New Garrison & Profession Information Via BlizzPro

Image Source: BlizzPro

In the post "Build 18566: Garrison and Profession Shifts" BlizzPro's Crow (@unlimitedBLACK) gives us some further observations and insights on how garrisons and professions are coming together (and working together) in the Warlords of Draenor beta.

Read on past the jump for a few excerpts and my thoughts on the changes.

Garrisons

Crow relates: (emphasis added)

"You’ll be able to collect ore and herbs from your Mine/Herb Garden even if you don’t have the appropriate gathering skill."

From what I can surmise this means nodes that appear inside your garrison. Crow also stated that they give XP. Interesting. One more reason to go to your garrison each day?

Profession Buildings and Character Professions

After going into detail on what you do and don't get by building a profession buildings that your character has Crow sums it up: (emphasis added)

"What this means is that having a profession building will give you a slower and somewhat more expensive crafter at your disposal, but it also means that you’ll be much more self-sufficient as opposed to relying on guildmates or the Auction House for crafted gear and consumables.

Of course, what that also means is that if you have a profession and don’t take the building, you won’t be able to learn most of the new recipes in WoD content. That pretty much means there’s never a case where you don’t want to take the building for the professions your character has. Given that you’ll only have three small buildings to choose from, this means that people with two non-gathering professions will really only have one building choice to make. And that third slot is up for grabs between picking up a profession building vs. getting a Storehouse or a Salvage Yard."

I'm anxious to get into the beta some more myself but from what Crow is saying Blizzard is still trying to balance the building choices to allow players to actually make meaningful choices.

Decisions, Decisions

I can see "normal" players (those with just a few characters) perhaps choosing to make buildings that aren't their profession simply to allow themselves the ability to play without the need for interacting with others (while we all know the second "M" in MMO stands for "Multiplayer", lots of people enjoy playing them as essentially single-player experiences).

An example of this I could see is someone who really doesn't like buying glyphs on the auction house (because "greedy" gold-makers sell them for too much!) would "sacrifice" a slot on one of their higher level characters in order to use the inscription building to make all their character's at the building glyphs (assuming you can make glyphs at your building).

Perhaps the "third slot" that Crow mentions being open after players take the building that match their professions (thus allowing them to learn new recipes) would be used for these "convenience" buildings.

Perhaps a raider would make an "unconnected" (meaning they don't have the profession so would only be using the building as a substitute for professions they didn't have on any of their high-level characters) Alchemy building so they could make their own raid potions and flasks.

Time will tell and I can see there being all sorts of profession building theory crafting and optimizing just as there has been for profession slots in the live game.

Which Profession Building Makes The Most Gold?

If the garrisons end up working the way Crow mentioned I can foresee being asked quite a few "I have two max level characters with blacksmithing, leatherworking, mining and enchanting. What profession buildings should I build to make the most gold?" type of questions.

My answer to those questions will likely be similar to my answer to current questions about profession choices on live: "It depends".

Many factors will come into play when making small building choices. A few of those factors would include do you want to be self-sufficient? How to you play the game? Do you want to make gold in the game Perhaps the biggest factor will be how many high-level characters you play the game with?

Those of us who've been in gold-making and have many max-level characters all with maxed professions will likely make very different choices for our buildings.

But then again that is nothing new. Those who focus on gold-making also tend to focus on doing what will make us the most gold which often includes having resources like lots of crafters. We will likely do this with our profession building as well (ie. BUILD ALL THE ALCHEMY BUILDINGS!).

Conclusion

In conclusion it seems that Blizzard is working to allow players to become more self-reliant by allowing them to build profession buildings for professions they don't currently have and have the ability to craft items albeit in a "a slower and somewhat more expensive" way.

In addition is seems that for those who actually want to learn new Warlords of Draenor profession patterns those will likely come from building a profession building that matches your current profession. If you have two that means you'll have one slot to use as you please.

I hope to bring you more information on the new garrison buildings and how they interact with professions as time goes on.

I've just given you a brief taste of what Crow outlined. I encourage you to head over to BlizzPro and read Crow's full post to get even more insight into how professions and garrisons are coming along in the Warlords of Draenor beta.

Update

Crow let me know on Twitter that he had some additional info that had come out on Twitter and has made an additional post relating some of what he learned.

A few of the interesting points from his post include:

• Getting XP from nodes on your Garrison is intended.
• \Warlords of Draenor profession recipes may also come from trainers at some point.
• A possibly (kludgy) work around for getting recipes may include building a level one building, getting the recipes and then replacing it with a different building.

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