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

[Nnyco]

You mean like Islands? Warfronts? Garrisons?

Still better than what would ultimately be a fancier achivement tab.

[Kithelle]

I don't know...maybe they can't make it work in game? Or not willing to put in the effort to make fully functioning and decoratable housing? Devs make the game they want and they don't care about housing...

Who knows besides them?

[mickybrighteyes]

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.

I think that less a side effect of "housing" in particular and more of a lack of use for the cities as well. I think I can only think of one thing keeping cities useful... trade chat. Other functions you'd seek out in town are now available via mounts, let alone what you could build your garrison for during WoD.

[mickybrighteyes]

I think the reasons why garrisons failed as player housing was due to how big and fixed they were.

I wouldn't say it was their 'scale' or size at all. It was that everything associated with them was horribly gated or very limited in customization. Like you could ignore the typical follower options and use the Inn/Tavern to recruit your own list of followers to try and make your garrison a class or race based establishment... but one new recruit per week. Guard options weren't that varied (unless it was tied to some obscure achievement I missed). Some things you would keep an eye out for were randomly swapped or generated each day.

At times it felt like pointless time gating was the main objective for Garrison related activities... but that was also present in much of WoD. I don't think you can do a single push on the questline even now. Still have to wait for weekly resets to advance plot if you wished to see some events.

[Soon-TM]

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?

Because they seem to honestly believe that Garrisons are a proper version of housing. Furthermore, they appear to avoid "expansionless" systems for some odd reason.

[Lord Pebbleton]

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

That never stopped Blizzard from messing up. In the second part of my post I mentioned pet battles and archaeology. Archaeology was not all that fun to being with but the real slog happened in MoP, the expansion after it got implemented.

Pet Battles now are just annoying checklists.

Both are content that were fun (or at the very least appreciated by some, me included), and instead of being refined, they became a pain

[Garymorilix]

Can someone actually tell me what the fuck you wanna do in your own "house' in WoW?

Log in and walk around for a bit before you go out and do actual shit in the world/instances?
Why is this a better option than simply having a hub city?

[Daedius]

Dance Studio first!

- - - Updated - - -

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

That was because it was a core part of WoD, with many things locked behind it... Housing isn't suppose to be a big part of the game, just a side thing to do... like Pet Battles, comparatively.

Plus the Garrison was all pre-set, nothing really done up by the player.

[Spike`]

it can be easy really

1. just dont make huge, only for a guild player housing
2. dont have any profession on them like garrison, but have other progression system/mini professions like carpenter that you need to be in the world (or buy almost all but no all items for the upgrades)
3. dont have any AH (garrion did, big mistake) to allow the normal flow of players to SW/Oggri for neither of player ou guild housing
4. make the materials of building construction decay with time, you need to farm/cut trees, mine some stuff etc in the world to restore the building with a limit, not total destroy to avoid players returning after months and dont have any house left
5. use islands AI to make attacks on the building when the player is online time to time
6. create a type of system to allow guild vs guild attacks. If a guild has less than X players to attack or defend use AI to fill the spots on the battle. To not allow abuse of system the lesser the players on the battle the guild has the AI difficulty is increased to compensate and make it harder to abuse. Maybe also not allow attack on a guild with less than X (maybe 10 min?) players. The winner takes % of the other guild resources as well a custom BoP that is only acquired this way for some top rank essence/gem/crafting, but for crafting they have to up the gear each time a new patch with raid is made unless its useless
7. create incentives to allow farming for the guild house, also create other incentives to help other players outside the guild to allow forming people bond, like allow to go the their house and in a upgrade you can pay with gold to speed it and get some BoP mat also (i know i know many guild will use alts and stuff to abuse it to some degree but for the bigger player base its better for the community on the longer term and makes the game with something to do or people to talk to)

etc etc to tired to think of more, the tech is all there already but takes dev time that dont want to have so... oh well

[ArmatisUlv]

it's a fine cosmetic feature if you design your game with it in mind from the start.

