World of Warcraft’s Garrisons Unlikely to Return in Next Expansion

Do you like your home away from Azeroth in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor? Live it up now, because Garrisons likely aren't going with you to future expansions.

In an interview with IGN, World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor's lead game designer, Ion Hazzikostas, explained that Blizzard has a lot in store for your home base in this new expansion. Garrisons act as a makeshift Stormwind/Orgrimmar for the dangerous plains of Draenor. You can design the base to your own preferences, include the shops you want and it all feels like home. Player characters have the ability to recruit NPC characters to their Garrisons and send them out on quests that take place off-screen and while you're away from your computer.

"I think there’s no question that we’re going to keep pushing the Garrison feature forward throughout Warlords of Draenor. Your garrison is your settlement in Draenor and your ongoing efforts against the Iron Horde and your enemies are expressed there," Hazzikostas said. "In the 6.1 patch coming up we have some improvements to the Garrison system, followers, new followers, new traits for your followers, new missions and so on but I think as we look into future patches beyond that it’s likely we’re going to grow the Garrison concept further."

Unfortunately, Hazzikostas suggested that Blizzard is unlikely to be coming with you to future expansions of World of Warcraft -- it is simply a massive base set in the perilous areas of Draenor.

"As we think into expansions beyond WOD, I think in many ways the Garrison as an entity is very much a product of Draenor," Hazzikostas added. "But I think the gameplay, offline progression, having a sense of ownership and a place to call home, having followers to do your work and send out into the world in service of your cause, I think those are potential more universal things that even if there aren’t 1:1 of those terms or systems, the concepts and the type of gameplay has been embraced and so we think it’s clearly a great part of World of Warcraft."

While there is no release date set for it, World of Warcraft's 6.1 Patch will bring about some big Garrison improvements, such as daily visitors, visiting friends' Garrisons, more achievements, new followers and new quests. Patch 6.1 will also be bringing in the revamped blood Elf models and a variety of fixes to the MMORPG king.

Garrison or not, it's still easy to get hooked on WoW: