Player housing, will Blizzard ever get the message?

[deathraiser1]

Till this day the one and only thing i miss and wish that wow had was EQ 2's guild housing could get everyone together in the house buff up then port to the raid zone. Just an awesome feature i remember we had 3 rooms with all the trophy's and raid related stuff was pretty sweet

[SodiumChloride]

You know can't say I'm not a tad bit pissed off.

Every time some non-raid feature get requested, it's just blown off with a "not enough resources because raids".

Seriously. Raiders don't have enough content? Can't other types of players getting something once in awhile too?!

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This is the WoW version of a 5 year old that wants to have a jar of frosting for dinner. Somebody has to tell them why it is a bad idea and will make them sick.

More raids sure is helping with the sub numbers right?!

[Jediguy]

For those who say that player housing is a waste of time, let me ask you a question: why do you play WoW? I'm guessing you either invest your time in raiding dungeons or fighting on battlegrounds, but why? Would you do these things if you received no reward (gear, gold, items, etc.)? Probably not or at least not with as much enthusiasm. Why? Because WoW is a progression-based game and the snare that keeps people playing is the desire to keep building on their character. More abilities, better gear, better transmogs, anything that will improve your character. If that's the heart of WoW, then why the hell can the same motivation not just as easily be applied to something in addition to your character; say, housing? Make it something players will enjoy improving, just like their characters. Just some ideas out there:

1.) Gold dump. Inflation is constantly problem in MMO's, so there needs to be a way for gold not just to switch hands, but to effectively exit the economy. Player housing materials can cost gold paid to vendors to combat inflation.

2.) Location: if Blizzard doesn't like the idea of instanced or phased housing, vary the cost of building a house depending on location in the world of Azeroth. More desirable locations cost more money - again, something for players to work for.

3.) Interaction: have things happen at a player's house. Hell, maybe they could even mark their house for PvP, gaining some sort of benefit, but being at risk of other players attacking it. Enable players to add defenses to their house so it's less like a grass hut and more like a castle.

4.) Limitations: if we're building player houses out there in the real world of Azeroth, have housing limited to one house per account (shared by all that account's toons, just like achievements), as to not flood the world with player houses.

These are just ideas off the top of my head that enable player housing to add to the experience of the game and keeping with the heart of what makes MMO's attractive: progression.

[Deleted]

Sorry, but Blizzard is right.

Runescape has instanced player housing, and it's not all that great. Most of the time, no one sees your house except you, unless you have a gilded altar. The only reason I made a house in Runescape is for portals, an altar, repair stand, menagerie, and an obelisk. I didn't make one to "ooo", and "ahhh" people.

http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Construction

As did I, but the dungeons were fun in my opinion too.

[Alvito]

You know can't say I'm not a tad bit pissed off.

Every time some non-raid feature get requested, it's just blown off with a "not enough resources because raids".

Seriously. Raiders don't have enough content? Can't other types of players getting something once in awhile too?!

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More raids sure is helping with the sub numbers right?!

A better game is all that concerns me not sub numbers. Nice of you to try and blame raids as the reasons this chip of shit idea isn't gaining any traction though. I am all for no raid features in the game, as long as they are crap ones.

[sphexs]

Sorry, but Blizzard is right.

Runescape has instanced player housing, and it's not all that great. Most of the time, no one sees your house except you, unless you have a gilded altar. The only reason I made a house in Runescape is for portals, an altar, repair stand, menagerie, and an obelisk. I didn't make one to "ooo", and "ahhh" people.

http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Construction

I have to stop you right there for that one.

Because that's not how it the system was originally designed back in 2003/2004 for when the idea was created for player owned housing. Unlike WoW runescape allows the ability to switch in between worlds/servers. In which it creates a design problem, which would you house be located and how does it stay in once place if you have free ability to switch to any server/world at free world.

Now Wow has the ability to do that. However, with the up and coming changes to combined worlds and now cross-realms being introduced they are now faced with the same limitation jagex face when creating player own housing. If the technology were to stay the same. meaning that cross-servers didn't exist. Then there would be much easier to create a system that allow people to own houses. As such, Tibia the game that has the same system and doesn't have player cross-realm has created and sustain the perfect player own / guild owned housing for their player base. http://tibia.wikia.com/wiki/House

[SodiumChloride]

A better game is all that concerns me not sub numbers. Nice of you to try and blame raids as the reasons this chip of shit idea isn't gaining any traction though. I am all for no raid features in the game, as long as they are crap ones.

