Player Housing and the New Cities

[noo]

I haven't been keeping up with this, does Blizzard have any plans to create player housing? I know they were working (lol) on new faction cities.

Mod-note: Locked the thread, please post within the many current threads about these same subjects.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

1. The new player housing are garrisons, which are WC3 esque customizeable forts you own. Basically; personal, over-glorified questing hubs.

2. The new faction cities are no longer "capitals" in that they will have transmog and portals, which is great news for us RPers, because now we can have Bladespire and Karabor all to ourselves for role-play (basically, they are the new Halfhill).

The new capitals are basically shrines 2.0 on Ashran.

[Azahel]

Hell no, if people want player housing, they xan play the sims.
Wow is about adventuring, questing, wars, saving the world... no time for choosing what wallpaper matchest those curtains that go fabulously with this forniture. Maybe if you are a blood elf

[nyc81991]

Hell no, if people want player housing, they xan play the sims.
Wow is about adventuring, questing, wars, saving the world... no time for choosing what wallpaper matchest those curtains that go fabulously with this forniture. Maybe if you are a blood elf

WoW is an MMO-RPG. Player housing is a pretty big thing in MMO-RPG's.

[shoc]

WoW is an MMO-RPG. Player housing is a pretty big thing in MMO-RPG's.

I would rather us get a personal town with other uses instead of a personal house in an instance somewhere and I get to reorganize my furniture so that my raider friends can come in and say "wow nice furniture". Maybe I could get my hands on a Mythic Ottoman? What I'm saying is that player housing doesn't really offer much other than to scratch our creative itch and what could be accomplished within the limitations of the WoW engine simply would not be enough. It would have to offer total control like WildStar or EQ Next and that just isn't possible for WoW.

[Hyve]

Yes; Garrisons.

It's better then Player Housing, it's far more fitting for World of Warcraft and actually of what I've seen on the Beta it looks really awesome.

[Vaelorian]

Can we lock this thread already. Player housing has been discussed to death since Vanilla. And finally when the "pro player housing" players got their housing in the form of garrisons (imo the only way that actually fits WoW), yet another topic about it is made.

But since I cannot just write the above and post my post, I'll take part in the discussion a bit:

Player housing as per usual in other games, does not fit WoW. Why does it not fit WoW?
In other games your house is usually visually available to other players right? You don't have instanced or phased houses right? So with 10.000 on a healthy server, where would your house be standing? Or if it is instanced: Would you love that 5000 (alliance/horde) would all be around the same instance entrance, waiting to go in. "Additional instances cannot be launched, ring a bell?"
Phased could work, and afaik they are doing just that with the garrisons.

What are you going to do in your house? Are you going to be there waiting for the queue to pop just like you did in your designated capital, but alone?
What is the actual benefit from regular player housing? Your own laboratory (alchemy)? Your own anvil (blacksmith)? Your own kitchen (cooking)? Why would you want all that when everything is there within arms reach in the capital? The game is designed for your convenience already. Exactly so that housing is not needed. Still you want "that little spot of your own". How childish. To me Stormwind feels like my home already. A house of my own won't add anything.

I am not sure Garrisons are such a good idea either. It's just another solo event. And I think we have enough solo stuff already ingame. Then we have the players who say: But but I love the extra things garrisons add!!! Right... they cannot move those special perks to some other place in the game. You did not even know beforehand that Blizzard would implement Garrisons in that way nor did you know what kinds of buffs you would receive.

Why on earth does one receive buffs? Why can't the creating of your personal garrison be something that you do because you like it? As it is now, it is sort of a thing that is mandatory. Sure not mandatory perse, but if you want to be the most efficient, you will get your garrison equipped to the max.

But oh well... I'll toy around with it, see if it is fun.

PS: how did you guys like Skyrim's player housing? I found it rather: oh nice... "wanders around" ok done... - never to return.

[BenBos]

I agree that Garrisons fit the warcraft Lore better than simple houses.

Overall WoD fits better. MoP was over reaching it a bit and apparently the Chinese never liked that part themselves.

I don't think it has much impact on player numbers as such though.

But garrisons are a nice WoW addition, more so than farms which can be a future part of it.

----------

@above: you can invite your group or friends into your Garrisons if you wish so.

Think RP and have a wedding. I assisted in several weddings over time and while it was fun, people around were disturbing the ceremony etc ...

In the future Blizzard has all the tools to blur the difference between an instance or open world already. Go to WoWinsider and read about their blend between the open pvp world and a seamessly loaded instance across servers for all players participating in it.

