Last time on Dragonba…whoops, wrong show.
If you missed the last entry, I created a Highmountain Tauren Shaman named Grizzlebeard and dove into Warlords of Draenor to see how it plays compared to my memories of the olden days in Mists of Pandaria and before. Our scrappy band of adventurers made it through the Dark Portal and escaped the Iron Horde to land in Frostfire Ridge, where we were gifted a plot of land by Thrall’s father(?). I think it is his dad anyways. Did I mention I’m bad with WoW lore?
Personally, as someone who very much enjoyed the farm in MoP, the Garrison was one of the main things I was excited about. To my understanding, Warlords of Draenor introduced Garrisons, and they continued to iterate and adjust that system in following expansions, so I am curious to see where they started and how it works out.
The Garrison begins as a small Horde outpost in the frozen wastes of Frostfire Ridge, and acts as a staging point for our adventures in the area and in Draenor as a whole. After a quick little introduction to the system and poking around at menus, it seems that I can use the supplies I have been gathering to build certain buildings in empty plots in the Garrison and tweak the overall function to meet my needs.
As someone who always enjoys crafting in MMOs and being somewhat self-sufficient, I figured I would snag a few professions here and see how those changed over the years as well. Opting for the old standby of Tailoring and Enchanting, I went ahead and selected the corresponding buildings for the Garrison.
Adding those allowed me to learn Draenor Tailoring and Draenor Enchanting, and this was one of the first things that really stood out as glaringly different from the olden days (aside from the graphics). Previously, professions functioned similar to the leveling route. You would first take up a profession, and level it from 1 to 300 in Classic, then pick up TBC versions, WotLK, and so on, leveling each of them from the previous cap to the newly raised cap.
Now, each era is broken up into a separate set of levels, and you can learn each independently. This makes sense with the new leveling layout and Chromie Time, as there is no requirement to go through each expansion sequentially, and it would be incredibly awkward to level professions in the old style. That said, it does make it seem like there is little reason to level professions in the older content outside of things like profession specific mounts, pets, and so on.
As I was only really taking Tailoring for making my own bags, this is not a huge issue or anything that will take much adjustment, but it is a large change from the way things used to be.
In addition to the buildings tied to crafting, I ended up with a few other things added to the Garrison as well.
A fishing shack, an herb garden, and a mine. The fishing shack lets me take daily fishing quests to catch certain fish and turn them in, so pretty standard fare. The herb garden does what it says on the box, and is a garden where you can harvest herbs. As I am not an Herbalist or Alchemist, these aren’t super useful, but I’m assuming I can always sell them. I won’t turn down free money.
As a side note, I am really enjoying these cinematic reveals of buildings and notable NPCs with the camera swooping in and a nice descriptive bit of text like in the screenshots above with the new buildings. It is nothing I was ever missing when I played before, but it is a nice addition to add a little more cinematic flair.
The other main aspect of the Garrison seems to be the ability to send Followers on missions with various rewards. For now, I have only had missions that reward XP for me, XP for the Followers themselves, or rarely a piece of equipment. I vaguely remember seeing mention of this in another expansion, so it seems like this has continued on, and it seems pretty neat for when the expansion is current game content. Playing through the expansion now as old/irrelevant content, there once again does not seem to be any significant reason to spend time on this, though it is fun to be questing out in the world and realize at the end of a quest chain that the NPC you have been working with is now going to join your merry band back at the Garrison as a Follower.
After a good bit of running around and familiarizing myself with the Garrison and doing some quests to unlock various things, I decided to head out and start really exploring the rest of Frostfire Ridge. After freeing the Citadel from Ogres, quests took me all over the zone to continue beating back the Ogre threat and rally more bands of Orcs to my banner. I encountered Gul’dan doing Gul’dan things and trying to summon or corrupt people, but after chasing him off most of the zone was pretty straightforward.
The story quests culminated in a 300-esque standoff in a ravine with a small group of our Frostwolves holding the pass against the incoming Iron Horde. Ultimately, the plan became to hold them back long enough for Drek’thar, who by the way I feel like I should know, to use his Shaman powers and collapse the ravine walls and block off the pass.
