9.0 & Player Housing

[ro9ue]

I assume the biggest hurdle for Blizzard when it comes to playerhousing is generating the art assets to use as an expansion feature. But if you think about it, it's possible they've been slowly building towards it over the years.

Orc - WoD Garrison, Ashran and Draenor, BFA new portal hub and the Arathi warfront.
Troll - (missing) but there are a few things like the Arathi witherbark huts
Tauren - Legion Highmountain
Undead - Darkshore Warfront
Goblin - Random goblin assets in BFA, Motherlode dungeon, Darkshore Warfront
Human - WoD Garrison, Ashran, BFA Stromgarde Warfront
Dwarf - (missing) but there are a few items. Hasn't really seen a massive update since Cataclysm.
Night Elf - Legion Suramar, Val'sharah, Tomb of Sargeras, Azsuna... BFA Nazjatar... elven is widely available
Gnome - Mechagon obviously!

Player housing doesn't even necessarily need to be tied to a racial capital. I think it could be cool to see Dalaran have a few housing plots available. For me even, I still have a little sentiment towards the Legion class halls. Just being a citizen in a big city is cool if you're visiting or trading, but if you're a DK being in a necropolis or a Hunter being in a remote lodge, that just feels way better as a place where you hang out.

Will we see player housing?

[Sharby]

Player housing doesn't work in WoW because when it comes to idling/hanging out WoW doesn't support it at all. The only way housing would be used is if it had efficiency benefits like an AH or portals, and if it did, the actual world hubs would be dead as shit. Its a lose-lose.

Housing works in FF14 because the game encourages having fun while not doing content, you have tons of animations and emotes down to how your character prefers to sit. WoW doesn't have any of that, it wasn't fun in WoD it wouldn't be fun now.

[Hitei]

Player housing doesn't work in WoW because when it comes to idling/hanging out WoW doesn't support it at all. The only way housing would be used is if it had efficiency benefits like an AH or portals, and if it did, the actual world hubs would be dead as shit. Its a lose-lose.

Housing works in FF14 because the game encourages having fun while not doing content, you have tons of animations and emotes down to how your character prefers to sit. WoW doesn't have any of that, it wasn't fun in WoD it wouldn't be fun now.

Kinda why I've never understood the point of player housing in general. Cutomization is fun when you take that customization and go actually play the game with it, pretty dumb when appreciating that customization is tied to actively not playing the game and sitting around "using emotes!"

[Thelxi]

I can see them doing guild halls or something before player housing. And yeah it will probably be similar to garrisons.

[Asrialol]

Please stop trying to make player housing happen.

[Bodakane]

We had housing with garrisons. Most hated it.

[Aresk]

As you mention, they have the art assets. I assume the biggest hurdle would be how to implement it in the world and make it engaging. I fully believe they could do it, assuming they wanted to devote a lot of resources to it. Adding little mini-games or creating a system for players to place and orient items. Honestly the new assaults seem to be most promising to me with the addition of more puzzle mechanics. Making housing a fun place to go and play around in would be the ideal way to implement,hopefully while leaving the basic economy stuff in the capitols.

[Aetal]

I always liked the way EQ2 did player housing. A place to put down items you created, earned or bought. It was mostly decorating with a few profession things, but it felt like I owned a piece of the world. Of course WoW doesn't have a profession dedicated to it, but they could still have bosses drop trophies and stuff.

Garrison's felt very cookie cutter and the customization just wasn't really a thing. It was I can put building A, B, or C here.

[Ifeanychukwu]

I can't stand when people call garrisons player housing. You had a few plots with pre-determined buildings that you can't change or customize in any way. Runescape's player housing is miles ahead of whatever the hell garrisons were supposed to be and that's a nearly decade old system. FFXIV is even better, you can change basically every aspect of your house and there are tons of unique furniture and other items to customize your home. The way you obtain some of those items gives further incentive to go out and do content as well. There are items that you can craft from items dropped by bosses and orchestrion rolls that you can use to listen to some of the absolutely amazing music that is in XIV in your home.

If Blizzard were to ever add proper player housing in WoW I would be subbed solely for that content as that's basically what I do in XIV.

[Tyburn]

Bliz really needs to give housing a real shot. They miss opportunities left and right to do something new with expansions. Not getting some kind of personal ship or ship combat in BfA is a real shame. More of the same is getting old.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I wish, but given how buggy the garrisons were and the many corners Blizzard had to cut just to implement them, I don't think it'd be possible to implement a FFXIV-esque housing system with free placement of objects. At best, you'd be able to customize a few preset wall racks/emplacements or something. Even then, this is Blizzard. I doubt they'd expend the effort to even try.

[Kumorii]

Either they tie it to gameplay, which turns it into a chore and requirement. Or it's simply customization and after the first initial hype no one will care about it except for a small player base.

[Sharby]

Kinda why I've never understood the point of player housing in general. Cutomization is fun when you take that customization and go actually play the game with it, pretty dumb when appreciating that customization is tied to actively not playing the game and sitting around "using emotes!"

The house as well as all the associated emotes and animations are just tools that make 'hanging out' feel more tangible and enhance the experience of doing so. I personally enjoy it and find it fun because it lets you appreciate the environment and character assets a lot more since you're not focused on fighting and it gives you something to do while idling,typing, or talking in voice with your buds.

Not to mention as others have said you can directly contribute to the customization of your house by actively playing the game as some boss drops are housing items.

