Hey Blizzard,
You put a lot of work into making Garrisons. You could add modern portals and this would make them a viable “house” for a character.
I feel like I hear this a lot – that people would like the garrisons to be somewhat relevant again.
You could also add a transmuter/void storage.
Voila! player housing
You get a hearthstone unique for garrisons.
But no that is not player housing.
the garrison hearthstone technically does this already. Having garrison at level 3 already gives you a portal to Stormshield/Warspear, where a portal to Org/Stormwind portal room is a few steps away.
Garrisons already have this… it’s in the bank building at level 3.
Some actual improvements: Allow us to place decorations separate from each other (as is if you place down Winter’s veil decorations, All Hallows, etc they ALL get placed like you can’t put down Hallows glow and use Festive outfits together, etc), allow at least base race customizations to the garrison building architecture like gothic buildings for Worgen/Forsaken, Japanese/Greek style buildings for Night Elves, Native American et; Allow us to get furniture pieces like paintings and beds and chairs and stuff based on environment assets from prior expansions, etc etc…
Also allow us to place the garrison in any zone or even just a select few more zones if every zone is too much.
My friend, just take some time and really build up your Garrison if you haven’t.
As others have said, the garrison has most of this. Even an auction house (I think you can still get it?)
One of the Cromie times gets you that stone in just a few clicks…15 min and it is not the one you think it would be.
It’s not Sunday yet.
Literally All they would need to do is put a portal in the major city (Org/SW) to send your your garrison. Add a portal to Org/SW at your garrison and Boom player housing. They could add literally anything they want to the garrison AH/Bank/Crafting area/Portal to current xpac major city / Portal to current raid anything.
The best option is if it was an Account Garrison instead of a character one.
Was very strange to me there is no default Org/SW portal in your Garrison after one is just right there before you built it.
In fact, speaking of furniture and more control of our garrisons and stuff… I don’t understand why they don’t just build off the scrapped designs for garrisons they didn’t implement when WoD was released if they still have the data for it.
Cause unless they deleted it the data for more garrison stuff is still there, they demonstrated it all at the Blizzcon for WoD’s release.
It’s in the mage tower at level 3.
They could make the portal so you could select a destination, like the current expansion or a capital city.
They could have a “house” with a portal for a doorway in your capital city and other recent destinations. You and your party members could go through it together. When you leave, you would be “exiting” and arrive on that doorstep.
They could give you options for other, favorite locations to have your house, with a back gate where you could walk out into the world.
They could just get rid of all the npc’s trying to give you quests or whatever, and let you turn your fishing pond into a swimming pool, your barracks into a cottage or mansion, your fence into a hedge.
But they don’t want players to have this, because they would become too attached to it and be unwilling to reroll and lose access to their previous main’s house. And they don’t want your alts to be able to share the house without each one doing all the work.
They could simply copy-paste the Garrison onto one of the many empty/wide-open plots of land in Dragonflight zones - boom, “player housing” in the current expac 
As for lore, a simple/lazy way to spin it is
…similar to what he did with “mass-teleporting” Dalaran to the Legion isles at the start of Legion
It’s not like they have to “start over from scratch” for player housing, the Garrison already exists and could simply be added to/iterated on to add more player customization and player choices. Simply listen to player feedback and revamp the Garrison according to player requests, that’s an easy way to do it
I’m talking about the Transmogger/Void storage… which is in the bank building at level 3…
Plus as pointed out, they HAVE the features ready to go unless by saying they were “Scrapped” they mean they were completely dumped from the data bins and storage servers. The thing is they did confirm recently at the start of DF in the interviews that they’d like to do player housing, it’s just gonna take time to do them to the same standard as most other MMOS (likely owing to the ancient graphics engine that was borrowed from WC3).
Never had a bank building. Just saying the default is on the mage tower when you first level your garrison up to level 3. I was too busy doing PvP during wod to bother doing all that fancy stuff in my garrison.
Blizzard!! shakes fist in the air
OMG YES PLEASE!
I still spend time in my Garrisons and would love to have the availability of different zones (in additional different building styles).
I don’t have strong feelings about player housing. However, if they do create it, it should be instanced, so every player could easily have a basic unit, not restricted by lots as FFXIV did. Blizzard can adapt the basic garrison framework pretty easily to give standard racial choices of architecture, amenities like a nightclub with a bar in it for big spenders.
Yeah, the Garrison is the logical place to expand for housing. I would love player housing, but it seems the RP in MMORPG is dwindling.
If you’re looking for another option to get back from Dragon Isles, make sure you have the Legion intro done to get the Dalaran hearthstone. There’s also guild rep tabards.
As others have said, garrisons already do a lot of what OP described.
That being said, Blizzard made it very clear in the leadup to Legion that they want garrisons to be forgotten. They want the playerbase to move on and not go back to them. They’re still in the game because that’s how WoW works. Unless you’re one of a select few legendary questlines (glares at the MoP cape and WoD ring), you’re staying in the game until the bitter end. But that doesn’t mean Blizzard won’t nerf you into meaninglessness or just outright disable you (glares at most old legendary effects and tier sets) in order to force players to move on.