[Confirmed] Garrisons won't stick around after WoD.

[FobManX]

I'm sure they'll add something new that's similar but better. Like how the Garrison is the Farm but 1000x better.

[Deleted]

Garrisons was one of the major selling-points for this expansion for me. Without them I would have been bored of end-game by now and stopped playing until at least the release of Highmaul.

The question here is whether they're not intending to bring back the concept of Garrisons whatsoever or if they intend to use the tech for something similar. Because I think without it WoW doesn't have a chance to be innovative as a current-day MMO. Player housing to some extent is something I expect to find by now.

[Wondercrab]

It's important not to read *too* much into this. I seriously doubt that they can say definitively at this stage what extent garrisons as we know them will be present in the next expansion. I'd be absolutely dumbstruck if they were gone completely in favour of something else.

It all basically comes down to how much garrison we get to experience in the next expansion. I would totally expect us to at the very least have to build up a new one again from scratch in whatever continent we end up visiting. Having said that, it would totally suck if nothing carried over from the old garrison. Followers strike me as a perfect carry-over, presumably having to be levelled to the new level cap, but retaining their rarity and skills that we've built up over the course of Draenor.
Things like garrison blueprints, as well, would be a great carry-over, allowing us to build up some new stuff again a little quicker (but presumably having to farm a new kind of garrison resource in order to do it, or something).

The design mentality of "keep X feature bound to Y expansion" concerns me a little, though, especially in the context of things like the removal of MoP challenge modes (despite being perfectly suited to scaling beyond their initial expansion), the legendary cloak chain, and this new comment about archaeology.
One of the most important and compelling aspects of MMO design is the persistency of gameplay, and the idea that the things a player does at any given time will have relevance going forward.

So I wouldn't go too nuts over this comment on garrisons, since I'm almost certain it's nowhere near as dire as some people are reading into it, but this design philosophy is definitely one to keep an eye on, as it has the potential to harm WoW a lot more than it helps if they continue along the same path of expansion-exclusive content that started with the removal of stuff at the end of MoP.

[Xar226]

As long as they can translate the tech into something going forward, that's fine with me. Garrisons very obviously took a tremendous amount of development time. Getting the most out of that investment is important for all involved.

[SL1200]

I could do without the garrison.

[Ald]

Garrisons are playing housing all blizzard needs to do is add more ways to change building looks and guards/npc looks, and again zone looks.

It's a little more involved than that. I'm talking thousands of pieces of furniture and building materials, which also makes crafting more involved and in demand. Players have built their own castles and guild halls given the building blocks and tools. That's what i'd like to see.

[Tkeleth]

"won't carry over" and "are being removed" are two very, very different things. It's just like the farm from Pandaria - you can go back any time, but it will no longer be relevant to current content.

It's cute how everyone here is QQing about it - EVERYTHING in the game becomes useless when the next expansion comes out. Should they stop making weapons and armor and levels for every expansion? Obviously not, but those become just as obsolete.

If you don't want your videogames to change and grow, go back to consoles plz, kkthx.

[Uriel]

Why does everybody seem to hype Garisons? If you think about it, they are horrible..
Early in development devs keep saying that garrisons won't matter that much and that you could simply set it up at lvl 92 and never actually care about it... well they fooled us. Half of the WOD is built around garrisons. Professions would either be impossible or would take twice as long to craft stuff. Seriously, i prefer farming matz for an item for a couple of hours than being forced to log in every day to use a professional CD. Thats what I disliked about Alchemy in the past Xpacs. Saying that Garrisons do not matter is just a plain lie.

So like I said, professions are directly linked to garrisons now. And to be honest they did fuck them up. I don't like the WOD professions in the slightest.
I also think that the devs promised that there will be epic battles where one Garrison can besiege another. Is that possible cause I haven't seen that yet.

I admit the follower missions are kinda cool, but again, you have to log in on a regular basis to really put it to use.


In a nutshell Garrisons are just your own Dalaran/Shattrath, where you just stand around when waiting for an invite combined with the average Dailyquest hub. But instead of reputation for a faction, you grind for profession matz or GR.

