The first patch for Warlords of Draenor goes live this week bringing a lot of quality of life improvements. However, it doesn’t bring much in the way of content. In fact, it seems to be more reflective of pre-hotfixes patch days for World of Warcraft.
During early Public Test Realm (PTR) builds, a new quest line was datamined. Players were able to located the new quest hub in the Gorgrond zone inside the Iron Docks. Unfortunately, it wasn’t ready for launch–none of the quests were even tested–and has been pushed back for release with Patch 6.2.
But the adventure continues with Patch 6.1. Check out the full Patch 6.1 Notes for all changes and read on for the cliff notes.
Garrisons
Garrisons have been the home away from home for Warcraft players. Many have spent countless hours gearing up followers to head off on missions, gathering supplies, and daily Apexis farming.
Before Warlords launched, it was evident that the Garrison system was not quite polished. Which is why many improvements have been made to the UI.
Available missions now display counters when hovering and will be checked marked in green if a follower is available for it- Also displays how long the mission will be available
- In progress missions display success rate and level
- The Follower tab now shows counters and how many have each ability
- Clicking on counter abilities will filter follower lists
- Upgrading Followers now has a special prompt as a fail-safe; inactive Followers can be upgraded as well
- Mission time is now displayed on followers
Many of these changes can be found through the Command Table within the Town Hall of the Garrison.
Buildings
Players should now rejoice that they will no longer need to spam the “Work Order” button. Two new options are available to either queue a select number or all production orders. Also, the Work Order NPCs will have their own unique interaction icon and a new title.
Work Orders can also be completed faster with a new item. Many of the Profession buildings have their own Rush Orders that completed 5 Work Orders immediately.
And profession followers have been fixed. Now followers who can be assigned to a building will need to be present to get double the resources. They will even gain experience for each completed Work Order when they provide the product bonus.
Dailies and New Quests
New Daily Quests will be available in Level 3 Town Halls, which is only available to players who reached level 100. These Dailies can be picked up by random visitors to the Garrison and are a nice alternative from the War Planning Table and Apexis Crystals.
- Bounty Quests are designed to be completed in a group of 3 or more and reward Bounty Packs.
- Relic Hunter Quests are a chain given by Harrison Jones. Players who lose their way can pick it back up thanks to the Relic book beside him. Completing these quests will unlock them as missions and reward Harrison Jones as a follower.
Daily Dungeon Quests may remind players about Wrath of the Lich King dungeon dailies, but instead reward Garrison Resource Shipments.- Weekly Raid Quests will reward a bag with a token of the raid gear within whatever raid.
- Profession NPCs will provide a daily quest for Primal Spirits and even sell several new recipes for Stage 4 crafted upgrades.
- Pet Battles will take place near the Menagerie with a Traveler’s Pet Supplies and a chance for three new vanity pets
Missions
Exploration Missions come in a variety of options. Some of these require Archaeology profession to be learned–no skill cap.
- Scouting Missions
- Digsite Missions
- Rare Treasures Missions
Profession Missions requires active level 3 profession buildings. This will keep other profession missions from appearing in the lists. Completing a profession mission will reward Rush Orders.
Relic Hunter Missions are unlocked from the Daily Quests given by Harrison Jones. They will only reflect the ones that have been completed by the players, so unlocking all of them will take some time.
The Blackrock Foundry raid missions will be available. They will require item level 660 for followers. These will be similar to the Highmaul raid missions.
Followers
Followers will receive many improvements that were missing with launch. New traits have been added such as a few missing racial ones and Treasure Hunter that increases gold rewards. And their item level cap has been increased to 675.
Three new followers have been added as well:
- Harrison Jones is rewarded to those who complete all the Relic Hunter quests.
- Fen Tao is a new Pandaren follower who can be recruited outside of the Town Hall.
- And finally the Legendary Follower reward.
Invasions and World Bosses
Invasions have a new level of difficulty for those wanting more of a challenge, Platinum–up from Gold. There is a new set of loot rewards for successfully earning Platinum.
Worlds Bosses can also be summoned to a player’s Garrison. These summons can be randomly earned from completing the new dailies or Platinum Invasions. These World Bosses will require a raid team to take them down.
Jukebox Hero
A new engineer gnome or goblin will be standing outside of the Town Hall with a quest to build a new device. The Juke Box will allow players to choose from music of Warcraft‘s life through Music Rolls.
There are currently 40 different music rolls that can be acquired either by different means. Players may need to journey to defeat bosses, trade currency, or simply knowing loot locations. If 20 different music rolls are collected, players will earn a Portable Audiophone that will play short Warcraft tunes.
Heirloom
The long awaited Heirloom system will automatically add in to a new tab with Mounts, Pets, and Toy Box. Players will need to log into all their characters to add in their Heirloom items as this will not scan through a player’s account.
Many of the items will fall into three group levels: 1-60, 61-90, and 91-100. Heirlooms at level 85 will be grandfathered up to level 90.
A new Neck slot items will be added to heal once per minute. These and other Heirlooms can be purchased for gold in Ironforge/Undercity (some can be purchased through event currency). By collecting all the Heirlooms, players will be rewarded with a special mount that can be used by level 1 characters.
New Character Model: Blood Elf
The new Blood Elf models will be available with Patch 6.1. An early iteration was revealed on PTR with several odd quirks that were hopefully ironed out for launch. Aside from the new models, several other races will have improvements.
Legendary Quest Continues
Khadgar has captured one of the closest members of the Shadow Council to Gul’dan. By breaking them free of his control, they will join Warcraft players as a Legendary follower in their Garrisons. Their skills will reveal Gul’dan’s motivations to be able to still claim victory for the Burning Legion.
Systems Improvements
Major improvements have been made behind the scenes for the systems. Some of the bigger features will be accessed through the Interface and System options.
Twitter Intergration
Characters will be able to send Tweets for items, achievements, and screenshots through the Twitter UI. This feature can be activated through the Social Interface. Twitter can be activated with either /share or the new share icon 
.
Colorblind Support
A small step has been made to improve the quality of life for AbleGamers with the new Colorblind Support feature. Players will be able to access filters in the Accessibility Interface.
Anti-Aliasing and Lighting
New graphic options will be available for those running high-end graphic cards, especially for NVIDIA. The multisampling anti-aliasing (MSAA) makes a return with supersampling anti-aliasing (SSAA) for DirectX 11 users. And finally per-pixel deferred point of light has been added to provide more realistic lighting for those in Draenor.
Veteran Edition
Players who have cancelled their subscription at any time will be able to experience the same restrictions as Starter Edition accounts with the new Veteran Edition accounts. However, they get one perk of being able to join guilds that characters are already members.
Published: Feb 24, 2015 05:06 am