I don't understand why Blizzard are dragging their heels regarding player housing...

[Touchyfeely]

Long as they do not do what FFXIV did and made trying to get a house a living nightmare cause there are more players than housing. FFXIV still haven't fixed that issue or implemented enough housing for the heavy servers

[Thimagryn]

Translation: If you're not a vainglorious peacock who derives immense satisfaction from being an arrogant braggart and thrusting your achievements in the face of other players screaming "LOOK AT ME AND HOW AWESOME I AM", you don't deserve to play the game.

Thankfully, not everyone thinks like this.

I think you got it the other way around if you took what I said and translated it into 'braggarts don't deserve to play'.

A big part of the social aspects of the game is visually displaying your collections. Displaying special mounts and pets promotes awareness of cool things, and is part of how the game promotes social awareness. You might not think twice about the Starbucks logo on your coffee cup, but someone seeing you with it might make them think 'oh, you know what, I could use a Starbucks right now too'. Despite any personal reasoning, riding around on a special mount has a different context when you ride it in the world where it's seen by others and if you're riding around in an instance where no one else can. It's not a statement about you, it's a statement about advertising that this mount exists, and someone who sees it might be urged to get it themselves. This extends to transmogs, pets and toys even.

Player Housing would be the opposite of that, where everything you're given is kept in an instance for personal viewing. For a game as vast and long-standing as WoW, it's hard enough to keep track of every pet and mount that's available out there for collectors, and not everyone is aware that some rare mount out there exists until they see someone riding on it. That's a big part of the social aspect of the game, seeing something you want and going out to get it. You won't see much of this if everyone has their own instance of Player housing.

That's why I think Guild Housing would be more interesting. Someone sees a statue added to the Guild Hall, and it starts up a new discussion about how it was obtained and who added it. Compare this to Player Housing where the only social aspect would be the vainglorious peacocks inviting others to see their own accomplishments

[Deleted]

Long as they do not do what FFXIV did and made trying to get a house a living nightmare cause there are more players than housing. FFXIV still haven't fixed that issue or implemented enough housing for the heavy servers

Well TBF FFXIV original housing was designed for guilds not individuals

[darklogrus]

After the disaster of garrisons, why would blizzard EVER put player housing into the game.

Lets face it, wow is not designed for player housing. It is a mmo, we should be in the capital cities like org/sw or dal.

You can't compare it to Garrisons since they were pretty much gutted in what they were suppose to bring to the table. Not to mention it was pretty much an abandoned feature in an abandoned expansion. Besides we have the same boring unused areas called class halls, so its not like Blizzard actually made an effort towards the design.

As for Capital Cities, nobody wants to be there either. They were so emptied that Blizzard had to CRZ them with the majority of other realms.

[Bosen]

Because player housing is worthless.

[subanark]

In order to have player housing work, you need a way to encourage other players to visit it, and for players to want visitors. One way to do this is to let players help each other on things like NPC missions, while providing a bonus for anyone who helps out.

Personally, I'm more in favor of player dungeons... provided that they discourage player made "farm dungeons".

[nekobaka]

Ill make a comment about garrisons and bad reception. It was basically a forced activity and valuable enough to burn even interested players out. The system destroyed gathering professions as well. A lot of talk about player housing is for something that is not forced on those with no interest. Pet battles might not have a wide appeal while at the same time it is an optional activity for those who want to participate in it can do such and those who have no interests can flat out ignore while easy to pick up and drop for those with a slight interest. If players was forced to do pet battles there would certainly be continued trash talking about it years after its introduction.

[Deleted]

Ill make a comment about garrisons and bad reception. It was basically a forced activity and valuable enough to burn even interested players out. The system destroyed gathering professions as well. A lot of talk about player housing is for something that is not forced on those with no interest. Pet battles might not have a wide appeal while at the same time it is an optional activity for those who want to participate in it can do such and those who have no interests can flat out ignore while easy to pick up and drop for those with a slight interest. If players was forced to do pet battles there would certainly be continued trash talking about it years after its introduction.

Exactly it would be OPTIONAL

[Deleted]

The consensus I am getting is Blizzard is too incompetent (garrisons) and rather than fix the issues with it let's just shelve it? Why is played housing bad but class halls isnt?

Because snowflakes need their collective stink to accumulate. There is guild housing in GW2 but the guilds themselves are fundamentally different.

[ZyloWolfBane]

We don't need more optional content, we need more ACTUAL content.

In case you haven't been paying attention they're shoving tons of useless optional content out the door nobody will do, housing won't change a thing, hardly anyone will bother after the first week, and it's just time/resources wasted that could go towards their god awful balancing.

[Pickynerd]

Now that is fabulous spin on the "they don't listen to the player base" claims

Um, yeah, I know they listen.. What I am saying, is if the fix is easy enough, we will see it and if not we wont.

