Is the end of Shadowlands the perfect time to implement player housing?

[Festisio]

why the hell you want to play by yourself in your shitty little house in an MMO?? or you want to make 2pm tea parties? player housing is the most stupid idea evet.

Well said, it's just such a sad little bizarre desire for a game such as this.

As others have said, the SIMS is for you OP.

[MoanaLisa]

It's maybe the worst time to do it since we will be in the afterlife all expansion. Why would our characters need a house?

I looked back at the op and it was specified that it would be done after the Jailer was defeated. That assumes we will all be going back to Azeroth after SL. I don't know if that's a good assumption or not. I might guess not.

In any case garrisons despite the effort they put into it with the art and stuff were, in the end, a really half-hearted attempt to do a pass on housing which was generally disliked. I tend to think it's a decent idea that was terribly implemented but the developers have shown little interest in creating anything other than a kind-of action MMORPG, action in this case being in the world or instance killing stuff.

I don't see a future for it although if they really did it right by incorporating standard stuff that is in city building games and let us build out our garrisons to towns or larger, our farms to more than just a few plots (like a good farm game), add a couple of professions (woodworking, construction) it might be all right. It's not the theme of the game though.

I don't want Blizzard to even think about it unless they're going to do it right. Another half-assed pass at it isn't going to make anyone happy.

[Lord Pebbleton]

We already had garrisons.

And before you say that garrisons aren't housing, it may be so, but the majority of players don't want to take risks anyway. The moment Blizzard says we will have our very own house people will get up in arms about Garrisons 2.0. And I cannot blame them to be fair.

WoD destroyed the housing dream, along with many other things. It is time to let it go.

[ZenX]

Do I want my own Nazarick aka Covenant in either Azeroth/Outland/Draenor/Argus/Shadowlands, of course I do.

And that is where the issue lies. While some people just want housing as their private quarters that they can furnish and invite their friends in, some will want a better implementation of the garrison with more world-building. WoD Garrisons tried to be an equilibrium point of sorts for it and caused issues with game's ecosystem at the time. It resulted in central hubs becoming ghost-towns removing the world feeling.
Screwed over professions big time and in turn caused the massive-inflation in player-gold and in turn the economy that the blizzard still can't deflate.

Storyline-wise, it is plausible and is indeed the time to do it but housing in itself should be able to span across the game and not be limited to a expansion which in turn is a substantial development time. Proper implementation ala not the Sims in WoW (likewise in FF) version but more like a Minecraft-like sandboxing in WoW might very well be worth two expansions worth of development time for the current team.

So nope and never will be, if it does and they deliver I'd just be happy about it as I have been playing around with various map editors for the last 20 years.

The Garrison implementation basically made playerbase lose their belief Blizzard being able to deliver a proper implementation of the idea and its better off they don't even try to do it again unless it is vastly improved and expanded upon.

[orsraunia]

Why do people want this waste of dev time?

Player housing is boring af and it'll never happen now that garrisons have already.

...and thank god for that.

[MrLachyG]

Anyone else think that after we defeat the jailer and save the Shadowlands that it would be the perfect time to implement a player housing system? What better way to reward the saviors of all reality then to let them create their own covenant/afterlife?

I totally agree - as we all know our HoA's have lots and lots of Azerite power. which means that the HomeOwners Association of Azeroth is very powerful right now... so next expansion we're all forced into player housing by the Azeroth HoA

[thunderdragon2]

Problem was Garrisons weren't player housing. With Garrisons Blizz's system team did what they always do: Take a great idea and turn it into a flagship non-optional expansion system, seriously overengineer and strap a whole bunch of borrowed power to it.

What people wanted as an instanced dollhouse. What they got was an overhyped quest hub that killed the open world.

that's exactly what i meant with this

[rrayy]

Open world content is pointless, if you want that go play Botw. See, we can respond in kind. Keep your shitty ass opinions to yourself. It may be a shocker but not everything created in WOW is catered directly for you.

Open world content isn't pointless because WoW is a giant open world. Housing has never been a part of WoW.

