Here's how to do player housing

[Echo of Soul]

The fact that they still talk about wanting to do housing as they don't consider even having started it?

Yeah sure but where did they say that? Do you have a blue post or an interview or something where they say that it was a research project and didn't really count as housing. I'd like to read/listen to it myself.

[Mecheon]

But you should be old enough to remember WoD times - you know the shitstorm - where people would complain about how empty the world felt(everybody were AFK in thier garrison - only zoning out to enter a raid)? Is it going to workout this time(somehow)?

Do remember trade chat was only put in the garrisons after we lost Karabor and Bladespire, because we all pretty much said "No we don't want to hang out in a city that is backing onto a PvP battleground"

Don't have trade chat or things making housing self-sufficient in the house themselves, forcing you to have to go out to the world to do other stuff. Cements the house as the "You go here when you're not doing other things" place and not the "You do your garrison chores then wait around for raids/challenge modes"

[glowpipe]

And where will i have my armory where i can display armor and weapons? where is my crafting den? where is my wall of triumph where i mount the heads of bosses ive killed etc?

We don't need a inn room. We need a House we can do whatever we want with, and not something as limited as the garrisons

[HansOlo]

Do remember trade chat was only put in the garrisons after we lost Karabor and Bladespire, because we all pretty much said "No we don't want to hang out in a city that is backing onto a PvP battleground"

Don't have trade chat or things making housing self-sufficient in the house themselves, forcing you to have to go out to the world to do other stuff. Cements the house as the "You go here when you're not doing other things" place and not the "You do your garrison chores then wait around for raids/challenge modes"

Not sure what's going on here.

But Ogrimmar and other places were pretty much empty in WoD. It has a big impact on how alive the game feels - like it or not - you will make a trade.

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And where will i have my armory where i can display armor and weapons? where is my crafting den? where is my wall of triumph where i mount the heads of bosses ive killed etc?

We don't need a inn room. We need a House we can do whatever we want with, and not something as limited as the garrisons

What exactly do you want with a house in WoW? You want to put the jailers head on the wall? Show off pets in a cage? What is that you missing out on?

Sell me the idea.

[Steelangel]

But it still died. If player housing was a great as everyone says, the game should be going.

Wildstar died because the devs were absolutely not competent to keep the game going once the first rough patch hit, they fucked up the rerelease, and the game was aimed at a very narrow population of players for endgame content.

The housing was the -best- part of the game by miles, and is still probably industry standard for player housing in games.

[tomten]

It's considered to be bad idea to start from scratch, because game has years of content, that would be scrapped. Better idea - to use non-binary design, i.e. to start implementing housing gradually. Current Blizzards' motto is - we do it or we don't. Problem is - housing is too big thing to implement it as one solid feature. So if we won't start some day - we will never have it.

You have garrison, their failed attempt. They ain't gonna do a second. Just how it is and frankly? Housing doesn't even make sense in an MMO to begin with.

[Mecheon]

Not sure what's going on here.

But Ogrimmar and other places were pretty much empty in WoD. It has a big impact on how alive the game feels - like it or not - you will make a trade.

Okay, so, back in the WoD beta, there were supposed to be the two cities (Karabor and Bladespire). They got scrapped and we got Ashran instead. Folks complained about this.

And a few patches in the Garrisons proper came along. The original plan was that the garrisons weren't supposed to have access to Trade chat, forcing you back to the cities. This changed during the beta around the same time as the Ashran pushback came through. Which, well, in turn resulted in the WoD situation where there was no reason to leave the garrison.

Do note at the time it was early Ashran which was... Garrison buildings slapped around an island. Early Ashran was not good. So the pushback was understandable

What exactly do you want with a house in WoW? You want to put the jailers head on the wall? Show off pets in a cage? What is that you missing out on?

Sell me the idea.

I mean, you got it there. Stack the Jailer's action figure form up in the corner. Doing your house up like a comfy nice place. Put floating lamps in place to create a jumping puzzle. Creating a shrine to your favourite minor character. Basement sacrificial circle to resummon Ragnaros. Getting rare items from raids and achievements (Like, say, the few decorations we have for the garrison like the Gul'dan v Khadgar statue for AotC) you can put around your house to show off. Have somewhere you can just go to and unwind after your dailies to just, wind back and unwind. Give yourself an excuse to head back into the world to hunt down more recipies.

Bragging rights and a place that's uniquely Yours to tie you into the world more

[Lochton]

Yeah sure but where did they say that? Do you have a blue post or an interview or something where they say that it was a research project and didn't really count as housing. I'd like to read/listen to it myself.

