My Blizzcon "next expansion" demands list, part 3: There's no place like it!

[Omedon]

Again, copy-pasted from the ol' blog, and here are the MMOC links to parts 1 and 2:

www.mmo-champion.com/threads/926813-My-Blizzcon-quot-next-expansion-quot-demands-list-Part-one-An-active-world

www.mmo-champion.com/threads/927261-My-Blizzcon-quot-next-expansion-quot-demands-list-part-2-Looking-the-part

And here's the conclusion:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-logs-on-alone

Same rules apply, it's not a microblog, so TL;DR types be warned, and feel free to pass. I really appreciate all the discussions we've had so far, so let's keep it civil, so without any further delay...


The series rolls on! The extended "list" of things Blizzard could announce at Blizzcon, as part of their next expansion, to keep the uninterrupted interest of players like yours truly (as well as many who agree with me) continues with today's feature feature:

Player/guild housing.

Oh yes, this dead horse. See, for the longest time, I got it, I understood why WoW saw it as wasted development initiative/effort, because WoW is an inherently competitive game, and no one who you don't invite along sees your house, so there's no bragging rights attached to it.

Then I played LOTRO. And now this is on the list.

LOTRO's neighborhoods are cleverly set up to stoke the "competitive" fires that Blizzard loves so much (honestly, the best feature of LOTRO is that these fires are pretty much dead, and in their place exists a noticeably more mature community, in my experience, cool with the idea that dickswinging is moot because everyone can, for the most part, "buy a bigger dick"... but that's another entry for another day) by having them placed in instanced neighborhoods. If other games are doing it this way, awesome, this was my first exposure to player housing that wasn't "the same portal everyone else uses". Art almost imitates life as people show off their trophy-laden front yards. While "collector's bragging rights" are downplayed somewhat (but not completely) in a freemium game, arrangements artful and conceptual can say a lot about about a character. My character, for example, has almost nothing inside or outside her home that doesn't scream *E*L*F*, because, as a lifetime Tolkien fan, this has always been my love affair with fantasy: the fair folk. Other folks have taxidermy trophies all over the place, or the iconic hobbit garden, it's a completely seperate and amazing statement of character, and I have indeed taken the time to write my "neighbors" and compliment them. It's a very pleasant and immersive dynamic of the game, and I think WoW could and should benefit from it!

Blizzard's other oft-expressed aversion to player housing is the idea that, should they implement it, cities will become ghost towns, and people won't interact with each other as much any more. I'm going to touch on this, and meander a bit, because it's a respectable stance... but I can still answer it.

Have you talked to the WoW "community" lately, Blizzard?

Part and parcel with the inherently competitive nature of WoW, are the ideas of sore losers, and worse, sore winners. Yes, you have a game that is designed not only for us to find each other and group up (which is nice... when it's positive) but you've also, because of the competitive nature of the game, forced our successes into each other's faces. "Duelling mounts" is a fun game to watch:

Player A summons annoying reputation grind mount
Player B summons rare seasonal mount
Player C summons super rare hard mode raid drop mount
Player D summons the time lost proto drake
...then I walk up and summon my bronze drake from H-COS with a smug, ironic "eat it, bitches" aura.

My point is, Blizzard wants these interactions, it's part of their design. They also want their "social game", because "facebook is onto something here, ka-ching!", but the player housing line is more about which kind of sociability you're encouraging than a binary "will we have it or not?".

While we're mentioning it, Let's use facebook as a parallel for a moment.

I see the "we don't want to do housing because people won't see/talk to each other in cities anymore" as facebook in the hands of the younger "he who has the most friends wins" generation, ala Cartman in South Park's "you have 0 friends" episode. The argument *for* housing, however, can be more compared to Jimmy Kimmel's "national unfriending day" initiative (which I partook in liberally) which, comedically, stresses quality over quantity: you find friends in more solid friend-finding ways, and *then* invite them into an enriched, maintained friendship as a way of mutually bolstering each other's expressed worth to a tangible degree, friendship means something in this particular example. To bring this back on topic, in LOTRO, I love my house, I have friends over, and we have a great time uninterrupted by those not involved in the moment, the friendships I have (my guild/kinship is entirely RL friends, and we don't invite anyone not matching that description) mean something, and every now and then we'll meet someone new out and about in town. Maybe we'll exchange in-character letters, maybe it will lead to a house invite, and maybe it won't. The point is, I'm not pressured to let people into that circle. WoW is more about that pressure, to a degree, WoW is about more "friends"=more fun, and so I, once again, may be asking for something that isn't WoW here, but allow me to line up a few points here:

