Tired of waiting for your garrison work orders to finish? In patch 6.1, you'll be able to acquire rush orders which allow you to instantly complete 5 active work orders for that particular building, e.g. Rush Order: Engineering Works.

There are a couple ways to acquire these rush orders. Firstly, there are new profession missions which become available based on the profession buildings you have in your garrison. If you have an Engineering Works, you should periodically get missions like You're Fired or The Wonder Gears which reward 2 or 3 of these rush orders. Followers with profession traits have an increased success chance on these missions as well.

Secondly, you can buy rush orders with Garrison Resources for non-profession buildings like the Barn and Gladiator's Sanctum. Currently it costs 1000 Garrison Resources per rush order, with the exception of the mine and garden which cost 300 each. Keep in mind this is PTR and all subject to change. It sounds pretty pricey to me, but if you're overflowing with resources it will give you something to spend them on.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

I can remember players asking for this feature ever since connected flight paths were introduced back in patch 1.10. Sometimes you click the wrong flight path, sometimes you fly over something interesting and just want to get off early. Whatever the reason, in patch 6.1 you can now request a stop at the next available flight point on your route.

It's as simple as clicking the little vehicle eject button that you normally use to exit vehicles or multi-passenger mounts. Currently, once this is toggled on you cannot cancel your request to land early. Aside from that little quirk, it's a welcome feature. Now if only I could bail out of flight paths with a parachute.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

Blizzard has just announced the unlock schedule for the Blackrock Foundry raid! Normal and heroic modes open on February 3, with Mythic opening the following week on February 10. Raid finder begins to unlock with wing 1 on February 17, and you'll have to wait all the way until March 24 to kill Blackhand in wing 4. LFR will require a minimum item level of 635.

Keep in mind this doesn't mean patch 6.1 will be released on the same date. The @WarcraftDevs Twitter account has already told us that the two are not dependent.

Check out the full unlock schedule after the break.

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Filed under: News items, Warlords of Draenor

Today's maintenance has been extended for WoW, Diablo 3, and Hearthstone. Realms are now scheduled to be up at 1 p.m. PST. The PTR is still up if you really need your WoW fix.

We'll update this post if it gets extended again.

[Update - NA] Maintenance has been extended until 1pm PST for #Wow, #D3, and #Hearthstone. We'll update as soon as we know more.

- BlizzardCS (@BlizzardCS) January 13, 2015

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Filed under: News items

The patch 6.1 PTR realms are now live, but without any level 100 characters there isn't much to test yet. All PTR realms are still locked to Mists of Pandaria and there is currently no ETA for when they'll be upgraded to Warlords of Draenor. Character copy is disabled, but you can make pre-made level 90 toons.

One of the few things available for testing is the new heirloom interface. Once you own a heirloom, it's a simple matter of clicking it in your heirloom tab to create a copy of the item in your bags. You can buy heirlooms and upgrade tokens from Estelle Gendry (Undercity) and Krom Stoutarm (Ironforge). Base level heirlooms scale from 1-60 and can be upgraded twice to level 85 and level 100. See here for a full list of the heirlooms available.

For more details on the status of the PTR realms, check the blue post after the break.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

Our friends at Wowhead have datamined a new set of follower raid missions for Blackrock Foundry. Like the Highmaul missions that exist today, these will reward random non-weapon loot from the Blackrock Foundry raid. It's unclear at this point if tier 17 armor will be potential rewards or not.

The important bit of information here is that these new missions require your followers to be 660 item level. The current cap on follower item level is 655, so you won't be able to upgrade them quite yet. In the meantime, you can continue to collect upgrades from the Dwarven Bunker/War Mill and Salvage Yard if you want to do these missions when the patch hits.

If you want to learn more about raid missions, you can check out our post from last week.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

Community Manager Crithto teased a new garrison NPC coming in patch 6.1 that will sell followers you may have missed because of quests, missions, buildings, or outpost choices. Remember that quest in Shadowmoon Valley that had you choose 1 of 3 followers? It looks like you'll now be able to get the other 2 -- for a price. This may address one of the concerns I posted yesterday (#5) regarding how easy it is to skip past potential followers on alts. Keep an eye out for more details once the 6.1 PTR launches.

Crithto

All of this feedback is great so thank you!

We have some really cool changes coming to Garrisons in the future and a lot of them are based on what you've shared with us in recent weeks. Also, I've relayed many of the ideas you've posted here, too.

One specific change I can share is in the next patch we're planning to add a new NPC to tier 3 Garrisons who will sell followers you might not have access to based upon which buildings and Outposts you've chosen. Definitely keep an eye out for that on the next PTR, test it out, and let us know what you think.

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Ohhh, what about for followers that came from quests that give you a choice of three but you can only choose 1. Gotta catch'em all you know =P.

Yup! You'll be able to browse for followers you did not choose from quests and any you might have missed from failed missions.

source

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

Tired of taking the scenic route because you missed a flight path between you and your destination? In 6.1, the flight master will be able to send you on the most optimal route regardless of what flight paths you've discovered. EU Community Manager Takralus has the details.

Takralus

We are making some huge improvements to the way flight paths work in 6.1.

There are hundreds of flight paths in Draenor. The way it works right now, if you don't know a flight point, the flight master won't use it as a connecting node when you're travelling from point A to point B. If you've missed a few flight points (which is very easy to do), this means certain flight paths are be much less efficient than they could be.

In 6.1, flight masters will use flight points you haven't discovered as connecting points. This will make things much more efficient.

source

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

I sometimes find myself wishing that garrisons were designed to be account-wide from the beginning. It may sound silly, but I'd love to see my alts hanging out in my single account-wide garrison when I'm logged on another character. This is obviously not in the cards, but maybe there could be some changes to make managing multiple garrisons a little bit easier. You can tell yourself that they are "optional" as much as you want, but you'd be missing out a large portion of this expansion if you simply ignored them, even on alts. Thankfully, Blizzard is listening to feedback and plans on making adjustments in the future.

Takralus

We're looking into ways to make Garrisons a bit more friendly in future patches for those of you who enjoy alts. We see that Garrisons are a bit too much for you guys right now.

source

Good to hear. I have a few ideas on how things might be improved, some more realistic than others.

1. BoA follower armor and weapon upgrades

As it stands, having a Dwarven Bunker/War Mill and Salvage Yard are essentially requirements if you want to partake in the most worthwhile follower missions. Wouldn't it be nice if after your first or second garrison this was no longer the case? I've put a significant amount of time and resources into my main's followers, and I'm at the point where most of them are maxed out in item level. However, I still have a ton of items like War Ravaged Weaponry which I can no longer use on this character. My alts could put them to good use.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Warlords of Draenor

WoW's 10th anniversary event was scheduled to run from Friday, November 21 to Tuesday, January 6, 2015 at 10 a.m. PST. Unfortunately, it is currently set to end 1 day earlier than originally announced. Molten Core or Southshore vs. Tarren Mill cannot be queued for on most realms at this time. Blizzard is aware of the problem and working on a fix. We'll update this post when we hear anything new. Hopefully you'll still get a chance to run these later today if you haven't yet (or wanted one last shot at the pet or enchanting illusion).

Update: Blizzard is extending the event for an additional week starting tomorrow. Molten Core LFR and the Southshore vs. Tarren Mill battleground will be available again from January 6 at 10:00 a.m. PST until January 13 at 10:00 a.m. PST.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor