Something I've Noticed About These Forums

Community General Discussion
103

Hmm you do bring up valid points. The idea at least on my perspective why garrison’s didn’t count is because the amount of freedom of decor is very limited. There is no racial structures there is only Orcish Structures. There is no paint or color it is only Prime Horde colors. You may have racial guards and banners which is a good direction but thats as far as they go. You can choose which buildings limited as they may be but you can not decorate inside them or even outside them. You can’t really decide what npc’s you want in your player housing. The amount of creative freedom that other housing MMORPG’s provide would make garrison’s seem like a trial feature that went bare minimal then was dumped. Which as every expansion feature does, did get abandon RIP Infinite Torghast, PvP Warfronts, potential mythic plus (MoP) Scenario’s and so on. When I personally look at garrison’s i see an abandoned feature that was a shell of its potential glory. I see the broken promises of WoD, i see Blizzards failure that people try to stay away from to avoid bad memories of the expansion. I don’t see a feature, or a potential social interaction of showing off or who has the best player housing decor. I just see neglect.

Player housing could just be simply instanced housing of some big racial building you can go full ham on decorating like runescape, wildstar, or even FF14. Mini games, cute plushies, lavish gardens, warrior coliseums (yes wod had this, it was a blast), dungeons, or for them forsaken roleplayers slaves / prisoners to experiment on (may change game rating so probably a no go). People then can show off to friends and guildies, and yes I know his name brings negativity in the forums but people can host house competitions like asmongolds transmog competitions / mount offs.

If these fun and time consuming things get and keep players its a win for the players and the devs. It may not be a Warcraft thing but it is a social MMORPG thing.

Moving onto the other topic about spam or continous debate. I think what would really help is transparency and blue posts of acknowledgement. For devs and community moderators to say: “Hey, we see your feedback we acknowledge it exists, we’ll let the devs know and if we decide on anything we’ll let you know and give our reasonings for our answer” and like any decent and respectful human, respect the final say, you can try to debate it still but don’t be hostile like the forums is known for.

If I missed answering anything let me know.

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104

All of these are good points but most of 'em also have parallells to other games and its both good and important to draw on other games for inspiration as to what to do with one’s own but one has to have a purpose and a reason for it

I’ll use one of my absolutely favourite mechanics in any MMO game I have ever played:
Piracy in Archeage

To attack factions and then be exiled from your own and forced into a third very difficult if not impossible faction to get out of but can accept anyone from anywhere - that is an AMAZING mechanic that really changed up everything, but it was built from the grounds up with that in mind
Even stuff like phased housing such as what ESO has would require a lot of things to really change to be worth it, since on a personal level our characters doesn’t matter even to ourselves - because WoW is a game built around the idea that you will have alts and these alts are independant characters that function independantly of other aspects of your account, with some minor things that quantify as quality of life or to speed levelling up for an example (not that heirlooms really do that anymore but that’s the intent at least)
If one compares it to ESO where your bank is shared, you have inifintely stacking sized stuff for your bank (as far as I am aware) as long as you are a ESO+ subscriber, skyshards aka. talent points are cross-character and so on and so on; these games are built for a single character to be able to play anything they want given enough time

WoW doesn’t work like that, and this fundamental change is enough to fundamentally change how you have to go about designing the game in mind
Why did garrisons fail? Because it was abandoned as it was almost universally disliked and “emptied” the world - why do stuff in the world if your garrison has your mission table and you can get gear from it? The few times you went out to do or get stuff was because of professions and the legendary quest chain - nothing else, unless you were a PvP:er collecting heads

So they took what people did like from garrisons … and created the order halls - something was part of the world even if it was just your own class that populated the “garrison” (order hall)

Even when playing WoW from a solo player perspective, you have always required other players in order to partake in the world around you - sure questing was always readily available and you could get to max level as a complete nobody that never did anything with anyone else, but that made you experience the world … not be part of it, and WoW has always ever since classic required people to partake in world events to be part of it rather than just merely experience them
See the raiders bringing the head of Onyxia to the front gate and suddenly everyone of your faction got more powerful! But you were never part of it unless you were part of the group who did it, you just saw them do it

ESO, FF14, Guild Wars, Skyrim, and basically most games WoW has borrowed mechanics from doesn’t require additional people for someone to experience and be part of the world so… when WoW added individual player housing, it failed
When they took the feedback of it and created something with it, that feature is something people have been begging for them to return to the game and be a mainstay feature to the degree where we got the Covenants from them - it is something which people don’t think of as “player housing” because … it isn’t, but it is the WoW’s version of a “guild hall” would essentially be what it is except much, much larger because it encapsulates part of the world rather than just a specific group or individual

