Should garrisons be scrapped or kept next expansion?

[Deleted]

I wouldn't say there is much interaction, but it is entirely different experience to mingle around with 100+ people compared to being in personal lobby waiting for queues to pop. It is about having a feel of mmo

Having a personal place is something people have asked for for years, if you absolutely miss the feeling of hanging around strangers then there's plenty of people to be had in Warspear/Stormshield and Orgrimmar/Stormwind.

[jbombard]

Having a personal place is something people have asked for for years, if you absolutely miss the feeling of hanging around strangers then there's plenty of people to be had in Warspear/Stormshield and Orgrimmar/Stormwind.

Garrisons don't really feel very personal, solitary, but not personal. What they need is real housing. Garrisons, meh.

[Wrathonia]

I think it would be fine if you didn't feel compelled to spend so much time there. If there were more reasons to go out. If there were more ways to interact with the garrison while out and about. If it was more than just a bunch of names doing things for you behind the scenes. It's a whole lot of wasted potential that ruined social interaction in WoD and made an MMORPG where end game is filled with hermits. They also ruined professions. Honestly, very little good came from garrisons other than pure gold. Fun? Not really. Hanging with friends? Rarely. Engaging? Not even remotely. That and they are too tied into leveling. Something like this should be an option. It should be something people want to do, not feel forced and obligated to do.

There are some good ideas wrapped in misplaced designs. It's a mess and I hope Blizzard learns the right things from this 'experiment'. Sadly, it will probably happen like flight, scenarios or dailies. Polish, fix, rework and make it better? Nah, too much work. Scrap it and move on to the next big thing.

[Deleted]

We already know that they're keeping elements of the garrison for EXP6, but that the base itself will disappear as that was "very much a Draenor thing".

We'll have followers and missions, possibly some place to call home, and so on. But I don't think we'll see a return to the Garrison-crafting and all the other buildings which contained you to one spot.

I predicted we'd have some sort of ship to travel the seas with back in 2009, for my unpublished south seas expansion concept. I still think we will, and it'll probably incorporate these garrison-elements, much like Golden Yak has suggested in his concept.

[Deleted]

Absolutely get rid of them.

The Tiller's farm was fine because you didn't *have* to maintain it if you couldn't be bothered with it.

They went way too far with that for Warlords, I don't want my mmorpg to be 99% based around player housing. That was an absolutely bonkers idea.

If they want to do another Tiller's farm sort of thing, fine, but I don't want it to be central to my experience.

[Deleted]

Garrisons: Click click : done, whats even fun with em? All they did was make character professions less useful. Scrap it!

[Eats Compost]

I think there'll almost certainly be something like garrisons in the next expansion, but the concept will probably be heavily iterated. They should probably step "garrison 2.0" much further away from being a progression/gameplay thing and hone in on making it a customizeable, personal thing. The fact that one garrison is basically indistinct from another right now is a pretty serious problem, and that's not a good price to pay just for the sake of choosing which resource you want it to spit out each day. I'd go as far as saying that their art direction for garrisons as a whole was flawed, and they should have put a LOT more into creating bits and pieces that the player can place anywhere (like more sane forms of player housing equivalents) than buildings already fitted with things that would be the equivalent bits and bobs.

I'd also say that missions aren't really a great system for an MMO where they'd be repeated for months and months, and that they should've just made each one take a lot longer with greater rewards to compensate. It's also very disappointing that nothing I can build in my garrison has any measurable impact on invasions, which you'd think would be one of the major things that a garrison would be built around. They said at times that they wanted to sort of capture the Warcraft basebuilding feel, but it couldn't be further from it because of how little of it has anything to do with it being a "base". I think they really need to go back to the drawing board on the core concept of it being a "garrison", because most of the time, it plays like a little factory or town.

