It's honestly baffling to me that Blizz still refuses to implement Housing

[Claymore]

Like... I get that not everyone is going to be into Housing. But then, not everyone is into Raiding, or PvP. Housing has proven a pretty strong pillar of any MMORPG that still exists, so I have to wonder; why are they so hellbent on avoiding it?

[Weeps]

If it can be instanced like wod garrisons, I can see blizzard being ok with it but not a priority

[Justpassing]

Beacuse garrisons were a 1/8 assed version of implementing the housing, it crashed and burned. After that the whole idea is poisoned.

[Voidism]

They seem to want only stuff for the specific expansion... like garrisons, order halls etc. They don't want a "expansionless" system that you keep working on, for some reason.

[Steelcryo]

I've wondered this. A player house would be loads of fun for a lot of people. Personally it'd just be something I'd do whenever I got bored of everything else, but I'd still enjoy it. It could be a great way to show off achievements and add extra reasons to revisit old content to get items and rewards for your house.

One thing that always bugs me is how disconnected expansions can feel. Each expansions sends you to a new zone and very rarely connect back to Azeroth other than occasionally "go talk to this npc in Org or SW". Housing would give something that connects all expansions, seeing everything you've done on your adventures in one place, that'd be awesome.

There's so many other good reasons for housing, it bugs me that Blizzard haven't done it. Although after the shit show that was Garrisons, I'd be very wary of them getting it right.

[Hellobolis]

send an email to the finance department with examples of microtransactions involving housing.

[This One Time At Bandcamp]

If housing will be made similar to Garrisons in WoD - Then I'm simply not that interested.

The only "fun" mechanic in housing, that I can think of, would be to visit Method or other top guilds houses, to see their trophies..
I dont feel the need for a secluded space for my guild, that no one else can find..

People would get bored in there anyways, because most PvE guilds spend their time in dungeons/raids, and not standing around.

[Lord Pebbleton]

Blizzard has proven to have become unable to handle cosmetic content properly.

Take a look at archaeology, pet battles and island expeditions. All three are freaking terrible side content. Archaeology is just "dig until you scream bloody murder and you get a title". I suppose island expeditions are better now but when I was into it you had to perform dark rituals to have a 5% chance of something happening.
Pet battles started strong but have devolved into "beat every trainer with no pets on your team with an unreliable internet connection while a guy pokes you with a pointy stick".

At this point, housing not happening is a good thing tbf. I can already envision exciting achievements like "visit 3000 different players houses", "spend a cumulative time of 1 year in your house" and "spend 10,000,000 gold to get all house upgrades".

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

I haven't played other MMOs, but I see no purpose to housing at all.
Unless they are going to change the game into minecraft where you can build anywhere you want and use resources from anywhere in the world to do so, its only going to make the game worse.
Otherwise, it would just be another predetermined place where everyone hangs out, or at worst, a fully instanced object taking more and more people out of the open world.

I really am inexperienced with the topic, but from what I have seen discussed the ONLY way I would be excited about it was if you could build literally wherever you want, allowing you to set your hearth in crazy locations.

Other than that, what gameplay does it actually add?
It seems like an RP thing, or a garrison.

I just don't understand what either bring to a game this size.

[Nzx]

Housing has proven a pretty strong pillar of any MMORPG that still exists,

Except for the most popular and long-lasting one. Perhaps the better thing to be "baffled" about is why other MMOs seem hellbent on including a feature that doesn't work, in that case.

[Hellobolis]

Except for the most popular and long-lasting one. Perhaps the better thing to be "baffled" about is why other MMOs seem hellbent on including a feature that doesn't work, in that case.

it's a fine cosmetic feature if you design your game with it in mind from the start. but implementing it purely as a cosmetic/show off feature in a 15 year old game would be a gargantuan task with no real payoff.

the cosmetic version could be worth it if you could sell microtransactions for fancy stuff, but then you need to think off a way to get people to visit strangers houses to make that appealing.

and designing a housing system with real gameplay elements seems like it'll never work beyond something on the level of pet battles.

so yeah the incentive just isn't there to do it from blizz perspective.

[Nevcairiel]

They don't want a "expansionless" system that you keep working on, for some reason.

The reason is simple: Such a system would haunt them until the end of time if it goes bad. At least expansion-centric systems eventually just end.

And as much as every pro-Housing player is going to say "Garrisons were not Housing", it still showed one of the primary bad side-effects of such a system - you depopulate the world, as many people will idle in their house, instead of a city.

There is only two possible options for how one could implement housing:

(1) Make it meaningless fluff, so that you have nothing but cosmetics in your house, so it doesn't take away any reasons from being in a city, but also doesn't really offer you any reason to be in your house all that often.
(2) Have the house offer certain commodities and services, taking away from the importance of cities and other hubs, but make the house feel more useful.

Either one of those options would really not be very good. (1) would be boring for anyone but the wannabe interior designers, and (2) would result in the "empty cities" problem, not only for one expansion, but for ever.

As such, there is little course where they can truely win. Such a concept would cost serious effort in artwork, and to justify that they need to get a lot of people hyped for that - and a (1) option might just not cut that. And (2) is dangerous.

[Nnyco]

Prolly because its a waste of resources that could be used somewhere else.

[JoshuaNLG]

Blizzard has proven to have become unable to handle cosmetic content properly.

That's why you make one piece of content that you then evolve and refine over time.

[TheRevenantHero]

I think the biggest reason is because there's a loud enough number of people in the player base that say it's worthless content. I see a lot of people call housing stupid and not content because it doesn't gear out your character. Or they say that it's just for roleplayers, which is 100% not true at all.

Housing has been the best part of every MMO that had it. Yet Blizzard refuses to include it. I really don't understand it at all. They steal so many other ideas from other MMOs but claim they don't know how to properly make housing.

[JoshuaNLG]

Prolly because its a waste of resources that could be used somewhere else.

You mean like Islands? Warfronts? Garrisons?

[Dejiko]

Given their efforts with "player housing" in the past,
with the MoP farm and Garrisons i`d rather they didn`t.

Though it has promise, could be fun if it came with a secondary profession like Carpentry,
where you could gather your own materials, get decor and add themes to furniture and carpets,
put up wallpaper or trophies so on so forth.

I just don`t think blizzard would implement housing in a meaningful and fun way.

[Super Kami Dende]

Considering the amount of stuff People complain about as being not Content, It really doesn't surprise me.

[callipygoustp]

Given how crazy many many people are over something as simple as transmog, I don't get it either. People would go nuts over well implemented housing.

[Narzok]

should it be per-person or for guilds?
personal would be only for yourself being in the house, and unless it provides something to do (see next point) you would just be sitting there not playing.
encouraging players to do nothing is a risky thing.(not talking about people claiming "you can just AFK this!", but dev-intended idle time.)

what should be the reason to have it? functionality? just for looks?
looks would work out, but functionality would undermine the original source of that function (see garrison with profession mats, AH and whatnot)

where do you get the items like furniture and decoration from?
would need a profession-combo like carpenter and lumberjack (could work, warfronts already have collectable trees)
should it drop from bosses? if yes, only guild-house stuff should. stuff for personal cosmetics should not be locked behind organized group content.
you could put it on LFR-bosses, but that would suck with the bosses people often leave on.

how to access?
it either need to be a portal with no corresponding building to take up space, or they would need to build a "city" for the houses.
the first one would be the less interesting, but easier way, since having a physical place for a lot of people to stay at the same time would require sharding and similar tech, breaking the immersion of a neiborhood or city.

is it possible? yes.
is it wanted? most likely by just as many people as mythic raids or pet battles, maybe more.
will it cost huge amounts of dev time? yes.

so depending on what gets cut for it to happen, it could be good or bad.

legion added m+
BfA added islands and warfronts

housing instead of m+? hell no.
housing instead of islands and/or warfronts? why not? i always have the option not to use it.