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.

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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

With the right followers, it's possible to get yourself a piece of genuine Highmaul raid loot without ever setting foot inside the raid. Before you endeavor to do this, you should know that the Dwarven Bunker/War Mill and Salvage Yard are basically required to do this in any sane amount of time. You need both buildings to get enough follower armor and weapon upgrades, as these missions require a roster of ilvl 645+ followers to complete.

Raid mission basics

• Your first raid mission will unlock when you have 3 followers at 645 or higher item level.
• The mission should stick around for at least a couple days if you want to spend some time getting other followers ready.
• After completing a raid mission, your next one will unlock 2 weeks later.
• Any piece of loot from the raid appropriate to your loot specialization can drop, with the exception of weapons. Just like normal drops, these can be warforged, socketed, or have tertiary stats.
• The quality of loot is based on your current progression in the raid itself:
  • Normal caches (ilvl 655 loot) are rewarded if you've killed 0-14 bosses in normal mode.
  • Heroic caches (ilvl 670 loot) are rewarded if you've killed 15+ bosses in normal mode.
  • Mythic caches (ilvl 685 loot) are rewarded if you've killed 15+ bosses in heroic mode.
  • Mythic caches plus a bonus of 1000 gold are rewarded if you've killed 15+ bosses in mythic mode.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, Raiding, Warlords of Draenor

Blizzard has just released a preview of some exciting new things we can expect from WoW in 2015. Let's get right down to the highlights:

• In patch 6.1, the legendary quest will be rewarding you with a legendary follower.
• They will be testing the ability to send tweets (with screenshots) from inside the game.
• Better flight paths, with more direct routing.
• New incentives to invite friends into your garrison with daily tasks (complete with rewards and achievements).
• New ways to spend Garrison Resources, new follower missions and rewards, new follower modification items, and a new tier of difficulty for garrison invasions.
• The ability to purchase game time tokens (with real money) that can be traded with other players in game for gold.
• Account-wide heirloom system, with the ability to upgrade heirlooms to level 100.
• New blood elf models and tweaks for existing models.
• Improving Ashran faction balance.
• Blackrock Foundry will begin opening in February 2015.

Check out the full blue post after the break.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

If you were wondering what happened to that hotfix to reduce the number of Inn quests needed for the level 3 blueprint, it has finally been implemented. I personally recommend doing most of the quests anyway. At least the quests that reward toys and pets. The one reward is the closest you'll get to flying in Draenor in the foreseeable future. Here are some of the highlights:

• A hotfix in testing from December 11 for the Inn has been implemented. The achievement, Stay Awhile and Listen now only requires the character to complete 10 of the 20 Inn quests (down from all 20).
• Tectus' health has been reduced by about 15% when the raid is scaled to 10 players on Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulties. As the raid scales up to a maximum of 30 players, Tectus' health for 30 players remains roughly unchanged from before this hotfix.
• Resolved an issue where having a player join the Dungeon Finder or Raid Finder group just as another player was leaving could cause the button to queue up for additional players to remain greyed out for the rest of the group.

Today is pretty light on the hotfixes. See the rest after the break.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

Today we have a little more class numbers tuning, along with a bunch of quality of life changes and other miscellaneous bug fixes. Those of you with Barns are going to be very happy. Here are some highlights:

• Beast mastery and survival hunters, as well as all rogue specs have received buffs.
• Alliance Tier 3 Garrison: Dungeoneer's Training Dummy for healing and damage have swapped places so melee classes are less likely to trigger the tanking dummy by accident.
• Barn: Captured beasts can now stack to 20 (up from not being stackable).
• Dwarven Bunker/War Mill: Armor transmogrification items obtained from the Dwarven Bunker/War Mill are now truly account-bound and can be sent to other characters on the same Battle.net account.
• Poundfist now has 40% more health and increased the upper limit on the number of players his health can scale to.
• Raid Finder difficulty Highmaul should now be creating raid groups comprised of 2 tanks, 5 healers, and 18 damage dealers (instead of forming raid groups with 6 healers).
• Tome of the Clear Mind now stacks to 200 (up from 20).

