Well Internet, we knew it had to happen sometime. Blizzard said as much, but part of me (the greedy part) kinda hoped they might just accidentally overlook it. You know, just let it slide to throw a bone to the working man.

Instead, they threw a bone (the throbbing one) into the Garrison and banged the gold out of it.

This information seems to have been met with a resounding “meh” because people are pretty sick of garrisons in general. Like I said, everybody knew this was going to happen because Blizzard had mentioned it before. Plus, and let’s be honest here, if anyone currently involved in WoD content had no idea that garrisons were a gold making machine, they haven’t been paying attention to pretty much anything.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say this was “broken” as much as maybe a thank you from Blizzard for sticking with a pretty sparse expansion. If you have one or two characters with a fully fleshed out garrison, you were probably making some decent passive gold. It probably covered your raiding repair bills, and maybe you picked up a bobble or two off the AH, if it tickled your fancy. If you happened to have six characters with jacked garrisons, you could probably buy a token for a free month of WoW every week.

Some have said that people are going to have to work for their gold now. They said that garrisons made gold-making too easy. I have sixteen characters at 100, and fifteen of them are at the point where they can make some decent gold for me. I see that as a return on my investment of a) gold spent in leveling up the garrisons, and b) time leveling each character to 100 and amassing enough resources to build up the garrison. I leveled those characters up so I wouldn’t have to spend hours farming old raids for vendor gold, or to gather transmog shit that may or may not sit on the AH for days or weeks before they sell. I front loaded my timesink so that I could coast later.

Am I bitter that the nerf is coming? Not overly, to be honest. Sure it devalues my investments, because those treasure hunting followers are going to be pretty much useless now. I’ll have to make some shifts, but with a little more work I feel that garrisons could still be potential money-makers. They might not make tens of thousands of gold per week, but if they can make that in a month then I’m still playing World of Warcraft for free. That’s what I make my gold for. I’m not in it to measure my “gold-peen” as a millionaire in a video game. I’m in it to save 12-15 real life dollars a month that I could use elsewhere.

What are your thoughts on the nerf? Happy to see it go? Mourning the loss of the gravy train? Do you have plans to keep your garrison making gold in Legion?