So whilst you aren’t wrong in much of this, WoW has historically listened to feedback and done so in a way that players don’t even think about until you deconstruct features in a 3-expansion span, since they design expansions in a 2-expansion period, but listen to design elements over a course of 3 expansions and try to course correct whenever an expansion has a feature that they known won’t be appreciated on launch but can’t change because of how fundamental they are to the expansion (see Covenants again)

Also another tidbit; I actually loved Garrisons and I have some of my best memories from WoW from there, bit too personal to share but I will loudly proclaim that Garrisons didn’t work well … whilst I absolutely loved 'em and still do, haven’t made use of 'em much as of recently but I think both Frostfire Ridge and Shadowmoon Valley are amazing zones and love both garrisons

105

But all of these features in these expansions are missing the big key point of the appeal of player housing. Self expression, thats why transmog is so popular, thats why tier set appearances are so heavily judged, its why mounts and cosmetics is the main driving point of the game and not ahead of the curve, top 100 guild raid clears, or even the esports pvp and mythic plus tournaments to the majority of the playerbase. Garrisons were only hated on by people who wanted the social experience but it was popular to the people who disliked the social experience.

I loved garrisons and if i wanted to talk / interact with people, garrisons had trade chat. Which is what the major interaction i get from retail now. People unfairly cried about Garrisons having everything inside it and preventing you to go out in the world but for years now people hang out in capital cities and que for instances. It is no different then hanging out in your garrisons and queing for instances. I feel like the cries and hate it recieved was unfair and biased.

As a night shift person who plays on off hours in NA all these world events like dream surges and what ever else has low player pop or sometimes no player population at all. I know its not anyones fault but mine for being a night shift person but like its also saying my $15 isn’t as valuable as the people who play during prime time and their $15. Also right now in retail we are seeing a great and what many consider an ugly divide is that a lot or at least a very loud local minority which ever you decide to pick wants wow to be more soloable to have more solo content. People don’t want to feel forced to group up with strangers to have fun in a game they pay for. And the counter debate is to make friends. But many say that like its something easy for the socially awkward or the abused.

I’ve had friends before only to get stabbed by them, for them to use me and when i wasn’t useful to be called trash, useless, and unwanted. I struggle with making new friends, wanting to keep my distance from strangers as who knows who is the next person who will stab me in the back. As nothing is more safe than being alone. Of course “this” doesn’t make sense in a mmorpg setting but its the exact mmorpg setting that turned me and others into wanting to be purely solo.

Anyways getting off topic there, leading into the whole solo divide, player housing should always be a solo. Because you can’t have ultimate expression of self if you are sharing a space with others, and if you are sharing your ability to express your own self is heavily limited if not completely removed like with the covenant sanctums or the legion class order hall. I personally found these to be less successful altogether and have visited them even less then my own garrisons.

WoW faces a ugly divide of following its roots of being the so called social and part of the world that it came from or to go smaller and more solo / small friend groups like it is now with the mythic plus community. As mythic plus is truly only fun and successful when you do it with friends, and a struggle / pain when you do it in pugs.

106

I can agree with a lot of what you are saying and having, essentially, grown up with WoW as well I can safely say I have experienced all of this to a greater and lesser degree myself as well
Heck, as I said before I like player housing and it was honestly one of my favourite things to play around with and fantasize about (never really got to the point of getting it myself so a lot of it was previewing it) in ESO and going back to way, way back I did a similar thing with Habo Hotell and Puzzle Pirates so… yah’, I get you completely

But even so, I will still stand by what I said earlier; I like Garrisons, but they were abandoned because overall they weren’t good for the game - they did receive a lot of unnessary and unfair flak but the whole “folks staying in their garrisons all day” wasn’t an unfair assessment, and folks did that with both the Class Order halls, Covenants, and major cities - but folks were still part of the open world which, when combined with other incentive, drove people to engage and care more about themselves as part of the world

Transmog, mounts, pets, all of these things are ways to express oneself … but they are open to the world to see - again, making them more communal than individual despite being an individual way to identify, define, and ways to express oneself all in all
WoW is not a good game for people who want the more individualistic experience because the game isn’t built for that I agree with that, but I think that’s per design and that by and large that’s a good thing as well - WoW is a weird one because we simultanously have one of the most toxic online community on social media, but it is also the game that has repeatedly made great strides to be inclusive and helpful towards people at least in my experience over the past 17-18 years

That’s getting slightly off-topic as well, but hopefully I at least made my point clear as to why I think the way I do in terms of this particular suggestion, because damn imagine if WoW had been built with player housing in mind from the get-go that would’ve been incredible for us today

107

Because everyone has a different opinion on how things should be.

