Introduce player housing to Stormwind and Orgrimmar first, then spread outside

[Swnem]

I agree. SWTOR and FFXIV also launched with only 2-3 housing locations.

Housing is an evergreen system. Just get it out there and add a bit to it with every patch.

- - - Updated - - -

Or they could just use those ressources for something useful.

Housing is about the most useful use of resources they can do. An evergreen system that will see content constantly added to the game. A raid tier is cleared in 2 weeks, farmed for 5-6 months and it's done. Housing is till the end of the game.

[thunderdragon2]

Why can't they hire more ppl instead of taking people from current teams?

that wouldnt help with development costs, those people still need to be paid besides ion said in the hazelnutty interview that player housing WOULDN'T be coming in dragonflight

[WowIsDead64]

They said player housing would take several expansions. Maybe they can start in a patch where they can introduce player housing to Stormwind and Orgrimmar first, then spread it out to the rest of the world in another expansion. 2nd phase would be Thunderbluff, Ironforge, Silvermoon, Exodar. Then third phase they can update the old and introduce housing there, like in an expansion maybe.

Maybe first phase introduce a carpentry for the furniture first and current dungeons and raids. Then to time walking older dungeons and raids. If that's all too big in a patch, maybe a prepatch or beggining of expansion then add the later phases in patches.

Yeah, I agree, that housing - is one of that features, that require gradual implementation instead of "when it's ready" one, Blizzard prefer so much. In order to fully implement housing we should start somewhere. And further Blizzard refuse to start implementing housing - lesser chances to see it in game are.

[ellieg]

The schematics for the housing would come from the world; Achievements. The time spent in the actual house would be minimal. If anything, it would give players a reason to get out in to the world more than before, time where they would have instead just afk'd in a city.

I get not caring about it, but why do people have to be so hostile towards people that want it? I play all aspects of this game and have always wanted housing, I just think it's a super fun part of MMO's and it's one of the FEW MMO's that hasn't done it yet.

Because gatekeeping is good. What's gonna happen when some appearance is locked behind a mythic achieve? You're gonna get ppl that shldve been playing the sims, crying online abt nerfing the difficulty. Just like u do now with gear and tmog, but now there's more.

[Lochton]

Well, there are games with housing, why not play those then? Maybe housing is not that interesting?

Maybe housing is all that interesting for some? Mythic Raiding, Mythic+, and ranked PvP are apparently minorities now.

[DechCJC]

Because gatekeeping is good. What's gonna happen when some appearance is locked behind a mythic achieve? You're gonna get ppl that shldve been playing the sims, crying online abt nerfing the difficulty. Just like u do now with gear and tmog, but now there's more.

The house is a monument to your achievements; if you don’t have the achievements you can’t show it off.

It’s an incentive for players to try different content, but there’s no player power attached. I don’t think it should matter where cosmetics come from. I would imagine the vast majority of appearances would come from outside of end-game, and you could always go back to the raid in the future when it’s easier if it does come from there.

[Cierah]

So in the thread we've seen the typical "wah, I hate housing" comments that always pop up. Basically the get off my lawn people. Housing is optional - you are not forced to participate. There is a way to have content AND housing... Ion is just too slow to change. That has been painfully obvious since his focus first and foremost is raiding.

With that out of the way time to dive into the topic...
Instanced vs non: It should be instanced to avoid the fiasco that is a housing lottery. There could be two modes of this - house or apartment. This would allow for flexibility among the playerbase. They could start by rolling out apartment mode and then later do the same for house mode.
In the house mode you have some big space you can build to your heart's (and wallet's) content. Build both inside and outside. This would be some outdoor setting.
In the apartment mode you only build inside. You'd have windows with a view of the city the apartment is in (fixed but still a view). It would be a fixed dimension.

Tech: They would need to build some new tech. For that alone I can accept that it would take some time to develop since unlike the next expansion or even the next content patch they haven't gotten anything off the ground so they'd need to build a team, strategize, and then start development. As noted, due to the complexity of this they should roll out an apartment mode first to get the basics down and then house mode which expands the geometries behind the tech. Some of the tech is already in the game as they lay out rooms inside buildings with items you interact indirectly with like tables or beds. Rather than having pre-fixed placement they would be able to be placed where the player decided. It isn't the end goal but a starting point to build the tech upon.

Components/skills: Perfect opportunity to introduce a new profession. This could be rolled out with house mode. It would be a secondary profession so everyone can learn it and not sacrifice a slot like leatherworking or herbalism. Acquisition of skills or components should in no way be tied to progression in dungeons, raids, or pvp. This needs to be independent of all of them to permit the greatest degree of access. At worst they could do something like they do with battle pets where there are some components or patterns you could get from an instance but you wouldn't need to defeat bosses to get to. That way it is still obtained without great difficulty. Items can come from vendors across the various zones and for those you'd "buy" the item and it would be "shipped" to your instanced residence where you could simply open the crate and your items are inside.

