Here's how to do player housing

[Culex]

I want my garrison to be relevant again, I love that thing.

[chilipopper]

Personally, I'm over player housing - I probably wouldn't bother with it too much. Guild halls on the other hand. Yes please.

[Shaetha]

How is that 'very simple'? All you've done is just say 'we don't need it' without offering any sort of explanation. MMOs emulate each other, grow and improve. How can player housing harm the game in a legitimate way? How would implementing player housing deviate from your opinion that the game is 'just fine'? Please try to answer the question without some sort of incredibly ambiguous hyperbole, and instead respond with some legitimate reasoning to why player housing would make things worse. As far as I can see, if you don't like it, don't participate, and you will continue to be 'just fine'.

I always assume it's because Blizzard wants cities to be populated with players, and I don't think it needs to be more complicated than that.

[Zardas]

Yes, my first MMO was EQ2. But I also played DND - should we have dice rolls in WoW?

Are dice rolls a beloved feature, that totally makes sens in a mmorpg and bring more players that it repels ? If so, yes.

We can't just cherry pick and say "IF housing is implemented correctly" - that is such a vague statement. We did test the waters in WoD - like it or not. People are into hanging out infront of AHs. They are concerned when the world feels empty. People are into sub numbers.

Exactly : they tested a bit in WoD and now have more informations for how to implemented properly. For example : no AH in your house, nor ressources to gather.

I'm genuinely concerned for housing:

With proper housing enabled - each toon gets it's own session(like in Wildstar - which is considered the best housing by many).
And they need to train the staff/hire new, they need to have more server capacity

If Bobby can buy himself a fourth yacht, I don't think that hiring more people or more servers is out of the realm of possible.

they need to program housing(based on 18year old technology)

Oh I didn't say it would be easy : implementing it with the engine is definitely the hardest part

they need to keep it relevant for the future expansions.

Easy : just make a new house relevant to the new expansion, as well as a bunch of new furnitures just as related to the new expansion.

They need to figure out how to earn the decorations and activities.

Just make them earnable the same way as all the other things : either through mob drop, treasures or crafting, seems very easy.

Point of failure increases. Paradigm/focus might shift from raiding to becoming a Sims game(jeopardizing the playerbase). Or - they would just risk the community shitstorm(just because they didn't implement it "correctly").

Did it happened in the mmorpgs that implemented it ?

It's just not that easy and cheap, compared to what it's worth. They could just add new talents, everybody loves that stuff and for much less resources.

It's obviously impossible to know, but I wouldn't be surprised if way more people are interested in visuals vanities like tmog or housing than talents : the majority of people don't really care about talents : they just click at random to match, try to match what they had before, or just copy them from external website.

I can't blame them for not implementing housing. I even think it's a wise discission(I don't want them to fail).

Wasn't it the kind of things that people said before the implementation of m+ ? Or tmog ?

[Halan12]

A player's house could help remove the clutter of one's inventory, provide a meeting space that friends can visit, and increase the in-game feel of WoW.
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[loras]

I want my garrison to be relevant again, I love that thing.

This, i unlocked all kinds of christmas shit for it, trees, ornaments and lights and stuff.
It's great.

All my favourite'd mounts in the stables, all my favourite pets just strolling around, conveniently has a bank, auction house, profession stuff. All it sort of lacks in terms of practical stuff nowadays are a barber, transformation rostrum, option to turn on warmode, direct access to the portal room and a place to showcase t-mogs / toys / more archaeology finds.
Oh and maybe other collectibles and a space for them?
Also i am not sure it has a bedroom.

It'd be nice to have multiple layout options or even freely placeable structures, as well as different styles for the structures.

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I always assume it's because Blizzard wants cities to be populated with players, and I don't think it needs to be more complicated than that.

One could always implement an estate in one of the cities, perhaps two mirrored ones of which one is your own instanced place a la WoD and the other is a public one that can be owned and manipulated by all for prestige stuff.

[Shaetha]

One could always implement an estate in one of the cities, perhaps two mirrored ones of which one is your own instanced place a la WoD and the other is a public one that can be owned and manipulated by all for prestige stuff.

Which does nothing to keep populations in capital cities.

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It's obviously impossible to know, but I wouldn't be surprised if way more people are interested in visuals vanities like tmog or housing than talents : the majority of people don't really care about talents : they just click at random to match, try to match what they had before, or just copy them from external website.

People might not care about optimizing talents, but they're something a lot of major competitors just don't offer. I'm not sure any of the games that copied WoW's gameplay use talents anymore. I know FFXIV has exactly zero meaningful character customization, for example.

[Zardas]

People might not care about optimizing talents, but they're something a lot of major competitors just don't offer. I'm not sure any of the games that copied WoW's gameplay use talents anymore. I know FFXIV has exactly zero meaningful character customization, for example.

Well, I haven't played ff14, but maybe they got rid of it for a good reason.

[Loveliest]

Not the point he was making. THe point is that housing isn't automatically a game enhancer you think it is.

It is, but not enough to save a game that had only 3 raiding guilds and all with weirdly closed recruitment. Wildstar failed miserably because it failed to cater to more casual players, which make the majority of a game's playerbase. And yes, cater means giving them options to raid and do dungeons at an accessible difficulty and all that crap wow does with gearing. Wildstar promoted itself as the hardcore WoW for hardcores only, which limited it immensly.

[Varitok]

I was never really a proponent of player housing but recently, I really wanted some. A place to display trophies and such is a great idea. It's a hard sell though, because it's a big chunk of development time towards something that, for all intents and purposes, is worthless gameplay wise.

[Vampyrr]

Here's how to do it: dont

[AcidicSyn]

I would like player housing.

[Shaetha]

Well, I haven't played ff14, but maybe they got rid of it for a good reason.

Yeah, to appeal to people for which WoW had gotten too complicated. FFXIV is like WoW in slowmo with every boss fight as scripted as Terros.

[Care-Romes]

There is some good ideas in this post,

- The player can have their own book shelfs which is a visual for achievements, they can actually click on a bed to sleep on for resting experience.
- This could affect many elements of the game: guilds, auction house, mailing. (possible access to the AH would be good aswell)
- armor rack (affecting gear durability) - Not sure on gear durability but storing personal items rather than going to the bank would be cool
- It would bring races to their inheritent cities, also remember its phased.
- Most importantly, is that its a subtle addition. - not to over complicate it would be a good idea, the new professions system has been overcomplicted

This is overall quite a good idea Aboostani!