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

[darklogrus]

Problem with housing is Blizzards servers could never handle it. Just look at what happened with Garrisons, broken every week and dropping people Fps by 1/2 for no reason.

[Mijati]

housing like in WOD is, was,is, and will be an epic fail after all ....
this garrison crapp was bullshit ...it FORCED players to do content and care about stuff they didnt want to ....
take the garrision missions at all for the content of wow as example ....
the whole storry was about the garrision .....and ended up in players logging in to start there missions, and than logout again ...
u was forced to care for the shipyard if u wantet to have acces to a "end content " zone and the legendary ring ....
this is stuff what cant be at all....
the only posivit stuff about this garrison stuff was the fact that u had your owen mine, garden,and fishing place arround u ...
even more or less positiv was the fact that u got tons of npcs arround u ....
negativ in the npc case was the fact that u had just 5 of them who could acompany u in the whole WOD area.
if i have a housing like this.. i wanna earn adena with it via tavern, cause npcs come through spend the night there and leave.. i wanna choose my companion by myself out of all the others stere ....
i dont want to care a bout a additional crapp like shippyard...
i want the companions do a job, so that i dont need to care for this anymore, or less ....like farming flowers or mining.....
that everyone was able to do/use all the diffent job types in wow in there garrision was a fail at all and crashed the jobs ...
but as example .. if iam enchanter, and can send out my companions in the garrision to farm old gear for me what i can disenchant , or farm enchanting mats would be ok,as long as the garrision is bind to the profession i have as a charakter .... AND what woukd be the most important part .. it should be account wide
i mean i take one char to build it...and all my other chars are out of the selection for the profession setup in the garrision, and can use the garrision
moreover there is a need of an account wide storage room . and espacaly there is a need for an account wide sharing of materials, currency, and stuff u need to farm.
espacaly the reputation stuff needs to be account wide .....it cant be that a twink needs to farm again for months to get the needed reputation while the main char is /was already farming for it for months ...
wow needs a kind of "recognition" regarding the npcs ....ex: u go to ogrimmar and your main character has a exaltet reputation.. npcs talk to u when u pass them ... the same should be happen for twinks ( just as example )
there is a lot of stuff wow needs . espacally since other mmo`s have it already, and using it since years ....
the garrision we had in WOD is nice and fun as long as its NOT bound to the content, and as long s u arent forced to do it, and care for it ...

[Deleted]

I love all the people saying they wouldn't use it/it's a waste of time. Know what is more popular than raiding? Pet battles. Casual players can and will spend hours and tons of gold on their housing. They could incentivize it further by making decorations/trophies drop from dungeons or raids. The garrison assets could easily be modified for some basic housing and would only require the UI system. Which, admittedly might be difficult for the WoW engine, I'm not a programmer.

But I spent an immense amount of time on my SWTOR house, as do many many players there.

I'm sure casual players would. Doesn't mean Blizzard is looking for opportunities to take the game that way though.

Garrisons *were* their own, unique take on player housing adapted to Warcraft "fantasy".
Just a house in the woods would be sort of silly in a setting where we're at constant war. I don't quite see how it fits the fantasy. We're not supposed to be settling down. We're supposed to travel to other dimensions to slaughter and murder 'bad guys'. If we run out of bad guys, we kill each others. The world in WoW is not a peaceful one. Why should I have a house to decorate?

Also, gameplay-wise, I don't see very many active gameplay components in player housing. It's mostly passive gameplay.

And that was exactly what the gameplay in Garrisons was - and it was not very popular and ruined social interaction completely. The game became lobby + queue system. Order Halls have improved the situation a bit, at least now I can see other people.

It's very easy to understand why Blizzard are dragging their feet.

[darkwarrior42]

Garrisons = player housing, and look how they turned out.

Garrisons were not player housing. At all. To call them such grossly misrepresents and insults player housing while simultaneously not understanding anything at all about what garrisons did.