"better game" = subjective

"sub numbers" = objective measure of player satisfaction and pays the damn bills.

Oh I'm not blaming raids. I'm just pointing out, more raids aren't helping. MoP has some of the biggest raids, coming out faster than ever. Subs still dropping. I'm not saying it's the cause, but it definitely ain't the solution.

[Rodeanen]

I would love to see guild housing tied to the world. A guild could claim a mine or a farm or stables or something. That would generate items for the guild in the same way as the farm in Pandaria generates mats for a player. Could add pvp elements, raid other faction guilds buildings and the more you defend it the more it produces.

[mvaliz]

It's interesting how people want features that failed MMO's have, and have them integrated into WoW.

It's interesting how people sight features in "failed" MMO's, but they fail to mention which MMOs they were - and exactly explain how their implication that Player Housing was the reason they failed.

I for one actually joined WoW long ago at launch due to them saying they were going to implement Player Housing later.... possibly in an expansion. =/

Of course Blizz can do it right, and provide TONS of utility to players to make it fun. The idea that players would "Sit in their houses all day" is about as ridiculous as saying players would "Sit in raid instances all day". For starters, you got to FILL that house with something... and you sure as hell won't find that inside your house, as by definition it's not there. :P

These days I tend to stay away from these thread though. Because the people who love to play "Dress up" with their little virtual dolls, and complain that their fashion accessories shouldn't be worn by everyone as it signifies how VIP they are, and that they're choice of pimp ride should be unique for their special little doll.... that those people apparently have a problem with "Setting up your own personal Man-cave" as it's deemed too feminine by them and their dolls.

[BFGrid]

A lot of players seem to fall into some kind of mental trap whenever suggestions for new features are brought up. When someone mentions player housing, most of the responses for whatever reason are based on the idea that "player housing = instanced, static location in capital city". Maybe it's because of precedence? A good designer doesn't just take ideas and copy them, though. They put their own touches on them.

The post directly above mine has a fantastic example of this mentality: "Players would gain nothing from player houses, other than a spot where no one goes." I mean no ill will toward the poster, but I have to question a lot of the responses in this topic that automatically assume if Blizzard made player housing a reality it'd be done in one very specific way. There are many ways to spin the traditional views on player housing. Try thinking like a designer and have some fun with it instead of flaming others for thinking outside the box. If it were up to you, what would you do to make player housing more than just an instanced, static location in your capital city? Blizzard might actually respond if one idea garnered enough positive attention.

[Otimus]

Yeah, no player housing is a stupid idea, it's not interesting and adds no interesting gameplay whatsoever. I absolutely can not see why anyone would want player housing at the expense of something meaningful like, let's say, interesting end game content?

Yes, more and more of the same types of bosses, in the same type of thing, that play the same type of way, as the same thing from years and years ago is a really meaningful thing to do rather than something that actually adds a bit of creativity to an interactive world :x

This is why WoW can't have nice things. This is why the "customization" for characters is total garbage, and seemingly, Blizzard lives by this philosophy as hard as it can. They have some strange hard case against customization.

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You know can't say I'm not a tad bit pissed off.

Every time some non-raid feature get requested, it's just blown off with a "not enough resources because raids".

Seriously. Raiders don't have enough content? Can't other types of players getting something once in awhile too?!

- - - Updated - - -



More raids sure is helping with the sub numbers right?!

Yeah, seriously. Never mind the fact ALL that money they've blown on raiding from day one till now, and only just in the last year and a half or so, have they really had a lot of people doing it. Blizzard has REALLY warped priorities, and for whatever god damned reason, no one calls them out on it. I guess because most of the people on these forums are raiders, and because people get jipped by and large to provide THEM content, they just flat out could care less what other people might would want in this game, and are happy that Blizzard is doing it to people.

[Mormolyce]

Remember that customisable housing means lots of art resources, and it would have to be constantly expanded, and if you want your house to look different to everyone else's (remember, pretty much every Sunsong Ranch looks the same) then they need a lot of furniture or whatever with many different appearances to go with it. It'd be at least as much work art-wise as a decent sized dungeon (that doesn't recycle any art assets).

You know can't say I'm not a tad bit pissed off.

Every time some non-raid feature get requested, it's just blown off with a "not enough resources because raids".

Seriously. Raiders don't have enough content? Can't other types of players getting something once in awhile too?!

Come on now, MoP has more non-raid content than every other expansion put together.

Blizzard has a big list of shit they could do and next to each item is effort versus reward. Player housing is a medium to high on the effort, but low on the reward and as such it is down the list.