Soon players won't even notice anymore if they are in an instance or the open world as everything can be done seamlessly - across servers - without a loading screen in sight.

[darkwarrior42]

No, there will be no form of player housing whatsoever.

There will, however, be a completely and totally unrelated feature called garrisons that Blizzard erroneously compared to housing that will serve as WoD's version of the farm, and will be in no meaningful way customizable (and with regards to aesthetics and style, it will simply not be customizeable).

[Deleted]

WoW is an MMO-RPG. Player housing is a pretty big thing in MMO-RPG's.

And they also advertised garrisons as player housing. Don't know why some people act as if it has no place in WoW.

[darkwarrior42]

And they also advertised garrisons as player housing. Don't know why some people act as if it has no place in WoW.

I think because player housing is about personal customization, aesthetics, role-playing, and making you feel as if your character has a place in the world apart from the main storyline and combat.... none of these things are aspects that either Blizzard or the WoW community as a whole seem to care about at all. Even with the quests and storyline, the players aren't made to feel particularly important; MoP did a decent enough job trying to rectify that, but in the end nothing we did mattered at all. We fought through SoO, we defeated Garrosh's armies, we brought his ass down, and in the end it was Taren fucking Zhu who got to decide what happens to him. He wasn't present for a single fight in SoO, we found his mangled body once in the instance before Lorewalker Cho walked off with him, and yet he got to decide the penultimate fate of our true target, completely invalidating pretty much everything we did in the raid.

So for player housing to have a place in WoW imo, the game and the community would have care about the characters as characters, not as bundles of class abilities. Plenty of people care about gameplay, the characters as they relate to gameplay, and mechanics. Plenty of people care about the lore. The two only make occasional passing nods at each other, however, and player housing winds up in a place that is halfway between the two, a place that doesn't exist within WoW.

Which is why instead of housing, we get garrisons: no meaningful customization, no choice of visual style or aesthetics, a storyline tied to the main storyline in a fashion that doesn't vary no matter what your class, race, or feelings are... but plenty of mechanical benefits. It's the perfect style for WoW.

[BenBos]

No, there will be no form of player housing whatsoever.

There will, however, be a completely and totally unrelated feature called garrisons that Blizzard erroneously compared to housing that will serve as WoD's version of the farm, and will be in no meaningful way customizable (and with regards to aesthetics and style, it will simply not be customizeable).

I think you underestimate the technology used by Blizzard in future years.

The competition stands nowhere vs the combo of :

- seamless (real time) cross server play in the open world without a loading screen in sight.
- integration of phased instances across servers with no loading screens into the open world (WOD first in their new PvP zone).

In other words it is only a matter of time before you will see the end results of this technology.

It is the same with people complaing about CRZ and how they disturbed their mining ... while Blizzard was really putting in the foundation of full cross realm play with Guilds and economy.

It is always the same: complaining because of lack of insight in the tools being introduced.

With the above technology they go step by step (as always) and IF a feature does NOT fall into the Blizzard philosophy of game play FIRST it probably will not be introduced.

What is the direct game play value of introducing Houses for a WOW player ? 2/10

What is the direct game play value of introducing Pet Battles ? 8/10

What is the direct game play value of putting in Warcraft Garrisons that can be build up with goals to achieve ? 8/10

But make no mistake with this technology Blizzard can put in personal items on the fly, but is the time investment WORTH it vs game play value overall ?

If the feature doesn't add some REAL game play objectives, it will be cut and not introduced.

Game play first. That principle primes everything in Blizzard games. From graphics to realism to fluff. Sometimes they do things for fluff ... and it is forgotten within 2 days (hair dresser).

[darkwarrior42]

I think you underestimate the technology used by Blizzard in future years.

The competition stands nowhere vs the combo of :

- seamless (real time) cross server play in open world.
- integration of phased instances across servers with no loading screens into the open world.

In other words it is only a matter of time before you will see the end results of this technology.

It is the same with people complaing about CRZ and how they disturbed their mining ... while Blizzard was really putting in the foundation of full cross realm play with Guilds and economy.

It is always the same: complaining because of lack of insight in the tools being introduced.

First off, I read your post before looking at your name, and thought "wow, someone talking about great tech without any regard for how it's used, that sounds a lot like some guy I used to read....", then I look at your name and go "oh yeah, that's his name."

I've had this argument with you before. The greatest tech in the world is utterly useless if it's not used properly (and it's amusing that you bring up CRZ, because to this day I loathe CRZ.... or is it supposed to be fun to take 3 times as long to get anything done while leveling because the zones are flooding with people I don't know that have no interest in grouping since there's no reason for them to do so?)