Well-done player housing wouldn't need to be mandatory for anyone. In fact, I would strongly argue against any mechanical advantage... at the most, access to crafting stations and maybe a bank. I would argue against allowing access to any of the ethereal services (transmog/void storage/etc), as well as the auction house. How much player power do you get from pet battles? Effectively none.

If I were to list the things I considered important in player housing, the only things from garrisons that would count, at all, would be wall coverings/pennants and the jukebox... and the former only barely qualifies, considering how little of your garrison was affected and how few choices you had. If I were to list out things I thought would be a bad idea for player housing, I would probably include at least 50% of what garrisons did... because they were not intended to be player housing, and that's not how they functioned.

Garrisons *were* their own, unique take on player housing adapted to Warcraft "fantasy".
Just a house in the woods would be sort of silly in a setting where we're at constant war. I don't quite see how it fits the fantasy. We're not supposed to be settling down. We're supposed to travel to other dimensions to slaughter and murder 'bad guys'. If we run out of bad guys, we kill each others. The world in WoW is not a peaceful one. Why should I have a house to decorate?

So every single quest in the game is serious? There aren't times where you're running around helping people with silly tidbits just because you can? I'm dubious that the celestial tournament (pet battle tournament) was a vital part of our efforts to bring down Garrosh.

Hell, the fact that the world is so bad is even more reason to have a home. Someplace to go back to, someplace that you have more incentive to defend, or just block out the world for a time. If you're going to bring RP into it, it's not about settling down, it's about having a refuge or private space. Besides, what wizard worth their mana doesn't want a private tower of their own?

Though honestly, I'm almost happier with Blizzard not doing player housing. Considering how they handled the garrison, I suspect I would be severely disappointed.... WoW still has less customization than pretty much every other major MMO, when it comes to your character, and I don't have reason to think any form of actual player housing they provided would be any different.

[Gadzooks]

Why don't you just go claim one of the empty houses out in the world as your "home", wow really doesn't need personal instanced housing. If you want to do this crap go play skyrim with the house add on.

Because you can't customize it.

I get the desire for housing. Back when I was in a raiding guild, I could see how useful a guild hall would be - a place to gather for raids, guild meetings (we'd use houses in the middle of nowhere for that), hang trophies, the same things that were integrated into garrisons, like the statues. It's not an irrational or unreasable desire or request. But for whatever reasons, Blizzard just doesn't think it's a good idea.

I'd like to see them do guild halls, because guilds need all the help they can get, especially with the games being played in Pugged content. Guilds need to be a thing again, and housing would be a huge step towards bringing them back, along with perks and rewards (but maybe make them raid instance buffs, instead, or make them declare themselves a PvP guild, and get PvP specific perks, like banners in-match, that don't effect the outcome)

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You got housing in WOD and you didn't like it. I doubt blizzard are gonna do it again.

They've only tried it when it was tied to a grind, like the farm in MoP, or the garrisons. Remove the crafting aspect, don't have any quest-related things, just a simple room or two to show banners and trophies, maybe archeaology finds, Guild banner, etc. Simple customization choices, and put a small zone in each major city for it, or have a "universal" one. Maybe have access to the guild bank, and such. They've never tried it at that simple level.

Some of the few things I liked about the garrison was being able to store archealogy things there, or storing pets where you could see them. WoW to a certain extent is a collecting game, and it would be nice to display some of your stuff, even if only you can see it.

[Deleted]

Though honestly, I'm almost happier with Blizzard not doing player housing. Considering how they handled the garrison, I suspect I would be severely disappointed.... WoW still has less customization than pretty much every other major MMO, when it comes to your character, and I don't have reason to think any form of actual player housing they provided would be any different.

Exactly. I suspect Garrisons were their honest to god shot at it. It failed. It's really easy to understand why they're "dragging their feet".

Blizzard is very picky about the way WoW looks. They've commented this many times. That's why we don't have armor dyes or other "free customization" options. They want to control the art and the "feel" of the game - they don't want us to decide that.

And I suspect having a 12-15 year old game engine that wasn't built for customization doesn't really help. They've put lot of effort into things like 3D belts. Can you imagine the amount of work a freely customized house would cause? We'd never see another raid tier...