Also, I will give my opinion here when I want to. My opinion is just as good as yours is. Not everyone agrees with you. Not my problem you cannot handle it.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Ah yes of course, getting a memorial that you could place in your home would be so much worse than getting a battle pet that you never use or a toy that you can't even use in the next expansion for some reason. Do you have any even less rational fears we can help you with?

Not sure why you're assuming what battle pets I do or do not use but it's not needed. Also the amount of toys with those sort of restrictions are in the minority.

[loras]

Anyone else think that after we defeat the jailer and save the Shadowlands that it would be the perfect time to implement a player housing system? What better way to reward the saviors of all reality then to let them create their own covenant/afterlife?

Given how we already did that before and didn't get much out of it i wouldn't hold my breath, in fact it seems quite out of place given that most on Azeroth haven't a proper clue in regards to the Shadowlands' happenings.

Also how would you bjnd it to the gameplay rather than have it become a poorly tacked on "Sims: Warcraft"?

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So...player housing...something like your base in Warlords?

Also this.

[Razion]

Collecting decor items is usually a pretty fun completionist activity in other mmos, and they make for good collectibles especially because you can show them off to friends and guildmates and so on. There's good community incentive when games also showcase creations within the community, or where there are community rankings and other ways to find neighbors or find popular builds and so on. It's obviously a good boon for RPers who may want to build specific areas for their own adventures. And especially for people who want to make re-usable loadouts for certain kinds of hang-outs, that's nice for its own reason. It would probably be complimented really well by a way to make really large areas with custom quests to really facilitate the RP focus, but that would probably be beyond the scope of just housing as far as how far other games have incorporated it.

They probably foresaw this kind of feedback where people would ask, "well, what's the POINT?" with housing, so they did Garrisons first hoping that function and little customization could lead into function with customization later if the Garrisons worked out. But since to history WoD was a critical disaster in the eyes of the community, the function of the Garrisons can't exactly be replicated or people will doomsay the end of WoW again. They would probably have to try and reimagine how they would go about housing functions while trying to make it feel different from Garrisons and how they could still incorporate the new decor customization it would need. But it still kind of seems like a catch 22 where this time they either try to build the function again for a second time first and possibly mess it up again, or they could try to focus on just the customization and try to add in function again later like they maybe almost did the first time around. It does seem like function will have to incorporate into housing eventually - and some games do this differently. Some just let you get a lot more rested xp, some give you log-in rewards like gathering certain resources, and so on. But Garrisons covered so much ground in respect to all the various ways you could potentially be rewarded for using the area that the housing I think would have to be successful first with just the customization before they ever tried to do the function for housing again. But at that point, I worry that the perception of Garrisons would taint the idea of function for housing ever happening again -- yet, without it, the criticism of "what is it for," basically echoes forever until the answer that comes back eventually becomes, "it's just fun for its own sake or collecting," and so on - which, ideally, it could serve as more than that so it could have more depth as well.

[StillMcfuu]

Any time would be a good time.

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Yes, that was the excuse for not adding a new class as well. How is that working out?
Should we stop all content development until that is taken care of? Or will you realise that it just isn't a priority for them?

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Think of transmogs. It's completely useless and people still farm instances for them. Same for pets and pet battles.
Housing would revitelize content throughout the whole game. Old dungeons and raids, reputations, systems. Everything can have life added to it with a housing system.

People like to customise stuff. That is why transmog is popular, that is why the pre-patch broke the login servers. That is why minecraft is a phenomenom. Creativity and your place in the world tied to everything else in the game.
There is nothing not to like. Many people like to make their own place in the world.

Unfortunely many here in WoW can't think of the game as anything more than a power grind rather than an mmorpg. It's disheartening and totally the devs fault.

So because people who have been playing the game for 15 years can't actually play the game on the specs they favored because the devs don't care, that somehow justifies you being able to play Betty home maker at their expense.

Just go play house flipper.

[Inoculate]

Open world content isn't pointless because WoW is a giant open world. Housing has never been a part of WoW.

Also, I will give my opinion here when I want to. My opinion is just as good as yours is. Not everyone agrees with you. Not my problem you cannot handle it.

It's your utter lack of tact and ability to see from anyone else's point of view because you have your head shoved so far up your own ass you can only smell your own stink that invalidates all your opinions.

