Housing is finally coming to World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor! Ring the bells and sound the alarms folks, the feature is finally coming. Similar to Assassins Creed and how you build up your town, you will now have the option of building your own Garrison which will be your house in WoW.
Whats interesting is that we kind of already have a housing system in WoW, which is the farm. This is sort of taking that idea to an all new level by allowing you to have a much bigger farm with a lot more going on it, including NPC servants, picking and choosing your own buildings to build, different bonuses, and mini-games included.
There isnt necessarily a lot to talk about in the new system just yet, other than it exists and its going to be really cool. Its very Assassins Creed. Like, super duper similar. Youll have an inn that lets followers come and join. Some of them show up automatically, others come through the story, and the rest are through gold. Followers will be able to go on missions or be at your garrison where youll be able to interact with them.
Missions can be done solo or co-op. Your followers will head out to gather resources (for you and for your garrison) and can join other followers in your guild. These resources can be used to craft for yourself or for building up your garrison.
There is a lot of other neat features, like there are different places you can put your garrison and you will get to choose which buildings you want to place, the artistic style of buildings, and their location. Each garrison is unique to some degree.
Opinions
I think this is an interesting approach to player housing, but at the same time I think its far removed from what the point is in player housing. It is a place to call your own, but a large plot of land that you can place prefabricated buildings into isnt necessarily as interesting as a singular structure that you can call your own. Its essentially taking the concept of the farm and taking it directly into the direction of Assassins Creed.
The mission thing is really similar to the farm too, in a lot of ways, and I fear its going to create an unnecessary amount of extra busy work. Hopefully you can take care of missions anywhere in the world and wont have to return to base to do them, because it would suck to have to micromanage all of that.
Its also pushing players away from each other by centering a lot of the story in their own personal space. Guild Wars 2 had a home district, but they choose to sort of stay away from it since it kept you away from other players far too much. Major cities need life to be interesting, pushing players away from them and into their own little bubbles just moves the game closer to being a single player game.
All that aside, at least it is a chance to call part of the world your own. Thats really what a lot of players have been craving, having some part of the world being theirs. Hopefully the garrison system will feel like proper player housing, but only time will tell.
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