Party A loves the Ghoulish expansion events that lead to PvP and griefing in cities. Party B hates being griefed anywhere, particularly in “safe” cities…especially on a PvE server. Neither opinion is wrong, they’re just an opinion.

As with all things.

108

Hmm unsure how to proceed with the debate but didn’t want to leave it hanging either. If anything there seems to be no perfect solution, be danged if you add player housing, be danged if you don’t. I know Ion said that he knows the community wants it, and even some of the devs want it, they just have a hard time finding out how to implant it into the game. Sadly with my personal flair, when it comes to such confliction or indecisive actions my go to is brute force a solution through or the brute force the problem down. Which will make some happy and some upset. But all in all there doesn’t seem to be at least in my mind a win all solution for everyone.

I guess I will be appreciative of solo rated bg ques as that was a battle i have fought for a long time.

109

I honestly don’t think there is a perfect solution in general, but especially to something like this

My take on it is this simple; I am more than happy to be wrong about any and all of this, but so far we have only seen the Garrison as an attempt at it which was discontinued and made into other features that worked better and folks liked more so… that’s why I’m pretty sure that’s where its going to be for a while moving forward
But I’d be glad to be proven wrong if the developers could nail it

110

tbh i’m just burned out on retail. I feel no more personal connection to my characters for the first time. They all feel throw awayable. This could be from events which i have considered victories like account bound mostly everything. I feel like no matter what i do in retail right now, it won’t matter at all. If I got BIS today, would it matter in the next patch? not by that much. The content in itself outside the main story is demanded of one to be in groups which i dont really wanna deal with and tbh i can just solo in the next expansion anyways. I’m finding more fun in Classic hardcore and maybe even in wotlk classic compared to retail.

The only differences i can think of when i play classic is that the leveling is fun and meaningful, its impactful. The talent tree’s are more simple and the rotations are more simple not that retail is an issue as i like retails rotations too. I feel like profession leveling and gearing through leveling is more important and impactful. The world feels more alive, its inspiring to see so many other players as well as frustrating when it comes to profession nodes / quest kill contesting. On top of that I know there is an end and i’m not gonna have the rug pulled out under me with some new patch that i have to regear with, there is an actual end a goal in sight that won’t change and that in itself is worth striving for.

Edit: oh and one of my biggest issues in retail is just how fast everything dies, i don’t feel like i can get multiple rotations out if i can even get a single one out, everything is curb stomped. Love the easyness / quickness, hate that it feels like im now playing less.

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111

If they did a +5 they definitely do play the game. Just because they didn’t do what you deem acceptable doesn’t mean they don’t count.

112

It depends on what you believe to be a “really cool idea”, because I think a lot of them are just bad. If I like someone’s idea, I’ll agree with it. If it has objective flaws, I’ll point them out. If I find it stupid and/or an unrealistic expectation, I’ll bluntly shoot it down.

The thing is people here don’t often come up with original ideas, they just repost fan concepts from MMO-Champion or say they want their dream races or classes to be made playable. The few ideas they do come up with often would be terrible for the game’s identity (doing everything else needed to make races completely cosmetic) or are mechanically unfeasible (merging most allied races with core races and giving the Alliance a new race because of vulpera).

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113

Are you guys the same person?

114

No, we both just know more of the english language than “lulz meme”

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115

OK. Ive never seen one person on these boards be this clear and detailed , much less two! :smile:

116

Shrug
I typically try to be detailed ^^’

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117

Excuse me sir and or ma’am, this forum is for lobbing vitriol and ignorance, not nuance or proper discussion.

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118

I giggled at this. :laughing:

That made me smile.

Why not make it an option in settings? That way everyone is happy.

119

as i said earlier in the thread…

That sort will lurk all over the web projecting their own misery on to others.
I have these sorts in my personal world here that I have to interact with on occasion.
They hate their lives, and that hate oozes from every atom of the being.
At a point you just have to pity it and not let it bother you.

120

Sorry but i consider them a tourist. Anyone who can’t get at minimum a +15 has very minimal time investment in the game. This is not to say other forms of the game aren’t respectable. If you’re at least pushing into heroic raiding that is an effort to play the game. PvP also has this stipulation. Open world play is a meme and if that’s the knoweldge base a forum user is pulling from it’s pretty silly.

121

I disagree Prismriver. There are very different types of players that play games. There are those that are more achievement focused, those that are explorer types and story focused, and many many others. There was a graph somewhere I think back in the day that illustrated the different types of gamers.

So yeah not everyone plays the game the same way. Some are probably insanely good at pet battles or fishing and know them inside and out. WoW has many different ways to play it.

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122

I agree with you. There are many different ways to play and I don’t have a problem with any of the different playstyles. The only thing I do have a problem with is forcing everyone to play one part of the game and call it World of Warcraft when really it isn’t.

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