I feel that the idea overall was great and had an insane potential however it’s execution was horrible. First of all you found everything there so there was no reason to get to faction hub besides buying PvP gear or reputation rewards. It also made professions irrelevant for the expansion duration since you had all mats available without gathering professions thanks to garrison. It also created huge gold inflation thanks to mission tables.
What Garrisons should be in my opinion is our dream of player housing. It should you allow to exhibit your favourite mounts, armors like Corvo Bianco in Witcher 3. Maybe contain profession table, target dummy and plenty of cosmetic things but it should never replace a hub. Maybe it should even be shared within Warbands. I think it’s a great idea that should be reviewed and executed better this time.
I would love to have a better version of it but it should be 100% cosmetic, where customisations or furniture is linked to achievements or maybe trading post. Also having it shared with your warband and allowing you to choose the type of architecture and location based on your race or reputation level would be great.
In Draenor while I understand the concept behind it, I hated the horde garrison. Impossible to make it look good…
I’d love that, Warband housing, mostly cosmetic stuff like showing off trophies/mounts/transmog items, minor amenities (Warbank, maybe a repair vendor and innkeeper), so people still have need to visit capital cities (For whatever purpose that serves except make things look crowded), and of course the possibility to use it as my warband backdrop.
Honestly, Garrisons should be “re-introduced” as a player housing revamp. I would assume it would start out small, but over time it would add new and more features to it. Perhaps make it a “Warband Base” with your alts walking around?
Could have the stables out to show off the mounts, the inn and have random visits from previous quest giving NPCs or other note-worthy NPCs for fun. Mage Tower for portals to Stormwind/Ogrimmar, perhaps let people activate portals to favorite racial main cities up to 2 as an addition.
The trophy room for artifacts (as it is right now), can be remade into a trophy room for the previous Artifact Weapons, perhaps a depleted Heart of Azeroth necklace laying around or something.
The assets are there, still not a case of flipping a switch and there it is, but most assets can be re-used for a new purpose.
Garrisons were just a war base promoted to look similar to player housing, it wasn’t a terrible concept on its own but was nowhere close to what players wanted for housing.
They should implement two things imo.
Player housing.
You could even make it Warband housing to make it so its per account rather than per character if that was to make things easier/use less server resources.
Guild halls.
Similar concept but a place where your guild can hang out in private.
Personally these things wouldn’t affect me either way but it could be another way to bring a social aspect back into the game.
I liked the idea of garrisons, but I also liked busy hubs like WotLK Dalaran, and also the order halls. My ideal dream would be and expanded Dalaran where every class can access their order hall (like rogues), and every player has a phased plot of land to call their own.
Could be neat .
It would be fun to have your alts walking around in it , doing stuff . Maybe acting like some role , for instance Vendor or Trainer , based on their professions .
Maybe you could interact with them somehow .
It could even be interesting to just talk to the “alt” and log in to it , without going to the login screen .
Naturally customizable everything in there .
We should also be able to choose the location . I don’t care if it is just visual thing . It would be neat to have the house say in Hyjal or Winterspring or Burning Steps .
And lastly Portals Portals Portals . You could unlock them by gathering teleport items . Like if you have the black temple attunement necklace you can open portal to the foot of the black temple .
I’m not sure how you would avoid Garrison’s biggest flaw, namely that everyone would just idle in their own house rather than visiting others. It would feel a lot less ‘massive multiplayer online’ and more ‘The Sims’.
