Know Your Lore: Garrisons and the story of Warlords

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

We are about to kick off the beginning of Warlords of Draenor's story when patch 6.0 releases in a couple of days here. It's an explosive beginning, and there's plenty of story to be had, but we won't see things really pick up and get going until the expansion releases in November. Everyone has their own way of leveling through an expansion, whether it's a race to the finish, or a more leisurely stroll through content, taking one's time and experiencing all the story the expansion has to offer -- and Warlords has a lot of story to tell in its opening chapters.

However, there seems to be some apprehension about garrisons and how they're going to work with the game, how they are set up, whether or not they require a massive time sink, whether they can be ignored entirely, or if the story hinges on completing garrison content, and whether or not garrisons are actually going to pull people out of the story and expansion experience. Today, we're going to step back from the usual lore presentation and instead look at garrisons, how they work with the story being told, and why this feature is actually one of the better storytelling devices Blizzard has put together.

A port in the storm

Here's where we're at when we begin our journey on Draenor: We are stuck. From a game mechanic standpoint, we can hit our hearthstone at any time and get on out of there and back to the safety of Azeroth -- from a story standpoint, we have just stranded ourselves on a planet we know little to nothing about. For the Alliance, the draenei have some insight into what to expect, because it wasn't more than a couple of blinks of incredibly-ancient eyes ago that the draenei inhabited this world. It might look a little different in places, but it's still Draenor, and they still spent a couple hundred years learning all about it before it was destroyed. The orcs of the Horde are also familiar with Draenor, because it's their home world -- or a close enough approximation as to seem largely identical in most aspects.

But both the draenei and the orcs have an uphill battle to fight here. The draenei of the Alliance may think this world a mirror image of their own, but it becomes apparent almost immediately that this is not the case. As for the orcs, they are face to face with a destiny they could not themselves avoid -- a destiny in which orc clans don't carry the green skin and tainted bloodline of the original history. On the one hand, this is all they could have hoped for or imagined -- on the other, these orcs, free of any blood curse at all, are the enemy. There is no hope of diplomatic or peaceful resolution.

So here we are, stranded on Draenor with the remnants of what forces managed to make their way through the Dark Portal into Tanaan, fortunate enough to have made some tentative alliances with at least some of the natives of this world. But we can't get back. And we have no home. This is not Outland, there are no Alliance or Horde forces waiting for us here. That's where the garrison comes in -- we are building it to establish at least a small foothold on this world, someplace where we can safely pull together what troops we have remaining and recruit interested natives to come and help us fight the Iron Horde and bring it to an end.

Quests and story

That's the story reason behind our garrisons, but that's not where the story ends, it's simply where the story begins. It's also where the story progresses and moves on. We aren't going to be spending hours upon hours ensconced in our garrisons, away from the rest of Draenor. What we are going to be doing is darting back and forth -- getting news, heading out to investigate, following chunks of zone story and, when those stories come to their conclusion, heading back to our garrisons to move the story along. There's nothing awkward about this process at all, it's as fluid as any other quest hub on Draenor.

To help facilitate this transition and cut down on travel time, players get their own garrison hearthstone, with a short cooldown that is separate from your actual hearthstone's cooldown. When a quest NPC says, at the end of a long chain, that they'll meet you back at your garrison, you can simply hit your hearthstone and meet them there in seconds. You'll invariably be sent back out in the world again in no time flat, after talking to whoever you need to speak to. In between those back and forth trips, you'll begin to notice your garrison changing. Not the structures, those are entirely under your control. But the people, the quests offered, the options available all shift and evolve depending on what you've been doing while you were away.

In this way, the garrison is far more than just some feature to be completed once and never looked at again. It's not a feature, it's a quest hub -- it's a stationary, evolving quest hub that expands and levels right along with you, the structure changing to reflect the story as it moves forward. You don't head back because you have to go pick up a work order and start six more, you head back because the story naturally leads you back in that direction -- and hey, while you're there you might as well duck in and take a minute to take care of those work orders before heading back out.

Level 100 and beyond

One of Pandaria's anticipated features was the sheer amount of content available to be completed once you hit level 90. Unfortunately, that content took the form of daily quests, endless piles of daily quests that didn't quite hit the mark with players and felt far more like a chore than a fun way to spend an afternoon. As the expansion moved on and new patches were introduced, new methods of working daily quests into lore and story development were also introduced. One of the most successful patches of the expansion, from a story standpoint, was patch 5.1. Dominance Offensive and Operation: Shieldwall both featured rotating sets of daily quests that were pretty standard for Pandaria, but interwoven within those daily quests was a story that gradually played out as players gained reputation with their respective faction's base.

It worked tremendously well. This was partially because of the story itself, which was pretty riveting, but also because of the pacing in which that story was delivered. If you completed all daily quests, you could look forward to another small chunk of story every other day or thereabouts. Subsequent patches tried different methods, but none had quite the same feel as patch 5.1 -- although the Isle of Thunder came pretty close on the story front. Here's the good news: Daily quests are at a bare minimum in Warlords of Draenor. They exist, but nowhere near the quantity that you saw in Pandaria.

Here's the better news -- we still get chunks of story. In fact, it plays out much the same way as patch 5.1. Rather than being dependent on reputation level or daily quest completion, these chunks of story are simply delivered via your garrison's residents. You aren't going to hit level 100 and suddenly find nothing to do in Warlords. The story isn't going to mysteriously evaporate until the next patch is delivered. Instead, it continues in an ongoing quest series that isn't a daily process -- the story chunks are delivered on a weekly basis.

Evolving content

This is what makes the garrison almost an ideal feature for players interested in the expansion's story. Because it is so intimate -- it's your garrison, after all -- the story itself carries far more weight, more meaning that it would if it were simply just another hub you went to once and forgot about afterwards. As you level, the NPCs that call your garrison home continue to acknowledge you and your accomplishments, all the while carrying out what feels like lives of their own. NPCs are far more reactive now than ever -- when you walk by, they notice. They stop. They look at you. They salute, or say a few words, or otherwise acknowledge your existence.

Because the garrison is so malleable, it's a simple enough task to add more content to it as the expansion moves on -- and that content doesn't need a flashy delivery vehicle. It can just be another yellow exclamation mark on the board in the center of the stronghold. Or a new visitor that makes an appearance at your front gates, or shows up in your town hall unexpectedly. A sudden attack over the horizon, a looming threat, yet something you and your army are totally prepared for.

It may seem like a complicated concept right now, it may seem like just another chore we have to slog our way through, but the garrison in action is a really cool feature that draws you into the world in an extraordinary way. More than any other expansion before, you matter. Your existence in the game is important, and that importance is reinforced not by an occasional offhand reference from a major lore figure during a raid encounter, but by every NPC, every vendor, every follower in this remarkable stronghold you've put together. It's a little town that breathes with life in a way we haven't seen before. While it remains to be seen where the story goes in Warlords after we've hit 100 and made our way through the available content, we won't have to look far to find it -- it's entirely likely it will come find us.

While you don't need to have played the previous Warcraft games to enjoy World of Warcraft, a little history goes a long way toward making the game a lot more fun. Dig into even more of the lore and history behind the World of Warcraft in WoW Insider's Guide to Warcraft Lore.