The downfalls of player-created housing
by Mike Schramm 
Jul 10th 2007 at 2:00PM
We unfortunately don't know much about what's coming next, but we do know one thing that's scheduled to show up, at least before the next expansion: some sort of housing. All the Blue hints point to guild housing, but player housing is an idea that's been tossed around as well. There's just one problem to MMO housing, however. As Hardcore Casual points out, it often becomes a ghost town.Back when I played Dark Age of Camelot, I remember visiting the guild housing area only once (the guild I joined was mostly lowbies, and we never had enough cash to buy property of our own), and it was a strange experience-- acres upon acres of customized buildings, all completely and totally empty as far as I could see. There were a few NPCs around (DAoC had a feature where you could have NPCs stand outside your house to sell your crafts while you were gone), but otherwise it was more like an abandoned trailer park than anything else. As HC says, the "IDEA" of housing is great-- you can have your own place to hang out, show off, and build to your heart's content. But in practice, most players would rather be exploring the world Blizzard designed then stuck in a small room that they made themselves.
Now, the obvious solution for this is instancing, and in fact, Blizzard has already foreseen this-- there are currently instance portals in a few cities that have been rumored to serve as either player or guild housing. If instances were used as housing, we'd just all own the same apartment in Stormwind. But you have to balance that against the other feature of housing-- actually showing it off. Wandering around the houses in DAoC was a kind of (lonely) fun, if only to see what other people had created, and with just an instance, all you'd get to see is the inside. It'll be interesting to see how Blizzard balances player-created content (which can sometimes be boring or ugly), with their own interesting design.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Blizzard, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mike Jul 10th 2007 2:14PM
I played DAoC for over 3 yrs and I enjoyed having my own house, as well as we had a large guild house. I could do my crafting in there and had a few NPC with crafting supplies and could also rez to there. Overall I would like to see player housing in Wow.
Budo Jul 10th 2007 2:15PM
What I would really like to see is a Guild Achievement feature in Guild housing. A "memento" of your achievements in game (Ony kills, Nef down, etc) that all the the guild can work on creating and adding to.
native Jul 10th 2007 2:22PM
i'd like player housing. i do a lot of soloing and if i could access my bank from there and maybe have an armor rack (druid for teh excessive armor) i'd be plenty satisfied with that.
navalpha Jul 10th 2007 2:24PM
Very true... i haven't thought about it that way!
Whats the point of having a house in a game? Hell, what is the point of having a house in REAL LIFE? To shelter you from the elements, store your possessions, have a place to eat and sleep, and a permanent residence where poeple can reach you.
In an mmo:
The elements don't matter.
Your possessions are in the bank, in your backpack.
You can eat/sleep/logout anywhere.
Your mail is available at any mailbox.
The only thing i can think of is using it as a guild hall. Now, if you could do all the things you do in a real house apply to individual housing, it would matter.
For example, your rested XP when logged out could be MUCH higher if you stayed at home then if you were to stay at an inn or camping outside.
If you were to eat any kind of food inside your house, you could have a buff that would last a long time (like 2h) even if the food doesnt provide a buff normally.
You could use it as a second bank for gear and weapons, like a big wardrobe, something tanks have been asking for a very long time.
And a mailbox just for you.
Thats about it. If blizzard can MAKE you WANT to go back home every day before logging out, it could be worth it. But it would always be YOUR safe haven, not everyone's.
oh and also, it should be far from everyone else,like the auction house or a flight path to get right back in the action.
Wreckless Jul 10th 2007 2:24PM
Guild and player housing is a waste of time and effort imo. I'd rather see new pvp and pve content developed instead.
Quoi Jul 10th 2007 2:29PM
I just want guild housing. A physical bank, a trophy hall, a meeting room, that's about it. And you could invite people into your guild home for a limited amount of time.
Also, a sparring room and maybe a reagent vendor would be cool too.
CursedLight Jul 10th 2007 2:42PM
What if guild halls/housing entrances were all linked to the major cities? For example, I need a guildie to do an enchant for me, but he's all the ways back in SW and I'm in outland. Sure, I can port to SW or shatt and get a port to another jump. Then I'd have to worry about getting back to where I was questing. But what if we decided, "hey, let's just meet in the guild hall." Guildie performs the enchant and we're back on our merry separate ways. Sounds like a lot of potential. And you definitely don't have to go searching and remembering where repair and reagent vendors are in every cities.
therationalpi Jul 10th 2007 2:46PM
I've played games that have had both. Player housing was on a very small RP-only UO server, so there was plenty of room for everyone. Because everyone was an RPer, the houses we very well decorated and fit the characters, but the game-mechanic value was irrelevant because of the audience.
Guild housing was on City of Heroes, where the super groups had their own bases. I thought that those worked out pretty well, actually. You could use them to portal around from place to place, you could craft there, there was a guild bank.
