And the whole expansion.
I havent played back then, i am a vanilla player, long break after MoP, came back in 8.3.
I really like garrison feature, i expecially love the buildings/professions/followers implementation.
However, community has such a bad opinion of WoD.
Why? I am curious
The garrison itself wasnât a bad thing, it was actually by far the most developed and fun mission table done so far. WoD in general has the negative view about it for other reasons, such as:
Arguably, WoD had some of the best systems design they ever made, but sadly it was underlined by some of the lowest amounts of actual content they ever made. For some WoW players, systems design is the important thing, and youâll see lots of people who donât actually hate WoD at all, myself included. But for other WoW players, what motivates them to play is new content, and understandably those didnât like WoD, because it truly was very poor on the content side.
Now, the players who tend to dislike an expansion as a whole also tend to reject all its features. The garrison falls pray to this type of thinking, basically in the same way some Legion fans are praising the legion order halls, despite those being nothing more than watered down boring versions of the garrison, for example.
To be honest i like it too , hope we get something like that in de future again but im affraid that are just dreams
I have a question. I was considering the most useful garrison building, i wonder: at enchanting building, will i be able, as non enchanter, of disenchanting EVEN ACTUAL EXPANSION STUFF?
I liked it also.
One thing I will say is I find mission table mini games very boring. Iâd rather the followers came out and we did the missions together.
Basically what redoctober said. Also I think garrisons were too powerful, you had basically no reason to ever leave it. Another thing was probably the backlash of them removing flying.
I think WoDâs failure has more to do with Blizzardâs internal metrics for measuring success. They are⌠weird. Blizz considers Diablo 3 such a failure that they canned the 2nd expansion which was already in production when Reaper of Souls came out.
I also didnât play WoD like you OP, but it really seems the expansionâs main failure is that⌠they just cut developing it. They cut an entire raid. When I go back to do the questing, to farm the raids it looks awesome. WoD has the best questing and open world in the entire game, I swear.
Its not so much that WOD failed itâs that wow started itâs decay and bad game design during the end of woltk. We got cata, mop and then wod. So players were already annoyed by Ionâs horrible direction during cata, mop and wod.
To top that off, no flying and no content much like Shadowlands. So they came with the introduction of their pay2win system; the token. At that time it was fairly innocent tho.
But today itâs mobile tier pay2win garbage, that many use for boosts. Hence why retail subs are abysmal yet revenue is somewhat oke.
Ion created this problem himself. Also the incoming shills; âbut players always leave a few months into a expansionâ. Eeh no they never did. Not even durings Ionâs first 2 mediocre xpacs. It took wod to get people to mass unsub every season.
Tl;dr wod didnât suck, ionâs wow sucked for a long time + content draught = rip. All the talent is gone from Blizzard theyâre just milking retail for what itâs worth today.
Hail friend.
Based on my personal observations and the plethora of common complains regarding the garrison during WoD, there were several issues with the garrison that ultimately led to its increasing unpopularity:
It was fairly limited in design, and many of its initial features were scrapped before release. Features like being able to choose the zone to build the garrison in and tier 4 of the garrison upgrade. The buildings customization and the number of options were severely limited, which in turn made most garrisons look alike and limited creativity.
Garrison mission table received mixed reactions, of which many were negative due to the nature of it. This feature quickly became nothing more than a gold mine for those who had multiple alts.
Garrisons were very lucrative and convenient, which made players largely self-sufficient. You could get most ores and herbs from the Garrison.
Garrisons were separate instances, which separated players and largely made the world feel emptier as a result.
The shipyard addition in 6.2 was largely unpopular, both due to it being yet another mission table and due to its initial gimmick of having the ships get destroyed upon failing a mission.
And lastly, garrisons took so much effort and resources that the expansion as a whole suffered as a result, mainly because of the enormous amount of content that got cut before release.
All in all, Garrison was a good idea that wasnât implemented well, and it suffered as a result.
For me, the problem with WoD was gameplay and Garrison start-up.
I never felt comfortable on my alts because their Garrisons were not properly developed like my mainâs Garrison. Professions were also tied to it in an awkward way. And the resource cache + mine and herb garden were incredibly annoying because I felt compelled to always keep them cleaned out whenever I logged a character.
Gameplay-wise my class lost a lot of its oomph going into WoD and that soured the whole thing.
IMO, too much resource generation.
Why was it a good idea to give herbs and ores to people who arenât herbalists and miners? Brought about heavy independence of professions and reduced the need for so much as a weekly run to the AH.
Also it really wasnât customisable. A few token locations you could drop 1 of N objects, and your choice of guards does not constitute a homely feel.
He wasnât even in charge during cata, mop and wod.
This. Imagine blaming Ion for the expansions when he was raid and class designer 
WoD feels very incomplete. No Farahlon, no Shattrath raid, no Karabor/Bladespire hubs. The fact that the legendary quests that contained about 25% of the expansionâs lore have since been removed doesnât help.
This guy nails it on the head. WoD wasnât bad at all, it was bland.
So much cut content and very little to do aside from raiding. The stuff there was to do were mission table stuff or very short dailies.
SL feels a lot worse to me imo, but for a different reason.
I am curious, what about SL in your opinion?
I find WoD a chill-out expansion. No riddiculous grinding. Just a good old gaming.
And I LOVE my garrison! I have my own auction house, pet enclave, garden, mines etc. I regret they didnât go with an individual space in later expansions.
WoD had the best questing/solo experience imo, and garrisons were a nice experiment with something akin to player housing as something each individual player could work on by themselves.
People complained about ânever having to leave my garrisonâ and âlul single-player game! I thought this was an MMO?â and stuff like that. Which is baloney since the game hasnât had any social fabric since LFD tool was implemented. All relevant content is done through that so I never really saw the âsolo gameâ argument as legitimate. After all, does it really matter if youâre queueing in Orgrimmar or in your garrison? It really does not.
But a lot of people complained loudly as they do, and here we are. Garrisons were a missed opportunity if you ask me.
Class Halls was superior to garrisons. Why you ask? You actually saw other people there. It felt like a meaningful place.
Different strokes I guess.
I hated being hailed as âthe Slayer!â or âhere comes the Deathlord!â and then youâre standing there next to 15 other so-called leaders of whatever order you were in.
It was completely immersion breaking.