The new profession: Skills obtained would be various architectural styles for exterior and various decorative items for interior to provide a means to make everything you want. Have interlocking formulae so you could use a pair of patterns to make a third new one. Get as complex as needed - tons of depth to be mined. Skilling up is simply "do" akin to the current professions. None of this "make 15 of xxx" garbage to get ranks.

Gold sink: This would be an exceptional way to drain gold if they wanted to by having truly exorbitant items that serve no purpose other than to look at.

World seeming empty: Easy - don't permit the housing to be a rested area and it would get its own chat channel like when you go from a city to the countryside so there wouldn't be an incentive to hang around trying to drum up conversation or groups or whatever. No bankers or auctioneers. Do that and it forces players out into the world when they're not lounging in the housing or building/decorating it. Sure there will be some who'll hang out there anyway - that's already in the game today and it won't change. Mailboxes would be fine as they're plentiful already.

Player engagement: There are players out there who like this kind of direct hand in world building, however limited the scale would be. This could draw them either into or back to the game. That's the first step. The second is to have alluring enough content alongside to keep them there. This doesn't have to be a competition - there are plenty of pursuits in the game today that exist in harmony with the core concepts of pvp and instanced group activity. There is zero reason to believe housing couldn't also exist in harmony and it may actually grow the playerbase. Simply excluding it because there are other games that do this already won't achieve that - rather it explicitly excludes those players it might entice and in turn threatens the long-term success of a game that frankly after 16 years could use an infusion of new options. "New content" in the form of a dungeon or raid tier or zone isn't really new - it is the same treadmill that we've all been on but with new mechanics and a new coat of paint. Still, as noted there is no reason they can't do both if they sit down and think about it.

Future viability: Just as with all content after you go through it the first time you get to that decision point of "what next?" - this would be no different. As each expansion comes it typically introduces new architectural models which would self-infuse into as well as new items that can be obtained and used. The entire format would feed into itself, expanding organically. Players who start with apartment mode could transition to house mode. They can rebuild, tear down, etc. In house mode the space can expand to where they could essentially, if they wanted to, build complexes or even something as extensive as a city if they decided to devote that much time and resources to it. As the underlying tech evolves new construction concepts could also be rolled out giving players something to consider.

An underlying issue: How to save said instanced content? This isn't as clear. Unlike an existing instance nothing would truly be fixed to specific coordinates. Maybe some of the tech behind garrisons could be expanded upon since that had a degree of customization, however limited it was. Some sort of grid mapping may be needed which stores pointers to what was in that spot. Don't really know - other games do it so the solution is out there. The key is finding that solution.


There is a ton of possibility with the hopeful introduction of housing in the future. The time has come to shake things up a smidge. They're doing it to character builds for the first time since Wrath. They're changing the base UI for the first time since ever (the remodel of the base layout doesn't count, DF is a wholesale departure from the past). Keep evolving.

[uuuhname]

people constantly make player housing sound like final fantasy 14 end game content; where you're hanging out in a lounge or something. which, yeah obviously a lot of people like that laid back social aspect. but to me until this company isn't perpetually on fire, player housing seems like a lot of effort for something that isn't *really* content.

[kasuke06]

Well, there are games with housing, why not play those then? Maybe housing is not that interesting?

"hey guys, we could do this thing that would make our game appealing to a greater number of people and would therefore allow us to profit from them!"

"FUCK THAT! We hate money and would rather burn it than get additional players for our game while these other games have already torn chunks out of our market share!"

[Emziek]

I would personally perfer guild housing over individual player housing however alot of the intial work can be pulled out of the garrisons such as assets and basic plot allocations. The bulk of the development required would need to be put on adding mechanics, user interface and physics for placements of smaller objects.

[rrayy]

$2.2 billion in profits company (2020 alone) can *easily* afford to do both.

WoW itself (unless you think Blizz is lying to us) makes up a major portion of that profit. Therefore, they can give us a *lot* more content (including housing) and still be wildly profitable.

Stop accepting the implied nonsense that Blizz can only afford to do the handful of things that they do now.

Because WoW is the only game they make and they can spend whatever amount of money they want right? This strawman needs to stop because it is disingenuous. Wow has a budget. The more money you waste on housing the less you have for other content.

The only nonsense that people need to stop accepting is the notion that cost is no object. There is a cost and WoW devs are limited to the budget they are given.

[arkanon]

Well, isn't that objective? To some, housing could be useful, more useful than another raid tier?

So go play as game that has player housing, instead of raiding.

Why are some people so determined to change wow into something its not, rather than playing one of the many games that already caters to them?

If i want a sim experience in a racing game, i play a racing sim. If i want an arcade racing experience, i play an arcade racing game. What i dont do, is ask for forza horizon to change into a sim racer.

