Solving the housing and capital city problem in one stroke

[Mysterymask]

Yeah, people here greatly underestimate the appeal of those casual features. Shit like hunting for transmog and a possible player housing are way more popular than whatever niche thing the hardcore part of the playerbase wants.

Garrison was just an glorified quest hub, proper player housing would be awesome and popular.

The big problem with Player Housing is pretty easy honestly...
This community has a HUGE COLLECTIVE SHITSTORM anytime a microtransaction is introduced..and if there is player housing there is going to be Microtransactions...TONS of them. Blizz will give you some generic stuff for gold or farming..but lets face it this will be an excuse to monetize the ever living FUCK out of it.
I mean every single MMO with housing of some sort these days has microtransactions attached to it. They will be there, people are going to be PISSED that they exist, people will see them as mandatory and blizzard is uber greedy. To make things worse I'm pretty sure token prices are going to skyrocket with them.

[Weeps]

WoW could make a sandbox that doesn’t affect the game drastically.

Imagine being able to build your own city, which you will command. I’d love to build my own city like suramar.

[Amnaught]

Can you just stop with player housing? This is awful idea. They gave it to you in WoD and it ended up being one of the worst expansions.

I think the most significant shortcoming of Garrisons was how antisocial they were. Legion Class Halls were awesome. I think they could pull off something similar for races but have actually useful unlockable NPCs for things like transmog and portals.

[ravenmoon]

Housing serves no place in WoW even in games like FF14 its mostly just pointless, anything they have done where you can build things in WoW has not been that great and building and improving cities would require a ton of work the game needs in all its other areas instead, what blizzard delivers for WoW is barely adequate as it is, you want to add more things that will cheapen the quality of the rest of the game.

There is tons of games where you can build houses all you want, WoW is not the game for housing.

you realise iti s good for an mmo to have other types of activities and systems too, and that this sort of thing has always been popular enough to draw new people in and sometimes being the sole purpose and focus of why some keep playing right?


Look at SWTOR and their strongholds, the amount of time, money and some just buy subscription for that sole purpose, it's paid for itself many times over.


This would be no different, at the very least all races get a new capital, at the most you get a sustainable hook to keep players constantly subscribed even through low content periods, because they can be working on their capital cities and earning resources for that while doing questing and other activities waiting for the next patch. Plus you get new people and some playing exclusively for this future, wanting for example all their cities to look amazing on their screens.

[loppy88]

This sounds like it could be an expansion wide feature, sounds really cool.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, loving the haters that bring up wod garrisons, sounds like a bunch of people who have 0 imagination and would drool at this if it was announced.

[Dracullus]

I think the most significant shortcoming of Garrisons was how antisocial they were. Legion Class Halls were awesome. I think they could pull off something similar for races but have actually useful unlockable NPCs for things like transmog and portals.

What was so awesome with Class halls? It was cool to have different intro and questlines on alts, but that's about it. WoW is game when you go out and do stuff in open, and if you que for something people usually do it in most populated places like capital or current main hub. I don't remember people doing stuff in class hall, unless they parked on mission table. My warrior hall had arena, I saw people fighting there two times in two years.

Same with guild hall, I don't why people think anyone would hang out there. Most guilds have "guild hall" and it's called Discord. And unlike some instance in WoW, people can hang out there and play the game at the same time.

[Tanaria]

If you want to bring player housing in, fine...but make it optional.

I mean, Draenei going to Dalaran Crater (not sure how this makes any sense, but maybe some Draenei fans could help me out):
By actual lore standards, the Forsaken and the Horde control the crater, but the Draenei players can have some small phased city on the outskirts of the crater. Again though, I'm not saying Draenei players are put at Dalaran crater, I'm just going off the example of the OP.

Lore standpoint - it is actually controlled by the Horde.

[kenn9530]

you realise iti s good for an mmo to have other types of activities and systems too, and that this sort of thing has always been popular enough to draw new people in and sometimes being the sole purpose and focus of why some keep playing right?


Look at SWTOR and their strongholds, the amount of time, money and some just buy subscription for that sole purpose, it's paid for itself many times over.


This would be no different, at the very least all races get a new capital, at the most you get a sustainable hook to keep players constantly subscribed even through low content periods, because they can be working on their capital cities and earning resources for that while doing questing and other activities waiting for the next patch. Plus you get new people and some playing exclusively for this future, wanting for example all their cities to look amazing on their screens.

WoWs only thing that is does better is group based content, implementing more solo content will just impact on the current quality of the content we have in WoW currently, blizz are hopeless at even just balancing classes and keeping specs usefull, we dont need pointless content taking work away from areas the game needs it most.

WoW is not a game where you need a house, the other MMOs the housing is pointless waste time content, if its nothing to do with raiding/mythic plus or PvP then WoW doesnt need it.

[Ohvul]

I think the flaw within being too city like, is it makes players get bored of it rather quickly. I think it would be interesting if they worked as outposts. I wouldnt be surprised to see a completely adapting EK and Kalimdor, working as zones where individual choices in outposts location changes the zone / server dynamics. If the house is just a hut in thunder bluff it doesn't create anything you can't do already. At least it doesn't make it inherently better by it being yours. Private servers do the concept of a functional hut very well, its a building that's been optimized for your gameplay purpose... player housing will eventually become the same just under the limitation if blizz development.

