FarmVille in World of Warcraft? WoW Insider's first look at The Tillers

http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/07/30/farmville-in-world-of-warcraft-wow-insiders-first-look-at-the/



When Mists of Pandaria was first announced at BlizzCon 2011, the developers stated that players would be able to grow cooking mats and herbs on their very own farm in the next expansion. Immediately, players began to speculate on what exactly the words "your own farm" meant in World of Warcraft. Would we be getting our own version of FarmVille in WoW? Or maybe something more like Harvest Moon? Could this mean player housing? No one knew, and the general shortage of information over the months led some of us to wonder whether we'd be seeing the new feature at launch or have to wait for it in a future patch.

Now, almost a year after the original announcement for Mists of Pandaria, we can finally put a lot of our questions to rest. Over the weekend, Blizzard implemented The Tillers quests on beta servers, and with them, the new farm feature. So is it FarmVille? Let's take a look.

Your adventure in farming begins in Valley of the Four Winds, where you'll be able to start a line of daily quests to gain reputation with a pandaren faction known as The Tillers. Quests revolve around an NPC named Farmer Yoon, a young pandaren who recently traveled to the valley to inherit his late grandfather's farm, Sunsong Ranch. As it turns out, though, Yoon isn't cut out for all the hard work a farm requires, so he enlists you to help him run the farm and win favor with the valley's farming guild, The Tillers.

Once you accept Farmer Yoon's starting quest, your first order of business is to get the farm cleaned up so you're able to till the soil and plant crops. It would seem that Farmer Yoon's grandfather let the place go to shambles before his death, leaving you with rocks, boulders, weeds, and an old, broken wagon to clear out before you can farm the ranch's available land. You can't remove all the weeds and debris at once, though; starting out, you'll only be able to break up the rocks to unlock four soil plots. Later, at honored reputation, you recruit the help of your neighbor Gai Lan, who will kill the weeds and open up another four plots. More than likely, you'll be able to unlock more plots each time you reach a new level of reputation with The Tillers, and based on the size of the farm, you'll probably be able to unlock a total of 16 plots once you're exalted with the faction.