Right so, first of all, good morning/day/evening/night.

Secondly, they are truly speaking as if Garrison were just a stepping stone, and accepted it wasn't direct the housing people wanted, or they wanted.

Garrisons were partly conceived as a way of incorporating the concept of player housing found in other games into World of Warcraft, but in a very Warcraft way.[7] The developers had discussed the concept of adding player housing for "a long time" prior to Warlords, but wanted to find a way to have the feature change the way people played the game, rather than merely providing a cosmetic addition.[7]

Thus, the Garrison was born but not as an accepted player housing but as an attempt, and they have come to realize it wasn't as simple as they thought. They realized that they had only just started the foundation of player housing. We can read through old notes that the Garrison's system started out in Mists of Pandaria with the Sunsong Ranch, and then upgraded from there to Garrisons, and Garrisons from there is just another stone for reaching higher.

Player housing is topic that comes up a ton around the team. Tons of support for it across the community and within the team, it's something many of us would love ourselves. Putting together any of the package of features for an expansion, it's a mix of what thematically suits the expansion, what's going to appeal to different types of players, but also what would be required to deliver that feature at the level that players expect and deserve, and what would we have to give up to make that happen... and player housing is a big one. It's a big project, a big undertaking, and I would argue that if we were to do it, it would probably have to span multiple expansions - it's a large enough feature just from the art. We saw that from doing the Garrisons in Warlords; frankly due to resources, we were limited to offering only the Alliance and Horde garrisons, while people were like "I'm a Blood Elf, I want cool Silvermoon architecture in my garrison, why can't I build that?" That was the original "it would cost you a raid tier" joke, but actually it was kind of true - this is how many thousands of hours it would take to make that.

That's what player housing has to be, if and when we make it happen, and so it's something taht, you know the dream is still alive, something we want to do, but they're not something we're going to be able to do for dragon flight.

(Source)

So, with the above mention, we can clearly see they are admitting that the Garrison isn't reaching the wished level for implementation of player housing.

[WowIsDead64]

You have garrison, their failed attempt. They ain't gonna do a second. Just how it is and frankly? Housing doesn't even make sense in an MMO to begin with.

Garrison isn't hosing. It's more like personal progression system. Same as Covenant sanctum for example. But with instanced zone, tied to it.

[Lochton]

Wildstar died because the devs were absolutely not competent to keep the game going once the first rough patch hit, they fucked up the rerelease, and the game was aimed at a very narrow population of players for endgame content.

The housing was the -best- part of the game by miles, and is still probably industry standard for player housing in games.

Can't be echoed more. The developers had a fountain of possibilities but fell short when they stumbled. It was very niche, very directed to a select group, very forced upon as well, "WAY TO GO CUPCAKE!" and they tried to sell the idea that Wildstar was to be - a bit like how people trying to sell Classic - meant to be "hard again". Housing was one of the things they did right, and it was truly disconnected, you didn't need it at all but you could do a lot of insane things with it, many found entertainment with it, and many find entertainment with housing in other MMORPGs as well, not just a minority group like roleplayers, housing, I believe when looking at FFXIV, SWTOR, ESO, and ArcheAge have a massive following of non-roleplayers.

Just like World of Warcraft indirectly set standards to how some things should be done, so did Wildstar with their version of housing, though, not many have followed suit on that due to the freedom within such a size is a bit too much of a bite for them in that side of the scale (Instances), in the other side of the scale you have ArcheAge, once more, a massive and brilliant use and entertainment, they are on the other side of the scale because all their housing is on the map, directly in the open, everyone can see and visit - most other MMORPGs waltzes in between with a tip to one side or the other.

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You have garrison, their failed attempt. They ain't gonna do a second. Just how it is and frankly? Housing doesn't even make sense in an MMO to begin with.

Blizzard admitted that Garrison basically never reached the level of actual housing but is more of a stepping stone. And yes, housing does make sense in an MMORPG, especially when all your competitors have it already, haha.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I will never understand why WoW players are so vehemently opposed to a highly requested feature that is ubiquitous to the genre being added to the game. If you don't care about player housing then it's addition is of no detriment to you.

[Lochton]

I will never understand why WoW players are so vehemently opposed to a highly requested feature that is ubiquitous to the genre being added to the game. If you don't care about player housing then it's addition is of no detriment to you.

I can, with a pinch, understand if there is a fear of a second Garrison but even Blizzard has come to the realization that their Garrison hardly counts for housing. It should of course be completely disconnected and not be able to be tied in with progression content.

[WowIsDead64]

Wildstar died because the devs were absolutely not competent to keep the game going once the first rough patch hit, they fucked up the rerelease, and the game was aimed at a very narrow population of players for endgame content.