It actually was. The one instanced portal in Stormwind City (not the other stockade) was actually in the game from release. That was supposed to be an instance for player housing but obviously that never happened.

[Adoxe]

Garrisons were their test. Like half if not more of the feature got scrapped and the remaining half is looked back on as the worst piece of content to ever be added to the game. They're unlikely to ever do it again on a bigger scale.

[Relapses]

It's honestly baffling to me that WoW players still think that they're entitled to literally every dumb feature every other MMO has.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Personally I'm pretty glad Blizzard hasn't wasted any resources on creating player housing. I always hated that concept and saw no place in WoW for it.

[Relapses]

Personally I'm pretty glad Blizzard hasn't wasted any resources on creating player housing. I always hated that concept and saw no place in WoW for it.

Clearly the bimonthly "DAE player housing" thread that hits 20 pages then is forgotten disagrees.

I wish it didn't, though.

[DarkTZeratul]

It actually was. The one instanced portal in Stormwind City (not the other stockade) was actually in the game from release. That was supposed to be an instance for player housing but obviously that never happened.

That's not really "designed with player housing in mind" so much as "if we decide to do this, we'll stick it here."

[Lord Pebbleton]

Sadly, I have to agree, as exaggerated it is, you are basically right about the shallowness of stuff like archaeology and Pet battles. As far as I am concerned, archaeology worked with being able to dig up mounts, pets, even a mighty weapon. Blows my mind why it got changed to this dull current state.

Ofc I exaggerated things a bit, but come to think of it, the reality is not too far fetched.

Archaeology literally went from MoP's "uncover the pristine secrets of this land to understand its history" to Legion's "dig 300 sites". The pristine deal was not all that exciting but at least they tried...

Island expeditions, as I said I hope they are better now, but back then if you wanted the mogu mount you had to go through so much mental gymnastics that it was just a massive headache. Not to mention people that all wanted different rewards so they went to kill whatever was supposed to help the situation and skip tons of enemies, made for extra long expeditions.

Pet battles kinda have it better because they have variety. Sadly they suffer from being too easy PvE wise, you either have the perfect counter to a boss or you get absolutely demolished, not enough space for self-made tactics and improvisations.

Still, before doing housing, I would like Blizz to address all these issues first, in order to understand the do and don't of cosmetic content.

[Drusin]

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?

I don't even know what the fuck housing is, if it's not what the garrison is then I dunno

[Relapses]

You know I used to be very much anti housing like yourself. I thought it was an enormous waste of development time and I didn’t see the point. And then I got a house in XIV and I absolutely love it. It can be a great gold sink, it keeps professions relevant by making craftable furniture and it helps immerse yourself in the game by having your own little corner of the world to customize as you see fit and things like the orchestrion rolls (Basically a housing jujebox) are one more way to keep people doing older content. There’s not much of a downside tbh but there are benefits. Now I actually agree that Blizzard has been silly to refuse to do it for so long (much like tmog)

Thanks, guy-who-obviously-speaks-on-behalf-of-every-single-player-who-has-ever-thought-player-housing-was-a-shitty-idea. I was wondering when you'd think for me so I didn't have to do it myself.

::thinking::

[Xosimos]

One thing Wildstar got right.

[Lollis]

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.

This is my number 1 issue with housing too. Unless they were to go the Archeage route where all the houses are out in the game world it's only going to make zones even more empty when people are parked in their own instanced houses.

Presuming there are enough places in the world and housing spots are managed well, then a none instanced housing system could possibly work but it'd take quite a considerable overhaul of much of the gameworld to allow for decent sized areas that would need to be be cleared of none house stuff. Zones would need extending most likely, perhaps with specific zones getting small village areas that players or guilds could buy a plot of land on. Too much work would have to be done to the game to make none instanced housing work, and instanced housing would make the game suffer from what my quote mentioned.