They also cut the faction capitals that were planned for the expansion. I truly believe WoD had the potential to be the best expansion ever but didnt live up to the hype due to so much cut content. Honestly even with what was left if it had introduced M+ it would have been an A tier expansion
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OP be wildin right now. Garrisons were horrible.
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I use my Garrison every day. I still like them after all these years - in fact, it’s my “happy place”.
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I loved the garrisons, for a lot of reasons, but to summarize what I think are the biggest points people had against them (that I think had a lot of merit):
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Not as customizable as you’d expect. Some buildings were just too good to pass up, or you built one type in order to get all the unlockables then destroyed it afterward. There were a few themes you could add and a few statues, but that was it in terms of personalization.
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Widespread perception that their addition, and the work it took to add them, cost us a patch cycle/raid tier. The area that became the Netherstorm simply does not show up at all in WoD, despite existing in the lore. The story took off at a weird angle that really felt like we missed something halfway through.
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Destroyed the economy. Garrisons added the mission table to the game, and it stayed in the game for a few expansions afterward. It was neat at first, but people quickly grew sick of it. I went from a poor boy in WoD to having 14 million gold because all my alts were farming it every day.
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Destroyed the open world. Sure, you can say it’s all bots now farming, but in WoD you could do all your farming in your garrison, with the mine and the garden, and never needed to leave. If you had a few alts, you could be completely self-sufficient at all times without ever leaving your garrison. Also, since your garrison was your home base, there was no “capital city” for the expansion like Dalaran or Valdrakken. There were a couple places that “could” have been (one for horde and one for alliance) but they were never fleshed out because the garrison did everything. It led to a very lonely expansion, because there was no central hub where people gathered. If you and your friend ran back to the garrison, unless you were in a party and invited in, you would both go to your own separate sharded garrisons.
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Now I have to post a Kiffness/cat video, because it was in my youtube feed that scrolled by when I watched that vid you posted 
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They were popular, but we were kinda promised we’d be able to pick a spot for them, other than the 2 we got, 1 for each faction.
We only got human/orc buildings.
The chores should have been managed and done by a NPC.
The best thing was the passive resource generation, which enabled my alts to do the missions and get tons of gold. It was by far the best patch for earning gold and buying token, which were measly 30k at the time.
Had I known it would be 300k today, I’d have farmed the heck out of that mission table and pay for like 20 years of WoW (yes, it was indeed possible back then, especially before they nerfed the “Bligtron’s Secret Vault” mission).
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No, they literally stated that they wanted to have “Little to no dailies” as a design goal before they even got heavily into garrisons.
The rest can be blamed on hiring a bunch of developers for WoD but not being able to manage a large group.
because its not player housing its a preset hub, and in wod you day was literally just sitting in your garrison waiting for the queue to pop.
I liked mine, still go there for my auction house.
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And in dragonflight your just sitting in Valdrakken for your M+ group to summon you - whars the difference lol
I was going to say, was there ever really a “live” open world ever since the game became about sitting in a capital city queuing for dungeons?
I know there was lively open world in Vanilla but at some point didn’t that change whenever Blizzard decided WoW was an e-sport?
Was the open world really ever alive though after Vanilla?
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And in the classic redo series you…do laps. It’s quite convenient Shattrath and Dalaran were/are in fact circular in design.
Running around in circles waiting for LFG hits is both literally and figuratively correct lol.
Some gamers lack honesty with themselves. Once any rep runs/attunement are done weeks in…the only open world runners are farmers. In either version.
and farming ain’t social. Those 5 other dudes are not people you go yay…someone to talk to! you go, elune dammit, those dudes are more competition for nodes.
The open world was dead but present. The garrison took the open world, dumped it into a tub of lye, and literally disintegrated it into elementary particles and then dumped them in the ocean.
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Tbc and wrath are trash. Classic vanilla wow is where its at
I won’t argue with you lol.
I got to era HC when I have rough wrath nights. Usually in disbelief and disgust after 2 teams lose WG in record times.
Team 1 defence loses in 6 minutes or less. Okay…lets hop on another one. and they lose…in 6 minutes too.
Inb4…2 losses me in common. I’d be one of those people in the keep going “dudes…delay towers and get here now.”
they stay on towers kill runs…horde wins in 6 minutes or less. BOnus points for the idiots who pull all cata’s all in south to spam quest complete. That amount of stupid…no one can fix that level of stupid no matter how good they are.
OH WOW! SO THAT THEY COULD RUN CIRCLES AROUND A FOUNTAIN?!?!
Some of you people keep peddling this as something bad that playerhousing will do, but I promise, no one cares about seeing your toon run circles.
I especially don’t.
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The greatness of Garrisons was effort that went into them, they really made the rest of the xpac feel empty. Look at everything Garrisons had versus a split raid tier, a daily quest, taking turns one siding Ashran, and challenge dungeons.
I loved the farm in Pandaria.
I understood going into WoD that the garrison was going to be farm 2.0, not an Ultima Online house.
I loved garrisons. Even with the horrific server stability issues because they underestimated the memory requirements of everyone spinning up garrison instances at once, I played them relentlessly. Every one of my alts since, including my dracthyr, has gone back and built a tier 3 garrison.
I get that not everyone did enjoy them.
I don’t want to force my playstyle on others nor fail to do my part in making the world feel populated with random strangers.
But I am a little sad that idea of personal spaces, gardens and mines died out with garrisons.
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Mainly because garrisons weren’t actually awesome?
People get tired of chore micro management