9.0 & Player Housing

[Otimus]

Player housing opens up a load of cans of worms of allowing a lot of player customization. Blizzard pretty much hates that, and what little we do have has been the most basic, worthless version of it. It's pretty much clear that this has never been a thing Blizzard has ever really cared about, pretty much in any of their games. Certainly not the one where it'd matter the most. I mean, hell, the character creator in WoW at launch was even bad and restrictive for it's own time.

Don't worry, though! I'm sure there'll be lots of raid and dungeon instances with RNG on RNG on RNG on RNG on that RNG. Who needs character and immersive worlds in MMOs when you got instances! WoW is an arcade game with typical MMORPG-type combat with a gigantic lobby, pretty much.

Anyways, I think player housing is too late for anyone to care. I'd like it, I have zero faith in Blizzard being able to do it in a way in which it'd be beneficial to the game, as it's obviously not something they've ever cared about.

[Kumorii]

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.

Why is it that whenever any developer don't want to implement a feature it's always because of them being lazy rather than not wanting it in their game?

[Shinrael]

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!"

Well the Tillers Garden in MoP was in fact a simple version of player "housing". You had your own plot of land and you were alone there. You had to clean it up, prepare it, take care of it and eventually enjoy the ripe of your efforts. And I honestly quite enjoyed visiting it on my pandaren monk each day and seeing a harvest full of Golden Lotuses. The WoD Garrison failed because it was indeed made mandatory for everything. You couldn't even level up without it. And you had to grind like hell to upgrade it. The Tillers thingie was simple, fast and not such of a chore. And then we had the Class Order Halls which were a shared space which turned out much better for the community and everything. The MoP tillers garden and the Class Order Halls could easily be combined and made into Guild Halls.

It doesn't HAVE to be a place where you just "stay" or do nothing. You can only visit it once in a while. You can set your Hearthstone there, have some nice utilities, considering the fact we already have the assets for it, it is barely any effort to make that work and you lose nothing. At the very least it can be an ingame "home" and a gathering place. For example I will set my Hearthstone to Shrine of the Seven Stars in 8.3 because I love Vale of Eternal Blossoms and I feel really nice logging off there. Just that tiny act adds so much to my experience.

And now imagine if the Guild Halls had actual functions. Instead of having your Artifact skins on display, you can have your Guild trophies for defeating bosses, challenges, etc. You can have a bank and a guild vault. You can have a garden which is shared across all guild members - not something you pick on your own. You can gather the herbs on a shift-basis, each day a different person. This will strengthen the sense of community and responsibility within the guild. OR you can even just all gather it together and make it a really quick piece of cake. At the start of BFA I sometimes organized Mat Gathering guild meetings where we would all go to some island/beach and fish together for Salmon, to make the Feasts for our raids. And there you go, a simple but very good reason to visit your plot of land without it becoming a chore (as you can split up the work or take care of it on a shift-basis). And honestly if that happened I might as well offer my guild to do it everyday because I just love herb-picking both IRL and in-game. You could make every single object/building/tree in the Guild Hall customizable. You want your Hall to be Blood Elf themed? Here you are Eversong Woods-style trees and blood elf citadels and sanctums. Magic brooms around, etc. Different types of content would offer different customization options but they would be purely cosmetic or just utility stuff and absolutely no raid/dungeon benefits. This way it wouldn't be mandatory like the WoD garrison. And you can assign different people to work on different goals to obtain certain customizations. Working together to get something. You are no longer trying to beat Atal'dazar M+10 timer just to get that fat Titanforge, you are trying to beat it along with your mates to get that nice Treasure Chest full of gold coins skin for your guild vault. And with it you get access to guild vault within the Guild Hall too. You can rescue 3 orphants who were abducted in Freehold and then they become your Guild Followers, offering portable guild bank or repair services but you only have 3 charges (since they are 3 kids) shared across all guild members (who have a guild Rank with the permission to use it) on a 6 hour CD. So you can give your officers the right to use those or you can just let anyone use them. Ofcourse, as your guild grows and more people do more content, you will have more utility, more charges, etc. And as long as you remain in your guild and are on good terms with everyone, have a high-enough authority among the guild ranks, etc you can enjoy your conveniences which without the guild you would not have. And over the years you can make it a true convenience paradise You can add your own Flight Master. You can send guild members to capture a certain Rare Elite gryphon which has been spotted in Tiragarde Sound and if they manage, your flights from the Guild Hall to other FPs are 100% faster. You can have your stable there with a stable master. Guild Officer can stable his Pureblood Firehawk mount there and turn on a toggle that allows another member to borrow it for 1 hour. This way you can borrow a rare mount you do not have temporarily. And you could lend a 60% speed horse to a level 1 character or a 100% one to a level 20+ character. It would be limited by something - either how many mounts you can lend or how long they can be used. It could be just 1 hour per day, but it is something! You can do soooo much more. You can have an armory which allows you to craft a unique transmog set to represent your guild, with many customization options - add horns, spikes, change colour palettes, add gems, hoods, wings, etc. You can work together as a guild there, gathering epic mats from raids and having a blacksmith (an actual player) strike them for 10 minutes every day to soften them and after 30 days you can melt the mats and make them into a sword, then a frost mage can help cool it down every day (with just one click a day) for 1 week and finally you have a Legendary Hammer which you can give to one warrior from your guild for 1 week and then he will have to pass it onto another warrior from the guild, etc. Do I need to go on?