If you read part one of this series, you know that I want "world PVE" in a randomized, persistant "gotta be there to see it" sense. As far fetched and "not WoW" as this idea may be, it's the perfect co-feature to player housing. The answer to getting people out into the world when they have a cozy house as an alternative, is to make the world interesting. Couple this with part 2's personal customization and a LOTRO-like neighborhood lawn display and maybe, just maybe, folks will meet up for reasons not tied to progression or killing. When progression or killing can be done in any combo we choose ("bring the player, not the class"), is it really so important that we're out there befriending "more paladins" for the sake of progression? I'd say it's ok to let us befriend more cool folks because they're cool, and we can still do that without being forced into each other's faces. There are still forums, automated guild finding systems, and such. I think WoW can survive us being able to retreat to our own personal space.

Don't make me get out the bronze drake!

Thank you for reading

[Deleted]

throw some pictures inbetween, not many people get arsed to read all that :P

[Arrowstormen]

Guild Club House/Guild Gunship is an idea I like to think about myself, but how they are going to implement it, and how it's going to work, I have no idea.

[Scottishpaladin]

It would take a new class and/or blizzard to put the paladin back to what it was like in wrath with holy power taken out of the game for me to go back to WoW...

[rayvio]

guild housing is a nice idea but Ironforge, Darnassus, Exodar, Thunderbluff, Silvermoon, Undercity, Dalaran and Shatt are all dead cities already, guild housing could potentially kill Stormwind and Orgrammar as well. so first they need to breathe more life into the neglected cities and then implement guild housing

[zox]

I don't really get what people/guild housing would really add to a game like WoW. The only time I sit around in a city is when I try to build a pug. I'd love to see some random phased world events though, that have real impact on the world.

[Omedon]

guild housing is a nice idea but Ironforge, Darnassus, Exodar, Thunderbluff, Silvermoon, Undercity, Dalaran and Shatt are all dead cities already, guild housing could potentially kill Stormwind and Orgrammar as well. so first they need to breathe more life into the neglected cities and then implement guild housing

I touched on it above, but I really find the "dead cities" argument somewhat dubious. I'd like the cities to become more "you *want* to be there" as well, but putting housing doesn't threaten that at all. All keeping housing out does is make it so you *have* to be there (in the city), and how pleasant is interacting with people that *have* to be there? I'd like the cities to become centres of commerce, and for whatever sociability is happening for the sake of it. If housing is in, people that don't want to be in cities don't have to go, and people that do want to be in the city don't have to be exposed to people that aren't there for any real tangible purpose. Everyone wins.

If implementing player housing makes cities quieter... than cities should be quieter, because no one who has no reason or desire to be there is there, how is that bad?

Unless you're coming from the perspective of "people see dead city, and move on to next game"... is it really in Blizzard's best interest to cater to those sheeple?

Give access to chat channels like trade and LFG from "home", now what's the harm? I can't see someone's purples to worship them? Come on.

Keep trainers and AH's in cities, implement features to make the cities and the outside world attractive (see part 1), and people that want to be in the city will be in the city... do we really want to populate cities "just so they're populated"?

Incedentally, part 4, and the conclusion to this series, is up now at http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-logs-on-alone

Thank you for reading!

[rayvio]

oh I definitely agree that we should want to be in them rather than the current situation where we have to be in Stormwind or Orgrimmar, but if we have no reason to want or need to be in cities and guild housing is added think how empty the cities will feel to new players, making it feel more like a big empty world
ideally all the cities should have reasons for us to want to visit and sometimes hang around in them

[Omedon]

oh I definitely agree that we should want to be in them rather than the current situation where we have to be in Stormwind or Orgrimmar,

As a side tangent, I've actually tried as a RP'er on a RP server, to frequent the *other* cities, because I know that the people that are there are sacrificing function for fashion, and are often cool people. That's my vision for cities in a world with housing, right there.