See the full list of fixes after the break.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

If you've regretted any of your garrison outpost decisions, it's now going to sting just a little bit less. Instead of costing 10,000 gold to switch outposts, it will soon be reduced to 5,000 gold. The exception is Nagrand where it will only cost 500 gold to switch between the siege tank and mounted combat. Blizzard is also going to allow you to recruit followers from the other outpost (previously this was not possible, even if you switched). These changes won't happen until the next maintenance. Looks like I have yet another reason to get a level 3 Barracks.

Lore

We're planning to make some changes to the Garrison Zone Outposts, to reduce the costs necessary to change out the building you initially chose while questing through the zone, and also allow you to earn the unique follower associated with alternate building choices. Specifically, these changes will be:

• The cost to change your Garrison Outpost building in Gorgrond, Talador, and Spires of Arak reduced to 5,000 gold
• The cost to change your Garrison Outpost building in Nagrand reduced to 500 gold
• Changing your Garrison Outpost building in a zone will also grant access to the building-specific questline for that zone, including the building-specific follower

Note that you will still be unable to change your Garrison Outpost building until you've reached level 100 and earned your current building's zone achievement, at which point the building can be changed by speaking with the outpost's foreman NPC (who varies from building to building).

These changes are currently not planned to go live until the next maintenance period for each region, but we wanted to give as much advance notice as possible that they're on their way.

source

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

Citizens of Dalaran! Re-enable your sound and listen! Rhonin has finally lost his yelling voice after the millionth hero saved the world from certain destruction. Cold logic deemed your ears not worth saving. Cold logic, however, does not account for the power of hotfixes!

• Rhonin, Leader of the Kirin Tor, should now be reciting their spoken lines to characters within a much smaller radius in the streets of the city of Dalaran.
• Players defeating the final boss that pushes their invasion score to over 1000 should now correctly be able to receive credit for obtaining a gold rating.
• The world bosses Drov the Ruiner and Tarlna the Ageless in Gorgrond now share a single loot eligibility lockout.
• Both Drov the Ruiner and Tarlna the Ageless should no longer be available at the same time.
• Raid buffs to Mastery no longer counts for food that provides a well fed buff to the highest secondary stat.

Check after the break for the rest of today's hotfixes.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

Rygarius has just announced some upcoming changes to the alchemy and jewelcrafting professions. Based on player feedback, alchemy recipes will now require more herbs (and no meat or fish) and jewelcrafting recipes will require less herbs (and more ore).

Rygarius

We're giving a heads up on adjustments being made based on player feedback over the amount of herbs used in recipes by Alchemy and Jewelcrafting. The adjustment will increase the amount of herbs an Alchemist needs and decrease the herb costs for Jewelcrafters.

Overview of Changes:

Alchemy

• Combat potion recipes no longer requires Crescent Oil and meat/fish, and will require herbs instead.
• Flask recipes will use more herbs, increasing the number of herbs needed from one type of herb to two.

Jewelcrafting

• Tier 1 gem recipes will require more ore and less herbs.
• Tier 2 gem recipes will no longer require herbs and instead require a tier 1 gem.

In summary, these changes are not active yet. But once the change is active, Alchemists will need more herbs, and Jewelcrafting will need less.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor

Do you have a Barn, Dwarven Bunker / War Mill, or Trading Post? If so, you're going to enjoy today's round of hotfixes. Alchemists can also rejoice now that Crystal Vials exist outside of a single vendor in Draenor. Here are some of the highlights:

• Barn: Increased the drop rates for Savage Blood from work orders.
• Dwarven Bunker / War Mill: Work orders now award more Iron Horde Scraps and increased the drop rates for Follower Enhancements.
• Trading Post: The Savage Friends achievement now only requires the character to become Exalted with 1 Draenor reputation (down from 3).
• Salvage Yard: Salvage recovered from a Garrison Mission should now always contain an item.
• General goods vendors across Draenor now offer Crystal Vials and Enchanting Vellums for sale.

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Filed under: Warlords of Draenor