A Currency Exchange (located right next to every Bank or Auction House) would fix most of the problems Blizzard created (in an effort to make life difficult for gold farmers according to one popular explanation) when it became obvious that with every new expansion, a new currency was used for monetary rewards and that Gold, while still used when buying or selling mundane or generic items and services common to WoW and all of its expansions) was “not good enough” to bypass some of the more tedious, annoying, ridiculously over-complicated, or just plain FUBAR elements of the game.
Random PvP encounters outside of Arenas, Battlefronts, Brawlers Guild events, and similar explicitly defined times and locations caused a lot of people to quit WoW. I would have been one of them if I had foreseen just how overused Contested Territories would become. They allowed Blizzard to use PvP in place of PvE content excessively. It costs more in the TW to have content which conforms to the original way PvE realms were defined. For people who like the more recent expansions a lot because they penalize anyone who has zero interest in ranked competitive PvP events as well as having to accept PvP as a practical norm in order to progress at about the same pace as avid PvP fanatics do in the newer Xpacs.
I recall making similar comments about Battle Pets and Pet Battles becoming short cuts for players who are into collections and enjoy being able to make some kind of game progress by using their toon’s Battle Pets as surrogates for the toon itself in very limited and rather slow combat sequences. In other words, Blizz just assumed that all WoW players would have fun in virtual cockfights (or dog fights, mongoose versus rattlesnake fights or old variations of surrogate blood sports such as bear-baiting) and that no players would object to it for the simple reason that it is not entertaining when it becomes a built-in feature of the game.
It would be a major improvement if players could opt to get rid of the Menagerie in their Garrisons and use the space as a meta-size parcel of land for another “elective” building, for example a Trading House (AH) and a Store House (Bank) in addition to the Mage Tower or Dwarven bunker, to make the garrison more of a merchant center; or a Forge, and a Bunker so a toon with Mining Skill could also have a Gem Boutique and be able to customize gear made at the Forge.
Essentially, instead of wasting valuable garrison land on a Menagerie, players who are not into Pet Battles at all could replace that useless building with one that allows them to do more with raw materials that come via fishing, mining, and herbalism or just store more things in the garrison.
Having a meta-building in place of the Pet Menagerie seems to be great option for the many players who would be happy if Pet Battles were never introduced in WoW. Players who like Pet battles (or collecting) might want to use the plot of land that has the Garden for a different purpose, since it is a large parcel that people might want to put a different (small, medium, or large) building on.
If you had the option to replace the Menagerie with any other optional building, would you? With what? No, a Pet Semetary [sic] is not currently an option.