There's a lot to be said for a little area that the player can call their own, but they have a lot of work to do and some of it really didn't translate well in the long term. In a lot of ways, it's worse than the similar systems found in other games, and I can't really think of any game that I'd want to see the garrison system in, whereas I can think of a few alternatives from other games I'd like to see in WoW. And, of course, it gets annoying because WoW has set it up in such a way that you can't just not do it because they deliberately made it the backbone of a lot of otherwise unrelated content.

To add one final little thing: it might be a little cynical of me to say so, but I get the sense that Blizzard is trying to create something that they're way out of their depth to do, because they just don't know how and because they have to work within WoW's restrictions. It was an ambitious idea with no ambitious execution to follow.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I doubt a true Garrison will happen again. Will the technology exist in some other fashion though? Likely. Just as it transferred from the Farm in MoP to expand into the Garrison in WoD. In what form is anyone's guess though. But I would hope they will have learned having something so separated from the social structure of the game that can provide everything you need in the game without ever having to step foot out of it minus maybe to level, raid, and/or PVP is pretty silly (I might have missed a few small things like archeology as well, sorry).

[Huntaer]

I voted yes. I enjoyed "sitting there" more in stormwind or the shrine instead of my garrison or even stormshield.

[Thelxi]

They'll call it a keep or something, maybe town, village or settlement. It's a sure thing it will return in one form or another.

[Deleted]

You know, I don´t think they are inherently bad.

I can see the idea blizzard went with, it’s an effort to make us all log in at least once a day which in and off itself is not a bad thing more people around means more life in /g more activities around the world in terms of dungeons being done or otherwise, if you are online already you are more liable to do "all" the grind - but I am not convinced Garrisons are the way in their current design, I´d like to see more physical feedback to what we are doing and the ability to further customize buildings had been nice, maybe something like a split progression path where one building can morph into several different ones - I´d also like to see buildings interacting with each other, why can´t I have my Lumber mill interact with the smithy for coal and thus a bonus to stuff from it.

Perhaps more story and less grind would be appropriate - writing up a silly story that lasts for a few weeks should not be hard, we´re in WoW just go ham about it have us be the leaders of invasions and shizzel, I mean we´ve got the Garrison campaign already which is nice but its "short" and split over several weeks, it had some nice moments and some story elements to it but it certainly could become more. The grinding part just wears it down rather quickly - rather than "I want to see what happens next" it’s a "Only x25 more of Y and we´ll be done for today...” feel free to add the grind into the story, it’s a MMO it’s going to be some grind involved in either case.

Much like our bodyguard followers and their singular character-quest, why don´t we expand upon that? I am sure we could make some Isle of thunder style scenarios for the followers and have the rest just be interaction, getting a few NPC´s with personalities would spice up the Garrison. While we are at it why not overhaul the missions for your followers? I get the basic concept, you are the commander and are sending your troops out to deal with matters, but it’s awfully stale matters that repeat endlessly and its nothing more than applying X to the right hole (phrasing) it could easily be more than that.

Why not turn it into a war mini game? imagine being able to see all of draenor on your war-table and having to deal with applying your soldiers and troops to the right areas, have your connections on old Azeroth matter - perhaps the factions you are exalted with will send aid, no need to ever interact with them beyond the table, just committing them and watching the iron-horde counter-invade your points or fight over rivers/etc. would make the thing feel more like you are actually invading a land and controlling the war, followers could still be sent on missions, and armies could have traits - make it as complex or simple as you want but focus more on the "why´s" - writing up a few paragraphs for each mission where you commit forces would not be so bad - a mission failure screen or success would also be rather simple I`d like to think.

Then deal with logistics back in the Garrison, food, water - equipment all of these things could be a major focus - a few NPC´s that offer opinions on the war as it goes would not be horrible either, make a few hard decisions in there like "do I sacrifice my army here?" or "One of the has to be bait..." it would make each character a little bit more unique in their own war on draenor, a Garrison series like this could offer some ability for people to "feel" the advancement of the story (outside of those of us who raid), each patch could introduce more areas and more fighting to the map - more difficult opponents and clever Iron-horde commanders, toss in a few actual quests in there to go to war zones if you want to be really fancy, make it optional and a thing for people to do if they want to, just rambling at this point, but I think my key point would be to answer the question:

No, I think the Garrison should stay but for it to be updated and build upon, it seems like a waste to throw away what we´ve learned in this expansion, let’s make the Garrison feel more alive and have some more interesting aspects to it beyond "press X to grind" if that is from a story or more game-play elements then so be it.