If it were instanced, like I think it will be, then I think the guild housing will be useful as long as you can craft, access your bank, purchase certain items like reagents, portal in using mage portals, set your hearth there, portal out to specific places, have a trophy hall, and have a guild bank. Each of those things could cost a certain amount extra, but if it could serve as a replacement for going to the city than I think they will serve a purpose.
Paul Jul 10th 2007 3:06PM
if it ends up being player and/or guild housing they could make it so that people in your party all go the house of the first person to walk through the instance portal.
Thrombus Jul 10th 2007 3:12PM
I loved my house in DAOC. Maybe you needed a better guild, dude. My medium sized guild had two villages that all of our individual houses and our guild house were in. People coordinated so that this guy had vendor x, this other guy had vendor y and so on. Guild house had a public vault for people to take and put drops into. Was very fun and useful.
PyroAmos Jul 10th 2007 3:24PM
wow wasn't designed for houses, everything is readily available everywhere. TBH I don't think it has any place in WoW, they'd be better spending their time d3ealing with real issues like updating ZG, AQ20, AQ40, MC, BWL and NAXX for lvl 70 so the best raid content in the game isn't wasted anymore, putting in a few new 20-50 instances, and a couple real (more than walk in, kill 3 bosses, walk out, no story, no significance, no point) 70 instances.
If you want a house you can always go play second life after all. This is a fantasy rpg, not a social experiment.
Savok Jul 10th 2007 3:26PM
Age of Conan is going to have Guild Cities, which with work will basically have anything you could ever want in them. Not to mention the bonuses they provide and being attacked by NPCs so everyone will have to be ready to defend it.
Then again, these are the same people who have a "drunken bar brawl" PvP minigame.
Guild/player housing/cities work wonders if the developers are clever enough.
Richard Jul 10th 2007 4:32PM
As a guild officer, I am unlikely to spend time building a guild area much more than a simple inn/tavern/bank/vendor area where you could meet, access the bank, stock up a few essentials. It could be a rally point before raids, etc.
I like the idea of it being available in any major city, ie. go into your Guild Hall and presto, you have access to the services.
Having a simple guild bank with uniform rules would be a bonus, one that wouldn't require a person to manage or add more drama.
Cosmic Jul 10th 2007 3:41PM
Here's an idea I read on the suggestion forum that I think strikes a perfect balance between utility, player-create content, and simplicity.
Have instanced Guild Housing areas. Make the Guild Hall standard. Then allow players to addon to it with customized structures. Though the addon structures could be cookie cutter, the guild can design their own implementation of those structures.
I also like the idea of implementing Guild Housing in a way akin to town upgrades in Warcraft 1-3. Have the Guild Hall be relatively easy to get, but have it be really basic and unimpressive. Then allow the guild to do a series of turn-in quests in order to upgrade it to the next level. Sound good?
kryptfiend Jul 10th 2007 3:44PM
player housing would be the best idea yet! especialy if you could buy/ find the mats and build it yourself. customizing the way it looks entirely, whether it be in elwynn forest or on top of some random mountain.
Quoi Jul 10th 2007 3:43PM
Hey PyroAmos, some people would say that they don't care about raids and instances, and that Blizzard should instead develop better PvP content. My point here is, different people like different things. If you want to pay my 15 bucks a month, I'll play the way you want me to.
If it wasn't a social experiment, it wouldn't be an MMO.
Rob Jul 10th 2007 3:45PM
You know what would be hugely useful? A guild bank accessable by all guild members. My current guild has a toon called 'guild bank', but stuff never comes out of there, since the guild leader needs to be on to do so (and he hardly ever is nowadays), plus we don't even have an idea of whats on there (see above for reason). Attempts to use an addon have failed (see above, no time). So basically our guild is somewhat not so useful. It's gotten to the point that we more or less police ourselves without a guild leader.
Pandemona Jul 10th 2007 4:03PM
I think FFXI did the best job with player housing anyway - instanced houses which served as storage and gold sinks based on the furniture you create/quest/buy. The added benefit, apart from added bank space, was the ability to gain character buffs based the types of furniture used. Also, questing in order to allow you to exit your house in different areas of the city made travel a bit easier to handle.
Enter your home in the mage district of SW, but need to smelt ore to make some JC rings? No problem - zone out in the dwarven district. Granted, the cities were bigger in FFXI and you couldn't ride mounts inside cities, but you get my drift.
Urthona Jul 10th 2007 4:31PM
Guild housing = good idea
Player housing = bad idea
Cosmic Jul 10th 2007 5:18PM
@17:
I like that idea. I am concerned that guild housing would diminish the importance of the city's services if the devs allow instanced Guild Housing to duplicate those services. A good trade off to not having all of the crafting stations, flight masters, profession trainers, talent givers, etc. inside your instanced area would be easy to access portals to all of those stations within the city.
I'm maintaining a wiki page on this subject please post here:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Player_housing