[Schwert]

I love how people keep spouting that it's a feature "barely anybody wants", but this website consists of mostly people who are invested in raiding and non-RPG elements of the game.

Stop trying to speak for the playerbase.
This is something the general player would actually do and enjoy - if implemented properly.
Just because an individual doesn't want it doesn't mean it's not a feature that people would use.

Garrisons was nothing like any sort of player housing in any MMORPG on the market. It can't even be considered similar.

We don't need more optional content, we need more ACTUAL content.

In case you haven't been paying attention they're shoving tons of useless optional content out the door nobody will do, housing won't change a thing, hardly anyone will bother after the first week, and it's just time/resources wasted that could go towards their god awful balancing.

You wanna go into details as to what you consider to be "actual content"?

[Al Gorefiend]

Player housing as a form of solo content just isn't as appealing. Honestly, if decorating my house with trophies and furniture sounded fun I have a Skyrim mod that lets me do so down to every bowl and vase in the game. Or I'd play Sims.

EverQuest 2 has a FAN. TASTIC. Player housing system. But, it just didn't do much for community and I just don't think WoW needs it.

What I'd LOVE to see is a Guild Hall that your entire guild shares, and can be decorated individually with permissions, and accomplishments large and small can be displayed. Content like that builds a strong sense of solidarity and never really gets outdated.

[Daarksoul]

As title says I don't understand why Blizzard are dragging their heels regarding player housing... Wildstar despite its many flaws possibly had the best player housing in any MMORPG, hell even WoWs biggest competitors FFXIV and SWTOR has player housing and that's almost universally praised by the players. Instead Blizzard gave us two poor-man's housing in the form of garrisons and class halls that didn't give much if any customization and get abandoned. Player housing could actually be an expansion feature designed to last unlike the garrison, class hall and artifacts that are obsolete a year later.

I find the argument "we don't want people not in the world" argument BS. I would rather a personal hub I can invite friends to, not some class hall surrounded by strangers not even talking! I also don't believe the "WoW doesn't have the technology" argument. Obviously some people aren't interested in player housing like some people aren't interested in PvP or Raiding but it would give us a new form of content to do at endgame be it crafting decor, running dungeons for decor, buying decor, etc!

Sigh. You already have player housing; it's called a garrison.
Wake up and pay attention to the game before crying all the time.
Google garrison and go enjoy it FFS...

[Traveler Voltin]

Garrison is not player housing.
So shut up troll

[Skayaq]

Because Blizzard's dev team are completely incapable of comprehending something being fun for some players if it doesn't relate to raiding.

[Echocho]

Housing wouldn't give any gear, mounts, transmogs or battle pets. Blizzard is probably trying to figure out a way for it to do so before they start working on it.

[Armourboy]

The problem with player housing is that its just a worthless time sink for development if there isn't a reason for it. In general it becomes yet another thing they add that players don't use for the most part, don't want to use, and have no reason to use other than shits and giggles. If you are Blizzard you need content that is going to be used, and you can justify the time on, especially something that is going to burn up as many resources as player housing is.

The games I have seen it be worth while, that most of the play base makes use of it, is in sandbox games, where they usually add things that props housing up. SWG it was a place to sell goods, as you could originally only list goods up to a certain price. It was also what is essentially our banks and void banks, and with enough of them in one location, you could use them to set up player cities. You had entire professions based around supplying these houses as well as modifying them.

Odds are Blizzard isn't going to want to spend the kind of time it would take to make an actual robust housing system. They could do it and make it a cool and interesting part of the game, but this far in its life cycle I just don't think its something they will or want to spend the development time and art time on doing. Whether you like it or not, I think Garrisons were their stab at it, and once they got into it the found out just how resource intensive it was going to be to get it up and rolling. I think they had planned to originally make our Garrisons much more customizable, and much broader in scope, but it was just chewing up too much time for little added benefit from a content perspective. My guess is the notion of having it went out the window with WoD.

[Flurryfang]

We don't need more optional content, we need more ACTUAL content.

In case you haven't been paying attention they're shoving tons of useless optional content out the door nobody will do, housing won't change a thing, hardly anyone will bother after the first week, and it's just time/resources wasted that could go towards their god awful balancing.

The more optional content there is, the higher the chance is for something of it to be actual content for you. I have a guildie, who mainly play because she likes the pet battle system and that is her primary thing she uses her time on. If they made housing ingame, there would proberly be a part of the playerbase, who would be happy with using alot of their time on that system, and therefore making it actual content for you.

It is also hard to define what actual content is. If you are not raiding within WoW, then you would proberly not call additional raids as actual content. It all depends on what you enjoy playing. If enough energy was put into player housing, some people would proberly play it as a main thing. Some people in Wildstar for example, play the game only to play around with the housing system. You actual create a completly new playerbase, which only do quests, dungeons and raids, just to get more components to put in their housing area

[Eazy]

What's the point of player housing?