They are focused on gameplay, they tried to have static passive 'no gameplay required' design in WoD. It was a huge flop.
I'd rather have Blizzard play to their strengths and concentrate on the bread & butter content - zones, quests, dungeons and raids - their engine and gameplay is still no1 in that field.

I get why people want their little houses - but I very much doubt we'll ever see them.

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They've only tried it when it was tied to a grind, like the farm in MoP, or the garrisons. Remove the crafting aspect, don't have any quest-related things, just a simple room or two to show banners and trophies, maybe archeaology finds, Guild banner, etc.

The garrison had those display options, didn't it? Guild banners, the achievement statues, trophies and archeology finds. And you could switch guards to other races.
You also had that super buggy christmas decoration.

And I don't quite understand the 'grind' part of your post. If you did the basic content, you got your Garrison. It was just a simple facebook click-and-logout game. What was the grind in it?

[Catacrusis]

The idea of player housing in a game like WoW has never really excited to me (the same goes for games like FFXIV and Aion).

As much of a failure as the game was, at least the housing in games like Archeage felt real since they are were physically in the world. Sadly, that kind of housing also has massive flaws and obstacles. It's a tough system to get right since there will be so many different opinions on what "right" is.

[Kokolums]

Maybe it could work in PvP in some way. Have a battleground where you build a castle and then either defend to attack the other teams castle. But you start over every battleground.

[Chingylol]

Pretty sure guild halls/housing will come eventually. Every Xpac brings 1-2 cool new features, so I'm sure it will come in the next xpac or two.

[wikinews]

I want my pretty little house in the sky

[Deleted]

I'd much rather the development team focused on what players want most. It's about time they finished the dance studio.

[Deleted]

The closest thing to player housing in wow is archeology, for years now archeology has had a place somewhere in the game where you could show off your accomplishments. In Pandaria you could display stuff at lorewalkers, in warlords your garrison had a room for it, and now there is a building in dalaran for it.

Such a room is pretty cool when its full, but it kinda looks weird when its empty/half empty and you can see the emptyu places where "something should go". and i don't think there is a good solution for that. you could go the garrison statues route iguess and do a sort of achievement showcase.

But fully customizable houses constructed from individual walls/parts is never gonna happen in this engine. I'm sure it's possible but that just prohibitive amount of work to make for what would be a feature that would probably be on par in popularity with battle pets at most. (and if it was possible, a lot of people lack the creativity to make something cool and would just download a mod that has blueprints for cool looking stuff)

SO yeah i dunno. it sounds cool but on the other hands it's all very meh since by its nature its difficult to show off. And showing off is what a lot of these cosmetics systems are about. And yes, getting someone to stop regular gameplay to come look at your house is "hard", when compared to things like transmog/titles/mounts that you can show off during regular gameplay.

[Deleted]

LuL player housing


Are we in a Asian mmo?

[Airwaves]

If Wildstar's player housing is an example of player housing done right, then I really don't think Blizzard should bother with it. Sure it had plenty of customization options, but in the end it served little to no purpose and I lost interest in it within a week.

I'd much prefer a guild hall so I can stumble across my fellow guild mates and friends instead of another Garrison 2.0 where you spend your time in your own personal instance.

Wildstar is also a new engine. WoWs is 15 years old at this point. Its alot harder to make something like wildstars housing.

[Viscount Thalvaus]

Making a superior housing system is likely too hard a task for them. The most limiting factor is time and the engine they use. Though, I'm a bit upset at whenever I see someone dismiss something outright or don't see the logic or possibilities.

Done right, housing could revitalize nearly Every system in the game (while being completely optional, as will be noted later). Every profession and secondary profession could have something tied to it -- specific crafts to sell people interested in such. Raiding could have specific furniture drops or the heads of Mythic enemies among other things. Returning to old dungeons could have unique things for decoration as well as practical system updates. Perhaps even putting Hearthstone into the housing and making even more money off of the card game that can be accessed through WoW. Fishing, archaeology, cooking (even creating food graphics that can be placed on a table)... Pvp, pets, rare mounts, new and old world bosses. Specific zone quests or events.

