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

[Aresk]

Wildstar implemented some of the best player housing ever seen in an MMO, and look where that got them.

Wildstar also implemented 40-man raids, even though most of the development staff wasn't onboard. They struggled with a sustainable end game. The housing was one of the few things they did right, but housing isn't an entire game in and of itself.

[Krimzin]

Wildstar also implemented 40-man raids, even though most of the development staff wasn't onboard. They struggled with a sustainable end game. The housing was one of the few things they did right, but housing isn't an entire game in and of itself.

Played from beta for almost 6months. Wildstars main issue was the raids were way over tuned. They were Mythic level difficulty at the earliest stages. Towelliee and his group quit within 3 weeks because they couldn't down bosses.

The housing was killer. Leveling was fun. Storyline was funny as hell and enjoyable.

Again the only reason it failed was difficulty. People couldn't do the content and they didn't scale it back until it was to late.

[Villager720]

Hard pass on the dev time this would take.

Aside from other actual content, I'd rather they dedicated a team to fixing bugs before I'd want them to invest time into this.

[crakerjack]

Yea, no. Player housing is available in other mmos. I don’t want the devs wasting their time on something like player housing. More raids and more dungeons, the stuff that makes WoW better than other mmorpg’s.

[Swnem]

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.

You really are unreasonable. Should the whole world await your aproval to spin?
You are acting up without even knowing i agree with "fixing" specs. But, it's unrealistic to think that we can just sacrifice a class, a feature, a raid, etc and it's gonna magically happen.
It's not how it works.

So, why don't you go do what you sugest? Cause you still sound sheltered.

[Biglog]

Player housing as we saw with garrisons is a huge feature to implement, especially considering how much they watered garrisons down through development. It's not something they are going to tag on with a minor patch. They practically sold WoD on garrisons alone.

So we can at least put the player housing idea to rest for 9.x. Maybe in 10.0+, but obviously anything like that is at least 2 years away considering Shadowlands is still a month or two away.

[Kayze]

Maybe but honestly the cost of creating such a feature wouldn't have the return they'd want. Like, it's sorta exciting but there's more value in character customization, dungeons, and raids; All which they could technically do a lot of for much less dev cost.

[rrayy]

Are you legitimately saying you enjoyed doing the same two Warfronts for 2 years? Content that required 0 skill, didn't deviate once, was rapidly outdated and lasted just 30-50min?

Yes. I wish they would have added a couple more of them, but I did enjoy them.

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or both? plenty of room to add multiple features to the game, and zero reasons to limit it. FWIW: now that the SIMs has Starwars version a warcraft version would be awesome..

No there is not. Housing is a huge feture that would take all the resources away from making other content. Garrisons proved that. Focus on content that no other games have.

[NorthernDragon]

The only real argument against player housing is "I am not interested, therefore it shouldn't be added," which is frankly a selfish and hypocritical argument. Garrisons and resources are a moot point because Garrisons are to Player Housing what Warfronts are to Raids, and Blizzard insists on wasting resources on throwaway gimmicks that barely remain relavent for one year every expansion.

The truth is we won't get player housing not because of public opinion or resources but because Blizzard can not be arsed in developing lasting innovative content. They can pump out low quality recycled content because they know a % will swallow anything they release. Personally I feel like housing, be it private or guild would increase subscriptions and give purpose to professions, the economy, gold sinks, guild cooperation and investment to play regular beyond weekly resets and WQs

[Sansnom]

Again the only reason it failed was difficulty. People couldn't do the content and they didn't scale it back until it was to late.

Interesting note. And some people wants WoW to be more difficult.

[Krimzin]

Interesting note. And some people wants WoW to be more difficult.

Hell ya, I'd jump on board that boat all day.
WoW has been dumbing down gameplay for years to cater to the lowest common denominator.

LFR equates to participation trophy. No one wins or loses.. you all win.

[Noctiphobia]

The only real argument against player housing is "I am not interested, therefore it shouldn't be added," which is frankly a selfish and hypocritical argument.

How is it selfish? I'd prefer blizzard to spend those resources on a throwaway gimmick which could turn out to be fun.
Plus the existence of garrisons or housing is detrimental to me, because then the cities are much emptier, which breaks the MMO experience.

[NorthernDragon]

How is it selfish? I'd prefer blizzard to spend those resources on a throwaway gimmick which could turn out to be fun.
Plus the existence of garrisons or housing is detrimental to me, because then the cities are much emptier, which breaks the MMO experience.

Because it's like me saying Blizzard shouldn't waste resources on Mythic Raiding because only a minority touch it. Or that PvP should be removed because I don't enjoy it. Garrison is a moot point because Garrisons isn't remotely what people consider as player housing and the only reason it affected cities was because it was mandatory to go there to do content. Other games with player housing doesn't affect city population, in fact the cities in FFXIV are more populated than WoWs cities. Expansion hubs empty cities not player housing. Shattrah in TBC, Dalaran in WotLK, etc

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Wildstar implemented some of the best player housing ever seen in an MMO, and look where that got them.