And in any event, how does that relate to this subject at all? Garrisons are not player housing. They have no aesthetic customization whatsoever. They will not be permanent fixtures for our characters any more than MoP's farm was; once we move on past WoD, the garrison will be lost and have little (if any) future significance. I have no doubt that there will be decent mechanical benefits to the garrison, but that doesn't make them housing.

This has nothing to do with their technology, and everything to do with how it's being used. This technology could have been used to create player housing, and instead they chose to create garrisons. That the technology may be of high quality and potentially versatile does not change that fact.

Everything you write about is technically impressive; I'll grant that without reservations, because it doesn't change or relate to my point at all. No matter how high tech they are, garrisons are not housing. They're garrisons. Garrisons may well be better for this game (and I touched on reasons I suspect that is the case in my previous post), but that has nothing to do with how technically sound garrisons are, and everything to do with what the players can choose to do with them.

[Geckoo]

Player housing as per usual in other games, does not fit WoW. Why does it not fit WoW?
In other games your house is usually visually available to other players right? You don't have instanced or phased houses right? So with 10.000 on a healthy server, where would your house be standing? Or if it is instanced: Would you love that 5000 (alliance/horde) would all be around the same instance entrance, waiting to go in. "Additional instances cannot be launched, ring a bell?"
Phased could work, and afaik they are doing just that with the garrisons.

What are you going to do in your house? Are you going to be there waiting for the queue to pop just like you did in your designated capital, but alone?
What is the actual benefit from regular player housing? Your own laboratory (alchemy)? Your own anvil (blacksmith)? Your own kitchen (cooking)? Why would you want all that when everything is there within arms reach in the capital? The game is designed for your convenience already. Exactly so that housing is not needed. Still you want "that little spot of your own". How childish. To me Stormwind feels like my home already. A house of my own won't add anything.

Some games handle them with several instances of a neighbourhood with a fair amount of houses with different shapes and sizes (final fantasy, lotro), this options works great for RP reasons. Others handle them directly as a personal instance (WS, Rift), but you can always invite someone to join and even work together decorating the place. In any way, that 'problem' doesn't exist at all and wouldn't exist either in wow if someday they made housing the same way, with the + they they have a pretty nice phasing technology that would be great for this (just as it is for garrisons).

What are you doing in your house? well... whatever you want! it could add a lot of potential gameplay to the game, have you ever done an old raid just to get the tier set you like? add some special items drop from those same bosses to place around in your house and you'll have just another reason to keep playing. This also allows to give just something else to craft for each profession, even the possibility to add new ones. Also works as very wide money sink if done correctly and can also have added functionality so is not only about decorating and placing random stuff around. Some people would love to have their personal museum of themselves, with several mannequins showing their most badass armors and legendary weapons in the walls, others would enjoy creating a cozy little place and other would simply ignore it.

People will keep going to idle to the capital just to queue or whatever they like to do, having a house in a videogame just means that you have the option to enjoy that extra gameplay if you want to.

Housing is one of the most potential features a game like wow could have, and the game can only get better by adding more options, you don't have to like them, you don't have to use them, but is always nice to have them.

[darkwarrior42]

With the above technology they go step by step (as always) and IF a feature does NOT fall into the Blizzard philosophy of game play FIRST it probably will not be introduced.

See, this sort of statement right here is what confuses me. I agree completely that if something doesn't add to gameplay, Blizzard won't add it; that's why WoW has so little customization compared to most MMOs. Blizzard doesn't care about customization for the most part, and gives us just enough to keep people from complaining too much (see: transmog, but no armor dyes, decals, optional accessories or visual items, etc.)

But that's a result of their philosophy of game design, not their tech. If they wanted to do something badly enough, they'd make it work; they've done it in the past. The reason we don't have player housing isn't because there's impressive tech elsewhere, it's because Blizzard doesn't want it, and a large majority of the player base agrees. It's really just that simple.

[BenBos]

See, this sort of statement right here is what confuses me. I agree completely that if something doesn't add to gameplay, Blizzard won't add it; that's why WoW has so little customization compared to most MMOs. Blizzard doesn't care about customization for the most part, and gives us just enough to keep people from complaining too much (see: transmog, but no armor dyes, decals, optional accessories or visual items, etc.)

But that's a result of their philosophy of game design, not their tech. If they wanted to do something badly enough, they'd make it work; they've done it in the past. The reason we don't have player housing isn't because there's impressive tech elsewhere, it's because Blizzard doesn't want it, and a large majority of the player base agrees. It's really just that simple.