I'm sure if they suddenly thought of something totally kickass they could do with player housing, they'd do it. Which is pretty much how Sunsong Ranch came to be.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Remember that customisable housing means lots of art resources, and it would have to be constantly expanded, and if you want your house to look different to everyone else's (remember, pretty much every Sunsong Ranch looks the same) then they need a lot of furniture or whatever with many different appearances to go with it. It'd be at least as much work art-wise as a decent sized dungeon (that doesn't recycle any art assets).



Come on now, MoP has more non-raid content than every other expansion put together.

Blizzard has a big list of shit they could do and next to each item is effort versus reward. Player housing is a medium to high on the effort, but low on the reward and as such it is down the list.

I'm sure if they suddenly thought of something totally kickass they could do with player housing, they'd do it. Which is pretty much how Sunsong Ranch came to be.

You might wanna take a look into certain towns and encampments throughout the world. All the art assets are already there and are created for every new race and dungeon anyway, all that is left is to go and stick model 0xFCA19B90 on item [Forsaken Style Torch #3] or [Klaxxi Kingsize Bed] and write some code that allows you to place it into a certain place in the world and save it's location, so that it is still there when you come back. I fear this is the real issue here, blizzard might fear the additional data they have to store on their servers (usual housing easly blows pity.. i mean void storage out of the water as you'd probably need at least 100 item slots for a house and then save all the correlating data of the items placed inside.

Edit:

It's interesting how people sight features in "failed" MMO's, but they fail to mention which MMOs they were - and exactly explain how their implication that Player Housing was the reason they failed.

I for one actually joined WoW long ago at launch due to them saying they were going to implement Player Housing later.... possibly in an expansion. =/

Of course Blizz can do it right, and provide TONS of utility to players to make it fun. The idea that players would "Sit in their houses all day" is about as ridiculous as saying players would "Sit in raid instances all day". For starters, you got to FILL that house with something... and you sure as hell won't find that inside your house, as by definition it's not there. :P

These days I tend to stay away from these thread though. Because the people who love to play "Dress up" with their little virtual dolls, and complain that their fashion accessories shouldn't be worn by everyone as it signifies how VIP they are, and that they're choice of pimp ride should be unique for their special little doll.... that those people apparently have a problem with "Setting up your own personal Man-cave" as it's deemed too feminine by them and their dolls.

Awww, this seriously made my day. I will start to work with a smile on my face now.

[Tackhisis]

Player housing is adding nothing to the game while opening a new avenue of grinding and donating. Such gimmicks should not take developers and designers' time from the core features.

[arcaneshot]

You might wanna take a look into certain towns and encampments throughout the world. All the art assets are already there and are created for every new race and dungeon anyway, all that is left is to go and stick model 0xFCA19B90 on item [Forsaken Style Torch #3] or [Klaxxi Kingsize Bed] and write some code that allows you to place it into a certain place in the world and save it's location, so that it is still there when you come back.

I'd be more concerned about that than anything. In fact... WHY would you want something like this? You'd have people griefing each other with houses like they do in Ultima Online.

[Scream And Fly]

Girlfriend (assuming you have one): "Hi babe do you want to hang out tonight?"
WoW Player/Boyfriend: "Nah I'm going to hang out in my Westfall beachfront home and decorate it. You can get a WoW account and come over my house!"

...silence...

[Mormolyce]

You might wanna take a look into certain towns and encampments throughout the world. All the art assets are already there and are created for every new race and dungeon anyway, all that is left is to go and stick model 0xFCA19B90 on item [Forsaken Style Torch #3] or [Klaxxi Kingsize Bed] and write some code that allows you to place it into a certain place in the world and save it's location, so that it is still there when you come back. I fear this is the real issue here, blizzard might fear the additional data they have to store on their servers (usual housing easly blows pity.. i mean void storage out of the water as you'd probably need at least 100 item slots for a house and then save all the correlating data of the items placed inside.

Could they take a pile of existing assets and dump them onto Sunsong Ranch and call it player housing? Sure. Would that be a cool awesome feature? No.

[Spotnick]

Only if we can pillage the opposite faction housings.

[Koji2k11]

Yeah, no player housing is a stupid idea, it's not interesting and adds no interesting gameplay whatsoever. I absolutely can not see why anyone would want player housing at the expense of something meaningful like, let's say, interesting end game content?

wildstar says hiiiiiiiiiiii

[Mormolyce]

wildstar says hiiiiiiiiiiii

Hey while you're talking to the future, can you get me some lottery numbers?