You know it's a pointless argument when the reason Wildstar flopped was because of its catering to hardcore players. Player Housing in Wildstar was almost universally praised as its best feature. If you're going to give examples of player housing destroying a game it's best to pick one that is actually true otherwise we could blindly say WoW is bleeding subs because [insert random feature you don't like]

[Thetruth1400]

Why do people want this waste of dev time?

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

Agreed. They gave it a shot with garrisons and saw what a massive flop it was.

Housing is not only a commitment for the expansion in which it is launched, but also every other expansion as well. Going forward, resources will have to be dedicated to ensuring more and more content to keep the houses relevant. Knowing the player base, it won't be simple "Defeat X raid, get trinket Y you can hang on the wall", they'll cry if it's not more.

Likewise, they'll have to go about and add in a bunch of content for all the old expansions as well because "Why nothing for all the achievements throughout the years that I've done? I need to show them off or this game is trash to me!"

Then how should it be handled? Will it be just like garrisons where we all have our garrisons in the same location and they essentially mean nothing as we never see anyone else's base? Are they instanced with a cap? In the open world? Too many variables with no easy answer.

[CrossNgen]

Agreed. They gave it a shot with garrisons and saw what a massive flop it was.

Housing is not only a commitment for the expansion in which it is launched, but also every other expansion as well. Going forward, resources will have to be dedicated to ensuring more and more content to keep the houses relevant. Knowing the player base, it won't be simple "Defeat X raid, get trinket Y you can hang on the wall", they'll cry if it's not more.

Likewise, they'll have to go about and add in a bunch of content for all the old expansions as well because "Why nothing for all the achievements throughout the years that I've done? I need to show them off or this game is trash to me!"

Then how should it be handled? Will it be just like garrisons where we all have our garrisons in the same location and they essentially mean nothing as we never see anyone else's base? Are they instanced with a cap? In the open world? Too many variables with no easy answer.

They don't need to create new content for housing besides the houses and systems themselves, everything else that's needed is already in the game. Every object and prop that you see across the world, no matter where or what it is can potentially be used for housing, and these are things they always make for every new expansion for all of the new zones they create, the only thing they'd need to actually do is curate where they're all acquired.

[rrayy]

They don't need to create new content for housing besides the houses and systems themselves, everything else that's needed is already in the game. Every object and prop that you see across the world, no matter where or what it is can potentially be used for housing, and these are things they always make for every new expansion for all of the new zones they create, the only thing they'd need to actually do is curate where they're all acquired.

This is nowhere near as easy as you think it is.

[CrossNgen]

This is nowhere near as easy as you think it is.

At no point did I say it was going to be easy, I was just clarifying that Blizzard won't need to develop more than they already are with each new expansion/patch once they have a proper housing system implemanted.

[Eurhetemec]

At no point did I say it was going to be easy, I was just clarifying that Blizzard won't need to develop more than they already are with each new expansion/patch once they have a proper housing system implemanted.

Doing housing in a way that was actually positively regarded, gave people a variety of house styles (location or race-style based), which was customizable (something WoW has absolute no provision for as the weird phasing within your own garrison showed back in WoD) would be a truly gigantic effort.

It's all every well saying that they wouldn't need to re-do housing every patch or expansion, any more than any other subsystem, but the effort to put in a proper housing system, especially one that wasn't just cheaply instanced, would be astonishingly high effort. No system added to WoW post-release would even begin to approach the level of effort - including significantly re-working the engine. You say objects already exist, but that's not really true - models exist - but they're not objects you can just casually make usable. Every single model/prop you want will have to be individually made to work right, sized right, limited in whatever ways and so on. An entire new system for building stuff would need to be build - even just limited pre-gen houses would be a big deal, because you'd need to be able to decorate.

It's not that it couldn't be done, but it's not just a system you can include in expansion or something. I don't even know how you'd do it. WoW doesn't work like some MMO, as it flows strictly from one expansion to other.

Maybe you could cut it down to a few pre-gen houses and really limited customization, and gradually expand it, but I don't think it would prosper if that approach was taken.

[Alcsaar]

I've yet to see a reason why they aren't wanted without a direct Garrison comparison. When it comes to Blizzard, everyone is very pessimistic towards them, but they won't ever cut the umbilical cord from WoW, very telling.

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That's why you just put the damn things in the damn Capitol cities. The entrance to get to them could be in the Capitols and the housing could be a hub, with instances for each personal home.

That doesn't resolve the issue of people idling in their instanced houses rather than being in the game world

[Otimus]

Why are there so people so passionately against this being a thing? Do you just like the world being an infinite lobby to do instanced content?

People REALLY should be asking for much MUCH less instanced content, not more. (Though, you just KNOW, if WoW did housing, it'd totally be instanced too... so yeah. There's that.)

WoW is basically an action game with very poor action combat in a gigantic lobby where you sometimes meet up with people to go into rooms of varying size to do things. The world barely matters at all