[ttak82]

My theory:

They will keep profession buildings in cities like, say alchemy labs and gem boutiques etc but you will only be able to access the ones that are limited to your proffs,
They will go in favour of outposts in different zones which will offer some customization. The outposts that you make will affect access to to city buildings tied to proffessions. Like for eg. If you dont have engineering but choose outpost option 'A' in zone X, you get to access the engineering works in the city as well as in the outpost but with some limitations.

[McFrotton]

Imagine a flying warship that you can put anywhere or port from world to world trought the nether!

[bufferunderrun]

It's a little more involved than that. I'm talking thousands of pieces of furniture and building materials, which also makes crafting more involved and in demand. Players have built their own castles and guild halls given the building blocks and tools. That's what i'd like to see.

i don't think blizzard will ever implement something with so much "freedom", every future that has been introduced till now involving "visual customization" has been heavily limited by blizzard.

[Xargoth6634]

Strange that they wanted to remove archeology? I think its a great feature to keep throughout expansions.

Well they haven't done shit with it since Cata. "Oh, here are a couple of new BOA blues and obnoxious achievements of collect 20 of x because we're fucking lazy." Fine with me though, was pretty easy to ignore after Cata.

OT: I think they pretty much need to bring garrisons back in some form, but I never thought that they'd be stupid enough to get rid of flying in new zones, so who knows.

[Tekkommo]

What did you expect?

We will get something better.

[Imnick]

Not even slightly surprising, they'll make Garrisons 2 for the next expansion and requiring people to go back and grind WoD content if they hadn't been playing at the time would be ridiculous.

They're not "removing" garrisons or abandoning it as a feature, they just aren't making level 100 progression required for level 110, just like you don't need to raid through every previous raid to go to Highmaul.

[Deleted]

We will get something better.

Hopefully, yes.

Are people really sad they are not still picking crops from their Pandaria farm? Or are they happy, the farm has been effectively replaced by the garrison?

I am wondering if the next stage of development of this aspect of the game might be to build on more of a single player type RPG mini-game around followers (make their missions more interactive) or a RTS type mini-game about the military value of the garrison (e.g. invasions as a plants vs zombies type mini-game). There are a lot of possibilities. To insist the next expansion sticks to the current model is overly restrictive.

[Glaejun]

not even 2 weeks into the expansion and the garrison is already the most boring repetitive chore in the game, so not much is lost there...

[Huggykaze]

not even 2 weeks into the expansion and the garrison is already the most boring repetitive chore in the game, so not much is lost there...

To you and some other players, most of us enjoy it, I for one spend most of my time there taking care of missions, orders etc., just my inner leader yelling out ^^

Also what is not repetitive?
You go to raid, kill a boss/wipe on a boss, get loot/go home.
You go out to farm and kill hundreds of same mobs.
You do daily quests? Same as above, go out and kill hundreds of same mobs everyday.


PvP? This one actually can be non-repetitive if you get some intense BG/Arena game, but these don't happen to often. Remember 2v2 with druid and warrior? As a druid you had to run around a pillar each freakin' time. Games are repetitive.

[Glaejun]

well to me garrison is nothing more than go pick up stuff at a few nodes, give some work orders, send some random people on random missions for whatever reason and that's it. There's hardly any game play involved tbh, no real choices to be made, no consequences if a mission fails, etc. It feels like it could have been a mobile game, except then at least I could (and would) delete it.

[Deleted]

THIS is VERY OLD news and Ion said in the interview with vanion.eu like 2 weeks ago that they are very happy with garrison and look how they can expand that. so no garrisons are NOT a thing of the past.

[Midnightaura]

How is this news? Did you expect to pack up your entire Garrison and unpack it in the next expansion world/continent?

I'm hoping that they have another garrison in the next expansion though, because this one is completely amazing.

I read this and had to reply. "Completely Amazing?"

Convenient, Novel, Interesting, Quirky; come to mind.

Completely Amazing?

I would love to introduce you to a game called clash of clans. You would love it.

On topic:-

I think the garrison has a lot of potential that wasn't realized. At the moment it sucks the life out of the social aspect of the game. However, make them instanced to your GUILD and suddenly all your mates are with you and you are not cut off from the world but are instead chilling with everyone you chat to in green letters.

Oh yes, the world PVP just outside would be real "LADS HELP ME NUKE HIS SHAMAN" *whole guild charges out of the gate like its return of the king all over again*