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I can get Bizz's concern if assets is the concern. It takes a lot to make a good housing system in terms of furniture assets. Because the key thing is to always have more. You can't just have one racial chair and be done. You need all the races, and then ones themed for the expansion locations, and maybe a chair for this really iconic boss, and that's just chairs.

Every FF14 patch for instance has a fairly beefy list of new housing assets. Not like scroll wheel long but there's usually a couple new items for every category.

[textz]

housing is the evolution peak of MMORPGs collectible layer - it summarizes nearly every aspect of MMO into a personalized space (combat indirectly too, as furniture could be a drop). the demand for WoW housing isnt new, as there were already a few takes. garrison was supposed to be much more customizable, but Blizzney scrapped it for good, as the original garrison concept wasnt convincing at all. (as this housing light version was their ultima ratio, so the original concept must have been really bad)
other titles, esp. WS and FFIX have already delivered a proof of concept without compromising, but expanding the core gameplay. the effects reach far beyond RP, from economy (professions, gold sinks) to socialising to collectibles, housing could be a new aspect, a new layer of gameplay experience for WoW.
as it allows player to create a personal and customizable space in a otherwise fixed environment, where the singular influence a player has on the world is to kill respawning mobs and clear yellow question marks - it would deliver the feeling of personal impact on the games environment, even instanced it would be a personal and mostly (even if only felt as) unique place to be.

WoWs got the culture for housing already, as even the hardcore crowd r collectors (collecting ilvl, challenges (RIO) and achievements) and mogs being of great identificational importance. housing could be great for self-expression, hanging out in never changing hubs gets boring, while housing not simply allows, but demands customisation.

but Blizzney probably cant do it quality, as otherwise they would already implemented it.

[StovnZJ]

Do you maybe have a link to videos on this? I always wondered about the "showing off" effect, because...where is your house and who would want to see it when everyone is building their own? Is it phased? Somewhere in the real world next to other players?

I get the competition idea...but how does customisation work when a certain mob drops the same furniture for everyone.

And at the end of the day...is it where you hearth to and log out? What do you do in your house...alone? Are you still in the general city chat?

Okay yeah so, the way it worked in wildstar was that mobs had a chance to randomly drop housing items, Your house was on a plot that was instanced that people can randomly go to even without being in your party. Each plot had a house slot and I think..4 utility slots.. Like a place to get some ore daily and a couple others for other professions, you could even place a portal plot in on of the slots that would let you port to raid entrances. Anyway the main point was the housing slot, you would place a house based off any race theme. then when you go inside it you can customize it. Most houses had a main room and a side room with high ceilings. Two rooms not enough for you? Use a floor platform tile and place it up high, stretch it out so that its literally a second floor, then place stairs leading up to it so now you have a two story house. Place all your armour racks up there to showcase armour and things like that.. couches, chairs tables, beds. All these items like walls and floors could be used outside of the house on the plot as well.. I literally made a deck on the house, a set of stairs leading up to the deck, the deck was fenced off with railings that were me just cleverly using fencing items. I placed picnic tables on the deck with plates and cutlery on the tables, a bar. I hung chilli pepper lights to add lighting.. the customization was limitless.

A buddy of mine used large rectangle stones that he lengthened to make a stone Colosseum for duels... like its nuts the amount of stuff you can do. If you look up videos some people made their plot a forest with a house in the middle.. set up spooky halloween based homes and forests... like its nuts what you can do or well COULD do since the game shut down. Oh and yeah you could still talk to a general chat.. I dont remember if it was for just housing or cities too.. but that would be up to blizz to decide.

[Bodakane]

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

I mean sure, you can make an analogy that doesn't fit the situation, but then you haven't brought anything to the table.

First, you're wrong, they are a lot alike. (Not fox and journalism, that you're right about). They were a home base that we could customize. Housing is a just smaller version of garrisons. Garrisons were literally born out of the notion of Blizz trying to give players housing.

Secondly, even if you continue with the absurd notion that garrisons and housing are so far apart from each other, it requires your incredulousness at the mere implication they are alike, then at least understand the fundamental problem with garrisons will be the same (or even worse) for housing.....lack of players out and about in world. People just sat in their garrisons and were bored, housing will have even less to do then a small "city-like" area like a garrison.

[Kyphael]

If Garrisons were a sign of what player housing would be like, I want no part of it. Blizzard couldn't even do that right.

"I just want a house for my player with some customization where he can hearth to and hang his coat."
"Oh, you want a military base your character will spearhead along with an underground mine, your own farmland, and NPC's with periodical NPC attacks so you never have to leave thanks to LFD and LFR tools and feel confined to? Say no more."

[Skorpionss]

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!"

Exactly, player housing on it's own is boring as shit. Now if u had a house that actually served a purpose, a la garrisons but with more customization, maybe.