It could really help the economy as well, if done right. More gold sinks, as well as new things to sell for everything that can be done in the game.

It shouldn't be a mandatory thing, while at the same time being there for everyone to profit off of by selling to those who use it. Story-wise, we're just hobos with no real home on Azeroth. Class halls don't really have places to sleep, and they will be gone in the next expansion. This would be great for lore purposes, and all the role playing servers (of which two of the largest servers in the game are), would definitely eat it up, as well.

New professions could even be created around it -- carpentry, tinkering, etc. Again, optional professions for your two slots, but capable of making things relating to it.

Achievements, too. New rewards. New achievements. New implementation of Time Walking dungeons. New reasons to go other than just mounts -- of which we already have 500+ already that we never use. This is definitively a casual experience -- the core playerbase -- but it could also be used to showcase achievements and raiding prowess by having a bloody head hanging from your house, or your wall.

It could even turn into a guild thing. Buy a small village. Or town. Or city. Have your guild mates place houses there. The costs could be enormous. 500,000 for the smallest guild plot. 100,000,000 for a castle. Real goals to go for and to be proud to display, without a power upgrade that the guild levels did to destroy smaller guilds. Maybe personal rooms within the keeps or castles, with a guild system, whereby players can buy rooms in their guild house.

There needs to be more guild content, after all. More social aspects and working together towards it. I still remember the old UO days of player made tournaments, BBQs, treasure hunts, etc. that all stemmed from this system. As well as working together to get a guild house and making it look good for the pride of the guild (in addition to impressing recruits).

Honestly, there is no limit to the use of a entirely new system like this. But the problem is, again, doing it right. And not just saying you're going to have 5-6 unique zones with race specific buildings, but then have one zone that most people don't like, with buildings that don't relate to their characters at all. With little to no features or customization at all. While making it mandatory during the level process and to get to 6.2 content. Absolutely horrid.

[Airwaves]

LuL player housing


Are we in a Asian mmo?

WoW is one of the few western MMOs without housing...

[Deleted]

The only game that have done the housing right was UO. But in that case it's design made houses useful and even then there were issues like lack of space to accommodate every player(making houses instanced would make them pointless). So yeah screw houses in wow, they are neither cool nor needed. Want virtual house just to "customize it"? go play sims

[Deleted]

WoW is one of the few western MMOs without housing...

And it is still the top dog, not calling coincidence but something is fishy

[Low Hanging Fruit]

The deal with housing is I doubt these homes would be just out in the world like in really old school games like UO. So you are likely in an instanced area. Probably some instance portal in Org and Stormwind so that it is viable between all expansions. So what you end up with is a place that people go that separates people from the rest of the people which was the major fail of the garrison. Profession hub, quests, and all that jazz were why it became that but the reason it sucked was it was where everyone sat all the time.

So the solution is to make housing not really have anything like that. So no real use to professions.. no real use to story telling.. no real use in questing.. and so on. So what we are talking about is something with no real use right? Something that also would likely be separated from everyone else in an instanced zone.. and what do we have? Something with no real use that is separated and not viewed by anyone but the player. In the end we are talking about a system that would take tons of resources to create items, zones, buildings, and a whole system that allows people to design and arrange things in the game that end the end has.. wait for it.. no real use.

I think the key to ever having player housing in WoW is to find a way for it to have a use without it become the focal point in the game. This is usually what WoW struggles with the most. When things become useful they tend to over come and take over the game completely. That isn't what anyone really wants. To simply say Blizzard just has to "find balance" is pretty fool hardy at this point because they won't. They are a knee jerking dev team that wants the world to swing wildly back and forth to each new vision they have. It isn't going to change because it would have years ago. This is what makes the game great at times and shit at times also so its one of those things you just got to roll with the punches on I feel.

[Amerissis]

Your title suggests you want Blizzard to hurry up and implement player housing and your whole text is completely the opposite. What is this?