Why not want actually new content to explore? Do you really happy with all the activities available in WoW? Do you find yourself afk in a major city most of your time? I'd argue having players afk in major cities isn't content but giving them a guild hall to show off the guilds accomplishments would be a huge draw to people.

Why wouldn't you want to have guild meet ups discussing various topics while in a great hall with nef and Onyxia's head mounted on a wall. With chairs, tables and such made by professions so once again professions matter and make gold?

If a game becomes stagnant, it dies and wow is in need of some serious innovation or it'll continue to decline.

[Will]

Oh dear god please no player housing. I don't care if some other successful MMOs have it. It's not a good thing to have players sequestered away and make cities emptier. Garrisons proved this.

[Djaye]

a player made place to display your achievements, kills and in game interests. garrisons were not player housing. garrisons sucked. a place unique to the player with the choice to show it to other players if they wish.
tie in fixtures to loot drops in all game content and you have stretched out the game content for some players by years.
honestly, player housing is probably the easiest and cheapest addition they could do to the game to extend the life of old content. even better than transmog.
to the naysayers, dont like it? dont use it.
i HATE pet battles. avoid them at all costs. i would not petition to have them removed jsut because i dont like them as they provide a ton of content to alot of players, are done solo and cannot be done in a group. so how are pet battles different from player housing?
this mindset is lost on the younger generations of gamers and why online communities are a cesspool.

[Triceron]

To be fair, there's a lot of complaints in FFXIV about how much of their resources could be put to creating more content that is instead used for housing. FFXIV patches are typically very small.

On the same line, though, Blizzard also wastes a lot of their dev time into creating borrowed power systems that don't wind up working very well.

Eh, that line of reasoning could be applied to anything.

People will complain out of a frustration or need for more content while seeking to lay a blame on anything they perceive as an obstacle to them getting what they want. We shouldn't be abstaining from more questing content for the sake of pleasing complainers who want PVP to be balanced.

WoW's systems and balance are completely cyclical. They are torn down and rebuilt every (couple) expansions, and this has been going on for ~16 years now. I don't see how people still haven't figured that out.

[cuafpr]

WoW has been massively successful. It is jsut fine without housing and it never needed to happen. THey need to be investing in open world content, not a SIms mini game. Go play Sims if you want to play house.

so lets not take something that works in other games, would keep people engaged, make old content relevant (for farming), can be tied to current content and open world content.... yeah total waste of time....

[McNeil]

Player housing should be a nice little side activity (unlike you garrisons....) that players can design, like build your own rooms and choose your own architecture. It would be something that will last through every expansion as they can continue to add new challenges for you to complete which adds to more decorations and trophies for your house. I'm not to big on needing to phase every house but I doubt that WoW is built to have alll kinds of different houses around the place. Still would love the idea of just make more towns where players can live in, maybe even have your entire guild live in their own town. Other MMORPG's have done it and people seem to live it, I could see the same going for WoW if they implement it well.

[rrayy]

IWhy not want actually new content to explore? Do you really happy with all the activities available in WoW? Do you find yourself afk in a major city most of your time? I'd argue having players afk in major cities isn't content but giving them a guild hall to show off the guilds accomplishments would be a huge draw to people.

I would argue that things that only exist so you can brag is not content. Things like Torghast, Warfronts and the like are. That is where I want resourtces put into.

Why wouldn't you want to have guild meet ups discussing various topics while in a great hall with nef and Onyxia's head mounted on a wall. With chairs, tables and such made by professions so once again professions matter and make gold?

Because I want resources devoted to content out in the open world, not wasted on something so you can have a glorified meeting room There are far better ways to make crafting matter than your ability to play house.

If a game becomes stagnant, it dies and wow is in need of some serious innovation or it'll continue to decline.

THe game is still immensely profitable and in no way stagnant hence the new exapansion every two years.

[Aresk]

It's a defacto competitor though. It isn't doing anything special, there just isn't anything else that isnt wow or ftp garbage.

There's also GW2, ESO, and SWTOR, which have upfront costs but no subscription, but they don't seem as popular as FFXIV in my experience. I don't have any numbers to back that up; I'm going strictly by how often I see those MMOs mentioned.