[rrayy]

"hey guys, we could do this thing that would make our game appealing to a greater number of people and would therefore allow us to profit from them!"

"FUCK THAT! We hate money and would rather burn it than get additional players for our game while these other games have already torn chunks out of our market share!"

"Hey guys, other games are telling their players to jump off bridges, so we should too".

Player housing is not the only way to appeal to more players. Lso, other games having something does not mean WoW should have it to. Wow had been profitable for 17 years ad counting. It does not need housing at all.

[arkanon]

"Hey guys, other games are telling their players to jump off bridges, so we should too".

Player housing is not the only way to appeal to more players. Lso, other games having something does not mean WoW should have it to. Wow had been profitable for 17 years ad counting. It does not need housing at all.

I agree with this - there are many other games, mmo and otherwise, which have elaborate player housing systems. If it is that important to someone, they have options. Now if wow had a good player housing system and it was removed / not continued, and players were asking for it back, thats a different situation, but it never has. I mean it had garrisons, but even they were not very well received.

[Biglog]

I'm not sure I'd hold my breath on player housing. We've been down this road before. Garrisons in Draenor were originally supposed to be Blizzard's answer to player housing, and during development they were going to be far more like housing and customizable than they ended up being at release. As development went on there were simply too many problems they ran into with phasing, the engine, etc. to make it possible.

So now saying they'll take another stab at it but that it will take at least a few expansions, I'd say I'm skeptical. We might end up eventually getting something more like alpha garrisons from wod that were more customizable, but even that was never really close to what players expect from housing in other games. At best it will be something much more watered down. And the fact that it would take 3 expansions when it would be 1 in any other game hints that Blizzard knows they are going to run into the same development issues as they did with garrisons in WoD when they had to scale back their original ideas.

[SoundOfGuns]

Well, there are games with housing, why not play those then? Maybe housing is not that interesting?

I mean i also dont find it useful, but i get why people want it. For the same reason they roleplay or transmog constantly. Its just part of the whole concept of customizing and expanding your characters identity i figure. A lot of people want it... So... more power to them if they get it.

[kasuke06]

"Hey guys, other games are telling their players to jump off bridges, so we should too".

Player housing is not the only way to appeal to more players. Lso, other games having something does not mean WoW should have it to. Wow had been profitable for 17 years ad counting. It does not need housing at all.

Wow has been bleeding out for so long that they stopped telling you all years ago. Blizzard has basically never innovated, merely cribbing other game's good ideas, and player housing is one of them. I mean for fuck's sake they straight lifted the mechanics and animations from GW2 for their "new" dragonflight mechanic.

Did Blizz have to stop selling WoW and discontinue their free trial to new people because they ran out of server space worldwide? Were they selling so many digital copies they couldn't generate new codes fast enough for people? No FFXIV, your main competition did. People complain about login ques on launch day, and then never again. FFXIV had "dont bother trying to play during your time zone's prime because you will be in queue for 4 hours then have to go to bed for work in the morning with another three hours of wait time" FOR A MONTH on the more populous servers after launch. This is what you're up against, a game literally so successful they have to stop selling it so the people can actually play it.

Now I'll grant you that it isn't the housing that sold millions of people on the game, but quite frankly, they don't have much for blizzard to steal in the ideas department. It's basically chocobos or housing, since their attempt at writing a mature, ongoing story came out like emo poetry written on a bathroom stall in excrement.

[Darkeon]

Indie devs can't afford to not focus on the mythic raiders for one single tier.

[Sugani]

Well, there are games with housing, why not play those then? Maybe housing is not that interesting?

Because they're not World of Warcraft?

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I'm not sure I'd hold my breath on player housing. We've been down this road before. Garrisons in Draenor were originally supposed to be Blizzard's answer to player housing, and during development they were going to be far more like housing and customizable than they ended up being at release. As development went on there were simply too many problems they ran into with phasing, the engine, etc. to make it possible.

So now saying they'll take another stab at it but that it will take at least a few expansions, I'd say I'm skeptical. We might end up eventually getting something more like alpha garrisons from wod that were more customizable, but even that was never really close to what players expect from housing in other games. At best it will be something much more watered down. And the fact that it would take 3 expansions when it would be 1 in any other game hints that Blizzard knows they are going to run into the same development issues as they did with garrisons in WoD when they had to scale back their original ideas.

Garrisons were poorly perceived because they were just way to powerful. Private herb farm, private ore mine, private banker, private auctioneer, you became a literal one man army. This isn't what people want from Player Housing. What they want is a visual representation of their achievements. A place to hang their hat and chill out.

[Lollis]

If Housing is such an important player driving feature, why did Wildstar die again? Why is Rift basically dead? Why is New World on its ass? Why has Archeage tanked?

People aren't playing FFXIV simply because of its fucking player housing (which by the way is pretty bad to begin with)