This was a neat sequence, and getting to fight alongside Durotan and Ga’nar everyone to hold back the Iron Horde ended up being a really enjoyable fight. We beat back cannons, a giant Gronn, and all manner of Orcs, until eventually Drek’thar was able to complete his communing with the elements. Unfortunately, at the same time a massive wave of Iron Horde surges through the ravine, and it looks like they will make it through to overrun our small band of Frostwolves. Durotan makes a move to intercept, but is held back by his brother Ga’nar who tells him that the Frostwolves need him, and to let Ga’nar do this in his place. Charging in, we see Ga’nar put up a heroic last stand, taking out numerous Iron Horde before the stone walls of the ravine crumble and bury them all.
This was a fairly epic feeling conclusion to what I understood to be just the starting zone of this expansion. Ga’nar himself I was fairly on the fence about throughout Frostfire as he was typically fairly abrasive and bloodthirsty, but he ended up making a noble sacrifice and doing what he thought was best for the Frostwolves.
Afterwards, there is discussion of pressing onward to Gorgrond, the area the Iron Horde were pouring through from, and we are also given a choice of Followers. This Makar Stonebinder guy does his best Professor Oak impression and presents us with three options to pick from. Greatmother Geyah (Thrall’s grandma), Kal’gor the Honorable, and Lokra.
Lokra was part of a chain of quests in Frostfire, and Greatmother Geyah is Durotan’s mother, making her Thrall’s grandmother. The other guy? Absolutely no idea. I assume he was probably part of some quests I did, but if so they were not memorable.
Of course I chose Thrall’s grandma. Come on, was it really a choice? Grandma to the greatest Shaman and Warchief to ever grace Azeroth or the Horde. No contest.
So, she becomes a Follower we can send on missions, and we are now off to Gorgrond!
But, we’ll save that bit for next time. For now, I want to touch on a few thoughts that arose while playing.
Flight. Ohh flight. What have they done to my beautiful boy? Starting in Dragonflight, the flying system in WoW was overhauled into the new Skyriding system. Where previously your flying mount operated like a harrier jet, allowing for vertical takeoff, reverse, and all manner of control, the mounts now operate more like actual dragons. You take off and glide forward, have boost skills, gain speed while descending, and lose speed when climbing. While neat, this feels horrible coming from the old style of flight.
I am aware there is the option to toggle between the two, and it seems like it may be faster to get around while Skyriding due to the boosts and increase in speed while angled down, but I wanted to highlight how jarring this was a returning player. I miss being able to just drop right on a gathering point and then mount back up and ascend. The new changes have made gathering while mounted significantly less enjoyable, and while I am going to continue to use it to get used to the new system, my initial impression is not positive.
Also relating to flying, I no longer need to purchase the ability to ride a flying mount in any areas from what I have seen. I will freely admit that I complained about the old system back in the day. Having to learn a specific skill for my mount to figure out how to fly in cold weather seemed absurd. Now with some experience with the alternative, I can appreciate the choice to restrict flight at the beginning of expansions. Zones feel so much smaller and emptier when you can just mount up and zoom off across them. Were the zones designed from the outset with flight in mind, taking verticality in mind, this may not be so much of an issue. As is, having immediate access to flying in these old zones is an interesting conundrum. For someone returning and wanting to experience the old zones, this feels like it somewhat cheapens the experience. But, I can understand why it was done as these zones are no longer relevant, and when leveling most players will want to progress as quickly as possible.
Talents have constantly changed throughout expansions, and I am curious what they looked like back in the Warlords of Draenor days. During Vanilla/Classic, we had three trees and the ability to mix and match points throughout to create diverse builds. In Cataclysm or Mists of Pandaria that system was overhauled and we were given a choice between three options every five levels or so I believe. This was a massive reduction to the talent trees, and while it was much more straightforward, it limited the options for build diversity as well. I was never particularly a fan of the streamlined talent system, and it is nice to see that we have returned to the trees at some point.
Now, we have talent trees, but only two options instead of three. It appears to be a general tree for the overall Class, and a tree for your Specialization. An option in the menu lets you select a Starter Build, and it will highlight suggested options as you level. This feels like it straddles the line between the previous trees we had in the past and the depth, while also offering ease of use for newer players.
Ultimately, I am enjoying the state the game appears to be in, and the story so far throughout Draenor. I am excited to progress into Gorgrond and see what new adventures are in store!
Next time: Welcome to the Jungle (Exploring Gorgrond in Warlords of Draenor)
Grizzlebeard Plays 