I think we agree on all of it. They have an awesome technology (read for example the new open world PvP zone in WOD on WOW insider and how they now can put instances seamlessly into open world zones).

But their philosophy is quite clear: if it doesn't fit the overal game play value THEY decide, they won't put it in.

I just explained why - in their view - Garrisons add lots of extra game play (you build up your houses and settlement with extreme achievements to go for) and they think it is more worthwhile than dressing houses with personal items.

Of course they could introduce later on those personal items, but they first try to introduce the mechanics with long term game play fun.

The important thing to know is that their technology permits it, but what do Blizzard players want ? They address a different public than ES (the solo adventure).

That's why mounting a horse in WOW takes a "fluff" cloud and is not actually "mounting a horse".

They decide what is game play first. You follow or not.

If you want huge "realism" and house decorating with fluff items, you have other games for that.

But let me tell you: most games fail because they put these things in while ... the REAL game plays like "shit".

You play WOW for the achievements and gear and titles and not what, just like any other Blizzard game.

A house filled with some personal items is great, but does it add to actual game play to KEEP you playing ? I don't think so (but that's personal). Sure it would be GREAT to see a plate with "Justicar" above my bed ... But Blizzard wants you to go for the title first...and show it to the world ... above you head ... instead of over your bed.

[XangXu]

Wildstar playing housing broke me of appreciating any other kind of player housing, honestly.


I was really looking forward to Garrisons until I played Wildstar, now i'm just annoyed that they are being forced on us.

[Ciddy]

I think Garrisons are supposed to be the player housing in WoW. I haven't read much about them yet myself. I think it's a cool idea, but it's nowhere near high on the list of features that will make or break my decision to buy WoD.

My only complaint is that I wish you could choose between different racial architectures instead of being stuck with Human for Alliance and Orc for Horde.

[Azahel]

I think because player housing is about personal customization, aesthetics, role-playing, and making you feel as if your character has a place in the world apart from the main storyline and combat.... none of these things are aspects that either Blizzard or the WoW community as a whole seem to care about at all. Even with the quests and storyline, the players aren't made to feel particularly important; MoP did a decent enough job trying to rectify that, but in the end nothing we did mattered at all. We fought through SoO, we defeated Garrosh's armies, we brought his ass down, and in the end it was Taren fucking Zhu who got to decide what happens to him. He wasn't present for a single fight in SoO, we found his mangled body once in the instance before Lorewalker Cho walked off with him, and yet he got to decide the penultimate fate of our true target, completely invalidating pretty much everything we did in the raid.

So for player housing to have a place in WoW imo, the game and the community would have care about the characters as characters, not as bundles of class abilities. Plenty of people care about gameplay, the characters as they relate to gameplay, and mechanics. Plenty of people care about the lore. The two only make occasional passing nods at each other, however, and player housing winds up in a place that is halfway between the two, a place that doesn't exist within WoW.

Which is why instead of housing, we get garrisons: no meaningful customization, no choice of visual style or aesthetics, a storyline tied to the main storyline in a fashion that doesn't vary no matter what your class, race, or feelings are... but plenty of mechanical benefits. It's the perfect style for WoW.

I am a roleplayer and I think that Garrisons fit wow much better than player housing. Better yet, I think that garrisons as they are now fit wow much better than with all the race shit people are asking for.
Why is that? In WOD you are treated as a commander, responsible for an invading force that is trying to take down a threat to the world. You are not invading draenor for tea and biscuits, you are invading it to take the enemy down. As a Night Elf you are not there to feel at home, or feel pretty. And especially not to buy furniture. The garrison has an objective and you are the leader there, not the owner of a real state with a panoramic view of an alien world. It's a military base, not a beachfront resort.

OFC, when it comes to RP there are two different kinds of people, the ones who play a role (That's why it's called roleplay) and the ones who try to force something into a character in a situation. I'm the first, I like to play as my character in a world and within a setting rather than imagining myself in a different situation/world.
Sure you can play the angst character who hates the world and wants to join the legion or only thinks about yourself, but when you do that you can expect to find yourself against the story and game proposal very often.

[TheTaurenOrc]

On going discussion on the WoD forum: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Player-Housing

Apparently even though this was touted as "Wows version of housing" its become far from it, and if you thought it was ur an idiot

Anyhow I am not an advocate for player housing infact I dont like it at all. I am just tired of the massive bait and switch that Blizzcon 2013 has become. Garrisons have sucked up so much development time, it doesn't meet half the player bases expectations and its a feature thats just going to get dumped and left to rot when the next expansion roll around. A complete and utter lemon.