[StovnZJ]

I mean sure, you can make an analogy that doesn't fit the situation, but then you haven't brought anything to the table.

First, you're wrong, they are a lot alike. (Not fox and journalism, that you're right about). They were a home base that we could customize. Housing is a just smaller version of garrisons. Garrisons were literally born out of the notion of Blizz trying to give players housing.

Secondly, even if you continue with the absurd notion that garrisons and housing are so far apart from each other, it requires your incredulousness at the mere implication they are alike, then at least understand the fundamental problem with garrisons will be the same (or even worse) for housing.....lack of players out and about in world. People just sat in their garrisons and were bored, housing will have even less to do then a small "city-like" area like a garrison.

THey are similar but house has been done right in games like FFXIV and Wildstar. Garrisons were prebuilt instances of player housing. But you couldnt use it to identify yourself. In Wildstar you could resized and stretch every single tile or items that you could get for it.. Preset housing shells not doing it for you? Take wall and floor tiles and build a damn mansion on your plot instead.. thats how garrisons and housing are very far from eachother. The potential for individual player housing is 1million times greater than guild halls or garrisons ever could be,.

- - - Updated - - -

Cheers, sounds interesting, guess I will try and find some of those videos

Sweet, you wont be disappointed at some of the insane things people made.

[CrawlFromThePit]

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?

I would love player housing and I don't really believe creating the art asset would be that much of a hurdle. Ever since Legion the art team has been throwing beautiful stuff left and right, the amount of art assets is insane and it seems they always have more than enough time to make everything AND MORE compared to the design team. I strongly believe that if they want to make a player housing feature it would be very well covered in terms of art stuff.

[StovnZJ]

Exactly, player housing on it's own is boring as shit. Now if u had a house that actually served a purpose, a la garrisons but with more customization, maybe.

yeah additional plots around the house tied to mining and herbing for a daily allotment of materials. A place to choose a few places in the world to port to to be more efficient that coincides with hearthstones. There is potential

[ro9ue]

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!"

It just might not be for you. But it doesn't mean there isn't a big part of the playerbase that wants it. Look up how many people spent hours customizing their housing in Skyrim... and that's a single player game no one else will ever see.

To the people saying Garrisons were bad so player housing is bad. That's just how Blizzard initially did it. Most other MMOs have pretty popular and successful housing systems. Blizzard just tried the themepark way to do it and it was a disaster.

[Lucetia]

it wasn't fun in WoD it wouldn't be fun now.

Except for every one player who didn't find it fun, there was another that found it fun. Personally I enjoyed Garrisons and had no problems with them. Still visit mine frequently.

[nyc81991]

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.

That's just false. Blizzard obviously thought similar to you did in WoD though and created Garrisons instead which was a terrible idea.

Housing could be a great place to show off achievements (hang up boss heads, tier sets on a stand, ect) and have fun mini games you can play alone or with friends. It doesn't need to be some crazy gameplay gimmick that ends up removing people from the world entirely.

[Skorpionss]

Except for every one player who didn't find it fun, there was another that found it fun. Personally I enjoyed Garrisons and had no problems with them. Still visit mine frequently.

I liked garrisons I'm just miffed that they didn't update them to keep them in future expansions too. If they ever add housing they have to update it with every expansion to keep it relevant otherwise just don't bother. I hate expansion exclusive systems.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I liked garrisons I'm just miffed that they didn't updated them to keep them in future expansions too. If they ever add housing they have to update it with every expansion to keep it relevant otherwise just don't bother. I hate expansion exclusive systems.

The Garrison wasn't terrible it just was just positioned badly. Order Halls did it way better by attaching them all to Dalaran in some way. What was broken is, ironically, the thing that survived the wreckage. The mission table.

[Lucetia]

I liked garrisons I'm just miffed that they didn't update them to keep them in future expansions too. If they ever add housing they have to update it with every expansion to keep it relevant otherwise just don't bother. I hate expansion exclusive systems.

Yeah that was my problem too. Though on one hand I can see why they didn't. There's just a lot of issues with it gameplay wise. I'd like to see them fix most of them so it wouldn't be bad.

[Sesto]

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

why does wow even have appearance options at all. if you want your character to have a certain hair colour you should just go play the sims.

personally i think every character in the game should be a grey blob

[Hitei]

It just might not be for you. But it doesn't mean there isn't a big part of the playerbase that wants it. Look up how many people spent hours customizing their housing in Skyrim... and that's a single player game no one else will ever see.

To the people saying Garrisons were bad so player housing is bad. That's just how Blizzard initially did it. Most other MMOs have pretty popular and successful housing systems. Blizzard just tried the themepark way to do it and it was a disaster.

In skyrim you use your house for active storage of items, to sleep, for easy and quick access to crafting stations, depending on mods it also acts as a hub for your companions, etc.

Unless your plan here is to remove all that shit from capital cities and have the house be the bank/forge/etc. you aren't talking about equivalent features. Not to mention that Skyrim is 100% a single player game, so its homes are seamless with the overall gameworld, as opposed to MMO player housing where you literally stop playing an MMO and enter some weird instanced construct that completely breaks immersion.