by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Let me be clear: I’m really digging the Garrison system right now and I’m easily spending more time leveling my followers and filing work orders than I am doing anything in the game. But something that I’ve heard rumblings about from other players is a degree of frustration with followers and alt characters. Namely, the following things kinda suck:

• When an alt character gets an epic upgrade on a follower that your main could use,
• When your main gets an epic upgrade on a follower that would really benefit your alt,
• Followers getting random profession traits that don’t benefit the character,
• …and the repetitiveness of leveling the same followers multiple times across multiple characters.

One of the logical responses to all of this is to make followers account-wide, just as pets and mounts have been for some time. But there are some issues with that position, aside from the technical challenges that might be associated with doing it.

Pet Battling is a player activity, not a character activity. The character you’re playing, whether it’s your main or an alt, really doesn’t impact your ability to participate in pet battles (except for the trivial matter of needing a flying mount to reach certain pet trainers, and even that can be worked around). So pets being account-wide is just a matter of letting you, as the player, roll your pet battles with whatever character it’s convenient for you to do it with. It’s a mini-game that doesn’t really impact your progression anywhere else in the game, whereas follower missions can reward gear both directly and indirectly.

Mounts are purely cosmetic. Even more simply than the pet battle system, your character has very little to do with what mount you’re rolling on. Yes, there are some class-specific, profession-specific, and faction-specific mounts, but largely speaking mount collecting is something you do as a player, instead of something you’re doing with a particular character.There are certainly arguments to be made for more distinct followers to change up the game experience, but that’s another discussion entirely.

Followers are intended to be a unique experience. Like a Fury Shaman Death Knight with Taunt.

Garrisons are a character-oriented activity. There’s a pretty powerful sense given to you in the game that it’s your priest, or your warrior, or your death knight, who’s been given command of the Garrison on Draenor. Followers that get recruited are being recruited by that priest, warrior, or death knight, or what have you. While ultimately there’s no change in gameplay, like dialogue options being different based on the character, there’s still a difference between the Qiana the priest recruits and the Qiana the warrior recruits. The fantasy of being the

priest who was appointed Garrison Commander by the King/the Warchief is upheld by having these unique followers attaching themselves to your cause.

To an extent, it’s the same as with reputation. The fantasy of getting reputation with a faction is that through your actions (whether it’s killing certain bears, completing certain bear-oriented quests, collecting certain bear asses, or wearing the special “I <3 killin bears for the Ramkahen” jersey) you are representing the interests of a faction. That’s being done on a character level, because the character is the one in the world doing those actions. The Grand Commendations introduced in Mists of Pandaria

actually support that concept, because your character still has to put in the work, but if you’ve dinged Revered, you’ve earned the convenience of having to do less work.

Considering how much of the story in Warlords 

hinges upon the fantasy of you as The Garrison Commander, it makes sense to try and preserve that fantasy with your followers. And depending on whether or not the Garrison concept gets used in future expansions is likely a big part of whether we see any kind of iteration on the system going forward.

All told, I agree that there are quirks to how followers currently work, but I don’t think making followers account-wide is a viable solution to that. Exactly how Blizzard plans to address those concerns, though, is really what’s up for debate here, it’ll be interesting to see what changes with garrisons and followers in the inevitable 6.1.