

• Garrisons can be decorated with monuments and trophies, which may be tied to achievement rewards.
• Players of the same faction can visit your Garrison if they are in your party. You can also trade Garrison resources with friends.
• Garrisons will not be phased like Tillers farms--if you have a huge tower, your friends can see it across the zone.
• Players can place their Garrison in several zones and Alliance and Horde get unique artwork for their buildings.
• A Garrison's appearance and furniture can be further customized by players selecting a certain design "spec." Layouts are also decided upon by the player.

Followers

You can meet and recruit NPC Followers in your Garrison, who can benefit your character and Garrison in various ways:

• Followers can go on various missions--some can gather profession resource,s return treasure, or other useful items like epic gear. They also bring back materials to build your Garrison.
• Followers have a character level, item level, and traits that affect tasks. Traits are affected by a follower's rarity--there are common, uncommon, rare, and epic followers. Higher rarity followers have more traits.
• Followers gain character levels just like players from 90-100. You can give them Follower-specific gear to equip, which can increase their item level.
• Followers can be acquired in several ways: naturally found in your Garrison, attracting more by building an Inn, completing quest objectives, and paying mercenaries.
• There are plans for cool interactions between Followers and zones--for example, your Follower might be out on a mission in a dungeon, get captured, and you'd rescue the Follower the next time you ran it.
• A sample follower shown at the panel was Hamfist Facewrecker, a warrior who had Dragonbane (Damage boost when fighting Dragons), Rambo (Bonus to all stats when fighting in the forest), Last Man Standing (Bonus to all stats for each dead party member if the last one alive), and Blacksmithing (Can participate in Blacksmith missions and can research new recipes for you at the Garrison.

Missions

Missions are completed by your Followers and are essential to build your Garrison further.

• Missions can be completed while you are offline.
• Missions provide resources for your Garrison as well as profession reagents, but also some useful loot for your character.
• Missions can be completed by Followers in parties--if you are offline, your Followers can still pair up with other Followers.
• As time goes on, missions can stretch out into several days or a week. Missions and Garrisons are not intended to be very time-intensive at high levels.
• Some followers might be better at some missions than others, depending on their traits.
• The sample UI showed a list of followers and a main panel of different missions. These missions take different amounts of time and followers.
• Quest missions take 15-30 minutes and are used to level up Followers. Higher level quests reward player loot.
• Scenario missions take 2-3 hours and has a high chance to reward player loot.
• Dungeon missions take 1-3 days and are guaranteed to have player loot.
• Raid missions take 4-7 days and unlock when you get 10 followers to 100. Raid missions also include transmog rewards from old raids.
• The mission UI filters missions by type and shows the amount of time a mission will take as well as desirable traits for the mission. If your follower has those requested traits, you will get a bonus.

Pulled from WoW Head.

The ability to build a base on Draenor.  This is the closest thing we may ever see to player housing in World of Warcraft.  Your friends can come and interact and visit.  This is a BASE.  You are going to do a lot of things.  You collect followers, send those followers on missions, build and work on professions.  You get to place this thing in several different zones, so there will be a change of scenario.  

The coolest part might be the Follower system that they are setting up.  You get these followers in various ways.  Those followers are then going to be able to complete tasks.  They can gear up themselves... AND YOU.  You can send them on quests for money or loot.  You can send them on dungeons.  You can even send your followers on raids.  Depending on the tasks it will take a different period of time.  A raid may take a week, a dungeon a day and a quest an hour.  You use these different things to level up and gear out your minion so that they can complete more tasks for you.  The idea is always about progress.  Think of your followers and NPCs that you have to level.  You're not growing plants anymore, you're growing people....

You have access to different things in your Garrison, too.  Professions seem like they may be the most interesting.  You can build a mine in your base.  You can then build a Blacksmith.  You can send one of your followers into the Mine and have them bring back what they get and forge it at the Blacksmith.  You can then craft things that would normally require a Blacksmith.  I'm still not quite sure how this actually plays out, but it sounds cool.  As a LWer on my Rogue I would love to be able to put in the time and work to craft an item for myself from Blacksmithing, if I'm able to get the materials.  With some thought and a nice coat of polish, this could be a stand out feature of the Garrison.

The Garrison is gonna grow with you.  You add more things over time.  Armory, Stable, Blacksmith.  They all over different bonuses and provide you with different things, it's all up to you.  Not only do you grow the Garrison, but you can move it!  Like I said earlier, you get to pick the zone that you set it up in.  You get tired of that zone... just fucking move.  Pick it up and move it.  This will also allow you to recruit more Followers and you will be able to see those Followers wandering around the Garrison to interact with.  You are also going to get monuments that you can put up.  Got a sweet achievement or did something really awesome?  You may very well get a sweet statue that you can put up at your Garrison to show off what kind of badass you are.  Maybe you put a head on the mantle over the Town Hall or Inn at your Garrison.  The buildings upgrade, too.  They look different both on the inside and outside as you grow your Garrison.

I'm looking forward the expansion and I think this will be one of the most solid features.  I'm gonna build a killer base and try to utilize as much shit as possible.  Hopefully this can be done casually and not require a shitload of extra input.  I don't mind putting in work, but I don't want to put in 2 hours a day just to hit max level Garrision in 18 months. =X  You can gate it, if you'd like, but let's just make this entertaining to everyone.