The housing was the -best- part of the game by miles, and is still probably industry standard for player housing in games.

I played Wildstar. Dropped it due to lack of casual endgame content. Leveling was fun though. I've said it many times. Wildstar was about that "TBC was the best xpack ever made" myth. There was vocal minority back then, that whined about casual WotLK killing Wow and MMO genre as whole and asked for return back to true hardcore MMO.

[Lochton]

I played Wildstar. Dropped it due to lack of casual endgame content. Leveling was fun though. I've said it many times. Wildstar was about that "TBC was the best xpack ever made" myth.

Well, Wildstar had a lot of the old WoW team as well, and they were reaching for the same argument as Classic, "Make the game hard again". Wildstar had indeed no end-game for casuals, except for the housing. Once you reached the end of the line, you could just spam content for good enough gear for raiding/PvP and that was it.

[WowIsDead64]

Well, Wildstar had a lot of the old WoW team as well, and they were reaching for the same argument as Classic, "Make the game hard again". Wildstar had indeed no end-game for casuals, except for the housing. Once you reached the end of the line, you could just spam content for good enough gear for raiding/PvP and that was it.

It was nonsense back in old days, when Wow was about LFD badge runs and PUG raids. It was standard back then and therefore if some game failed to provide such content - then it was doomed to die. Major problem is - Wow goes the same way now. Yeah, non-soloable dailies were nonsense back in that days. But today we have the same non-soloable rares, so content is pre-programmed to die, when activity drops, as there is some unfair system there, that increases spawn rate, when there are more players in location. It's already felt. I guess, many players have switched to WotLK Classic, so spawn rate is non-existent in ZM even during rush hours.

[Nymrohd]

Sad thing, because of sites like this one, Blizz simply stopped sharing numbers with WoD. We will never know if our realm is full because it is full, or is it full because 4 shards were opened and now neighboring servers are blending in. Even if every server in the login list had 40k people online, we'd have to prove 100 realms are packed full and not just labeled "Full" by the login screen.

Please. AS if they'd care about people whining about subs. They stopped reporting them because they looked bad to investors and didn't even matter much in a post-token paradigm nor where they indicative of revenue.

[Relapses]

Please. AS if they'd care about people whining about subs. They stopped reporting them because they looked bad to investors and didn't even matter much in a post-token paradigm nor where they indicative of revenue.

I don't even think they stopped because it "looked bad." Why on earth would they share a 5 million sub loss if they were ashamed? They could have just as easily switched the very quarter that the losses happened and we'd have never known. The reason they stopped reporting them is because WoW stopped being Blizzard's only bag. Up to WoD they really only had WoW so it made sense for them to share subscriber numbers as a way to show consistent revenue stream. Post-WoD they have D3, HotS, Hearthstone and OverWatch so it didn't make as much sense to report the subscriber numbers any more. (Nevermind the fact that the sub numbers never meant anything to players anyway since Blizzard never shared new customer generation or attrition rates.)

[Nymrohd]

I will never understand why WoW players are so vehemently opposed to a highly requested feature that is ubiquitous to the genre being added to the game. If you don't care about player housing then it's addition is of no detriment to you.

A decent number of WoW players is opposed to everything about this game because they only care and only really play their instanced content. THey don't care about the world (they are annoyed they have to interact with it), they don't care about the story. ANything that diverts resources away from raids or these days, dungeons, is wasted effort to them. Heck anything that provides progression to anyone but them is wasted as well.

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I don't even think they stopped because it "looked bad." Why on earth would they share a 5 million sub loss if they were ashamed? They could have just as easily switched the very quarter that the losses happened and we'd have never known. The reason they stopped reporting them is because WoW stopped being Blizzard's only bag. Up to WoD they really only had WoW so it made sense for them to share subscriber numbers as a way to show consistent revenue stream. Post-WoD they have D3, HotS, Hearthstone and OverWatch so it didn't make as much sense to report the subscriber numbers any more. (Nevermind the fact that the sub numbers never meant anything to players anyway since Blizzard never shared new customer generation or attrition rates.)

They stopped reporting subs because they introduced the Token. This completely changed the relation between revenue and subs.

[Relapses]

They stopped reporting subs because they introduced the Token. This completely changed the relation between revenue and subs.

I'm sure that had something to do with it but they stopped reporting in Q3 2015 and the token was introduced in Q1 2015.

[Nymrohd]

I'm sure that had something to do with it but they stopped reporting in Q3 2015 and the token was introduced in Q1 2015.

Probably took a full quarter for accounting to get finance to agree