[Illusions]

In essence, this sounds like an interesting idea. However, I worry it would be too difficult to implement, especially if you insinuated it'd be cross-expansion.

On top of being attached to *a* capitol city (Stormwind/Orgrimmar?), it limits the racial pre-sets heavily. I'd much rather the capital city being built be in a different location, similar to Garrisons. But then, it'll just be a Garrison with the promised racial textures.

It also sounds like it'd be very intensive in development time, so at best you'll get an aborted feature like Garrisons were. I don't think it'll turn out the way you intended, and even then it might be flawed.

For most people, it only works for an AFK hub. For roleplayers, this could be great, but limits random RP happening, since you'll need to be grouped to see one single instance. It'll just be a mess overall.

[Gimlix]

Imagine thinking garrisons was anything like player housing. Oh well.

Imagine thinking it's not. Ow well.

[Dastreus]

Imagine thinking it's not. Ow well.

Garrisons all pretty much look the same, and it's a glorified mission table/material farming place. Meanwhile, older games have figured out housing. Just two examples is all I need.

[Yriel]

Every single game i've seen with housing had housing zones packed with houses but otherwise completely dead. You never see another player there at any time.
Also they are very anti-social hubs because:

True. A big problem was that they were put on the alternate timeline version of a different planet. AU Draenor is far removed from everything else in the game. If you had your Garrison in saaay Kalimdor, they could give you an excuse to return there regularly even during other expansions and add new buildings, new building tiers or any sort of customizable and/or collectable aspect. But they didn't and the borrowed power paradigm took over the world.

If the garrison were on Azeroth, and you had all your portals and auction houses and trainers there, no one would ever go to a hub city again. Then it really would be world of instancecraft where you sit in you instanced private capital city and then port to some instanced dungeon/raid/pvp map.
People always talk of single-player MMOs, that would be my definition of it.

[Resheph]

Every single game i've seen with housing had housing zones packed with houses but otherwise completely dead. You never see another player there at any time.
Also they are very anti-social hubs because:

Then I suggest you install TESO, as they totally nailed housing in every respect. The houses are placed in the world, and only the inside is instanced for you. But you see people walking outside it, and most are near or in traffic hubs. This would absolutely be the way to go for WOW, and would seamlessly fit in the existing world.

[VinceVega]

Sure make housing. But whatever you do: Do NOT put any conveniences in it whatsoever!!! EVER! It will end like wod with empty cities because you have no reason to return.
Make it cosmetic only. Nothing else. Never. And i would be ok with.

And don't be suprised if it will go the way mounts go now. Good unique ones in the store reskins in the world.

[Tarba]

Can you just stop with player housing? This is awful idea. They gave it to you in WoD and it ended up being one of the worst expansions.

Yeah like bfa was the worst expansion because of the advanced AI... Sure.

Every single game i've seen with housing had housing zones packed with houses but otherwise completely dead. You never see another player there at any time.
Also they are very anti-social hubs because:



If the garrison were on Azeroth, and you had all your portals and auction houses and trainers there, no one would ever go to a hub city again. Then it really would be world of instancecraft where you sit in you instanced private capital city and then port to some instanced dungeon/raid/pvp map.
People always talk of single-player MMOs, that would be my definition of it.

What are you doing in capital city? a part for being afk and moving from ah to bank.

[MrLachyG]

They kinda did something like this with the mage tower. While fine for that, it’ll be dumb for a city. I mean, people can’t even get the 3 color slime rare spawn done right.

oh god I still have nightmares after working so hard to get that achievement. 13 red, 14 blue, 2 yellow - need 1 red - some fuckhead comes along with a yellow and throws it in.

[ellieg]

Best way to solve it. In game poll asking if you want it. After a month, everyone that said yes gets perma muted

[Yriel]

Then I suggest you install TESO, as they totally nailed housing in every respect. The houses are placed in the world, and only the inside is instanced for you. But you see people walking outside it, and most are near or in traffic hubs. This would absolutely be the way to go for WOW, and would seamlessly fit in the existing world.

I play quite a lot of ESO, but the houses there have no funktionality, who ever visits their house and why (asides from maybe use it as a porting place) ?
I think the houses there are dead as fuck, everyone probably dumps their furniture there once and then never visits them again.
I really don't see the benefit of them being in the game to be honest.

What are you doing in capital city? a part for being afk and moving from ah to bank.

I mean, it's about seeing other players. If you remove that you end up with a lobby based dungeon game after everyone finished leveling.

[Wangming]

If the garrison were on Azeroth, and you had all your portals and auction houses and trainers there, no one would ever go to a hub city again. Then it really would be world of instancecraft where you sit in you instanced private capital city and then port to some instanced dungeon/raid/pvp map.
People always talk of single-player MMOs, that would be my definition of it.

Well if the game can't provide any reason to get into the open world that is not the fault of the housing system. That is the fault of everything else.