Saturday was
interesting. We were short a couple
people so we went and stomped down Heroic Mogu’shan Vaults and Heart of Fear to
get our guild achievement for the mount.
It was nice laid back fun and if we are short again I am hoping to stomp
throne of Thunder in the same way next.
But hopefully next week we won’t be going to back to do old content.
Sunday was awesome. Pure, 100% awesome. Lag put his tank pants back on due to the sudden
departure of our off tank. Despite
having to kick the rust off my tank skills we ran pretty smooth. Once we were up and running we downed Gruul,
Hanz and Franz, and Beastlord with only one wipe between the fights. I found the groove I needed and we moved
through well.
Now, while I
would love to rant on having folks leave during a transition time. For example, like when we are swapping to
weekends and things might be rough getting schedules in place. I really want to
discuss garrisons and how I think this system will work in the next
expansion. (See, I’m being good and
moving on.)
Garrisons have
been the big feature of this expansion.
There is no way advancing in Draenor without building/maintaining one
and without getting to level 3 you won’t be able to experience then next big
bout of content. They have allowed us to
make stuff from any profession that we might need. They have made it so gathering (other than
leatherworking) can largely be done without going anywhere. The garrison had felt like your specific
place on Draenor, and it has pretty much destroyed the desire for most folks to
go out into the world.
I don’t believe
we will see garrisons like this again. I
think the ideas taken to the next expansion might include building your own
little quest hub, but won’t be as comprehensive. Allowing folks to make stuff from any
profession, gather, play the Auction House, and do pretty much everything in
one space has been detrimental. There is
a reason a lot of people are referring to this game as “World of Garrisons”
now.
There is no need
to go to a main city unless you are actually PVPing in Ashran. Other then maybe a weekly visit to get your
tokens for raiding. Every time I go I’m
lucky to see more than a handful of other players who are trying to get in and
out as quickly as possible. Gone are the
days of players hanging around showing off mounts, or just staying together in
a central location. For all the rage
that happened when Blizzard announced it would be moving the Capital Cities for
the factions before expansion launch it seems it didn’t matter what they did. We have abandoned the idea of a faction hub
where everyone hangs out.
I normally have
an alt with every profession leveled.
Garrisons have destroyed my need for that. Not only am I not leveling several alts like
I have in previous expansions, I haven’t felt the need too. I have no use for professions I can access if
I can just make items in garrison. On
top of that, I just don’t have it in me to level a bunch of alts if that means
I have to keep up with garrisons on them as well. With three level 100 characters it feels like
a big time sink right now. There is no
way I could keep up on garrisons on ten or twelve characters. It just feels impossible to do more with a
limited amount of time.
So, my guess is
that for the next expansion we will see things pulled back to somewhere between
the garrisons we have now, and the farm we had in Mists of Pandaria. I think we will still have something that we
can work with and build up, without it taking all desire to do other things in
the game away. The other thing I could
see happening is they could just do away with garrison/player housing
completely as Blizzard does have a tendency to overcorrect when something
doesn’t work. This would be a shame as I
do like the feeling my character has a little bit of something invested in the
current world.
So what we need
is an area where we can enhance our professions, without replacing them. Supplement our resources without replacing
the need to grind. Build and have
something that feels permanent without being tied down to the point where you
feel like not visiting several times a day puts you behind. I am not sure how they can pull this off, but
I like the idea of them doing some sort of guild housing, or maybe a keep that
is phased in a way that you see other players, but certain buildings look
different or change when you enter them.
How do you think
they can change garrisons for the next expansion, if they include them at all?
Lag/Lazyeye
No comments:
Post a Comment