PS: Make them bloody account wide.

[Deleted]

They should go away, completely and forever.

What was blizzard thinking, when they made the decision about garrisons?

- lets give MMO players a reason to isolate themselves, in a phased zone
- lets give everyone a gold generating method that doesn't require player interaction
- lets give everyone easy access to professions, because it wasn't easy enough
- lets give players their personal housing, in a phased zone where 10.000 other players also have their housing (how is this even explained from an ingame perspective?)
- players have a housing, but they can't personalize it in a meaningful way and nobody can see it, unless invited (pathetic). Individualization level is basically zero.
- not account wide, because of reasons...
- browser mini game in an MMO? Why? Just whyyyyy?

TLDR Summary: garrisons are a bad joke.

[Dome Fossil]

I loved the process of gathering followers, loved getting all the different blueprints and figuring out which buildings to make first, what they should be replaced with later, and all that. I did like leveling and building up the final team of followers I went with. There was such a wide variety of things to do across the world and in dungeons, the brawler's guild, and so on.

But then we hit the phase where it's all done, and I just hang around sending followers out to do things. It's gotten grueling enough that I after hitting Next on the mission board I x it out and reopen just to skip the animations. Quick as they are, I still want it over faster. I don't care about what the followers bring back anymore, but for whatever reason I keep doing it, because this is what I was working for, wasn't it? All that building up results in very efficient followers who bring me stuff.

I dunno, I just don't like the "Facebook game," as it's been called, portion of garrisons. If there was some way to keep it like the earliest weeks of WoD, I'd be much happier with it.

[Deleted]

Garrisons don't really feel very personal, solitary, but not personal. What they need is real housing. Garrisons, meh.

Real housing, like what? The stuff they had in Wildstar? I'll take my Garrison any day over that. Having your own building out in the actual world, laying claim to actual land? How about no. That way people can still disturb you and you might end up with a terrible spot because all the great spots are already taken.

What exactly is, real housing?

- - - Updated - - -

I voted yes. I enjoyed "sitting there" more in stormwind or the shrine instead of my garrison or even stormshield.

What's stopping you from "sitting" in Stormwind or Stormshield now?

[MegaVolti]

- Make it guild garrisons
- Keep farmable items (like the garden or mine) but make everything gathered in the garrison go right into the guild bank
- Remove followers and everything associated with them
- Make all profession buildings available and usable only by those who have the profession
- Make profession building work orders free but have the mats be directly transferred to the guild bank
- Make everything a town has available in the garrison (AH, bank, etc.)

[Huntaer]

What's stopping you from "sitting" in Stormwind or Stormshield now?

Most people are in their garrison so it kinda feels empty lol. They remove garrisons, people go back to the cities

[vqkatsuko]

There is pretty much zero chance that garrisons are going to continue in 7.x I do not know if people have mentioned this but yeah its a 6.x feature only.

[Huntaer]

There is pretty much zero chance that garrisons are going to continue in 7.x I do not know if people have mentioned this but yeah its a 6.x feature only.

Yea blizzard said so.

[Airlick]

Garrisons would have been great if they were done Argent Tournament style - "championing" various buildings instead of cities, follower mini-games and stuff. The way they were implemented sucked some serious balls.

[Soeroah]

Hopefully they bring the mission/delegation tech forward.

I don't think they should carry over the idea of a personal fortress in its current form, though. It's basically replaced dailies and...basically most content feels shallower outside of raids and dungeons because the Garrison is trying to tie in to to many things.

Any future iteration ought to be more optional, less 'forced'. I love the Garrisons myself, but I don't love that they are the only part of WoD I enjoy.