In WoW you don't have any of these things so it'd be boring and I'm not saying that to shit on WoW or anything but the game was designed with hanging out largely being an imagination type of deal via custom emotes and stuff, which is boring to most non-rpers. It would be way too much effort to try and change it now I would rather them focus on the things WoW excels at like PvE content.

[Gasparde]

We had housing with garrisons. Most hated it.

Garrisons and player housing have about as much in common as Fox News and Journalism.

[StovnZJ]

Player housing doesn't work in WoW because when it comes to idling/hanging out WoW doesn't support it at all. The only way housing would be used is if it had efficiency benefits like an AH or portals, and if it did, the actual world hubs would be dead as shit. Its a lose-lose.

Housing works in FF14 because the game encourages having fun while not doing content, you have tons of animations and emotes down to how your character prefers to sit. WoW doesn't have any of that, it wasn't fun in WoD it wouldn't be fun now.

100% disagree, Player housing in Wildstar was one of the best iterations of housing in a game, being able to spend hundreds of hours perfecting your plot was amazing. being able to show it off to other people as well as submit your houses for competitions adds another element to the game for people who enjoy that sort of thing so it would absolutely work in WoW. Wildstar also didnt have all those animations and stuff so thats really not what people care about. Sure wildstar failed but its playerhousing was not one of the reasons at all before you try to use it as a counter point xD.

Player housing items dropped randomly off mobs and dropped alongside gear. Blizzard can fill all the raids with housing items that dont count towards your chance at actual gear giving another reason to run old and new raids. Siege of org can drop orc related furniture, Nighthold can drop ancient night elf furniture, etc. Its a great idea and can really flush out more to do in the game as adding new pets to old raids did for some people.

[Sharby]

100% disagree, Player housing in Wildstar was one of the best iterations of housing in a game, being able to spend hundreds of hours perfecting your plot was amazing. being able to show it off to other people as well as submit your houses for competitions adds another element to the game for people who enjoy that sort of thing so it would absolutely work in WoW. Wildstar also didnt have all those animations and stuff so thats really not what people care about. Sure wildstar failed but its playerhousing was not one of the reasons at all before you try to use it as a counter point xD.

Player housing items dropped randomly off mobs and dropped alongside gear. Blizzard can fill all the raids with housing items that dont count towards your chance at actual gear giving another reason to run old and new raids. Siege of org can drop orc related furniture, Nighthold can drop ancient night elf furniture, etc. Its a great idea and can really flush out more to do in the game as adding new pets to old raids did for some people.

You have to consider the culture of the game which I feel you're missing.


Wildstar had player housing very early into its existence.

WoW has never had any static housing aside from maybe WoD(?), people are so conditioned to not having it + the culture of the game is currently only doing things that add onto your efficiency that if they added it 15 years later it would be very iffy that it would be worth it.

This isn't even considering the massive amounts of resources needed to make it function properly on top of garrisons leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouths. And for what gain? Nobody holds guild meetings in-game outside of raids AFAIK, there are no player-oriented events that are common, and outside of RP servers I hardly ever physically interact with other player UNLESS its to trade.

There are of course people who do the above, but they are a very tiny minority and for good reason, the game just doesn't do anything to make hanging out feel worth it. Adding housing wouldn't solve this.

[XDurionX]

Why cant people stop with this nonsense. Go play the sims.

[psyquest]

Player housing is like useless when other main game systems are not good at all.

You can start thinking of player housing when the REST of the game actually works well.

Raiding , classes, talents, leveling, gear are all in need of major work.

So sorry, but player housing is like a guy asking for custom wheels when his car is crappy with an engine that doesnt work and in need of a new paint job.

[StovnZJ]

You have to consider the culture of the game which I feel you're missing.


Wildstar had player housing very early into its existence.

WoW has never had any static housing aside from maybe WoD(?), people are so conditioned to not having it + the culture of the game is currently only doing things that add onto your efficiency that if they added it 15 years later it would be very iffy that it would be worth it.

This isn't even considering the massive amounts of resources needed to make it function properly on top of garrisons leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouths. And for what gain? Nobody holds guild meetings in-game outside of raids AFAIK, there are no player-oriented events that are common, and outside of RP servers I hardly ever physically interact with other player UNLESS its to trade.

There are of course people who do the above, but they are a very tiny minority and for good reason, the game just doesn't do anything to make hanging out feel worth it. Adding housing wouldn't solve this.

Yeah but its not about hanging out, many people want player housing. The assets are there. Fuck they even hired Stephen Frost who was THE wildstar guy and squandered the opportunity to use his knowledge of Wildstars player housing to potentially add their own. If it were to be added many players would use it, even those who are all about efficiency as its just another side thing to do when there is nothing else to do like pet battles or transmog collecting. Even if its just Hey check out how cool my house is for 10 minutes, players will still go back to it as they get more and more items for it randomly while "Playing efficiently"

[unbound]

Will we see player housing?

Probably not. The problem isn't that there is some deficiency in theme or no place for it in the game, it is because Blizz simply doesn't want to expend the effort.

They started looking at player housing with WoD, but when Blizz realized the effort it would take to allow people to pick locations and have a good variety of customization options, they dropped their ideas, and we ended up with garrisons (fixed location per faction and extremely simplistic customization options).

Until Blizz decides to get serious about WoW again (sorry, even Legion was a fraction of the effort they expended on either BC or Wrath), I wouldn't expect to see full player housing.