Home on the Barrens
by Amanda Rivera 
Oct 31st 2007 at 4:15PM
Ever since I first explored Stormwind and saw that huge instance portal behind bars in the Canal District, I've been waiting for the day that housing would be added to WoW. Oddly enough, I'm not the only one wishing we had a place to call our own. Anthony on Idle Chatter says that player housing has worked well in LotRO and SWG, and wants to see it implemented into WoW. He brings up the instanced housing districts as an idea, an idea that makes a huge amount of sense, considering the instance portals are already set up. He proposes that there are two solutions to the housing issue, guild housing and player housing. In this scenario each would be an alternative spot to hearth to, and in the case of the guild housing, one would be able to read the Trade Channel within your dwelling.
As much as I love the idea of creating my own house for my characters, the one thing I noticed about the housing in EQII for instance that I did not like was the solitude. I much prefer the supergroup base concept from City of Heroes, where more than one person can enjoy it. In my mind, I would love to see guild housing with real world locations, so that much like Anarchy Online, the PvP element comes in and you can siege an opposing faction's guild lair. Wouldn't it add an additional element of risk to know that when you flag for PvP your guild hall is flagged as well? There is a lot that can be done beyond the traditional "this is where I keep my stuff, and those trophies no one will ever see" sort of housing concept. What good is a trophy if you can't show it off to passersby?
Filed under: Virtual selves, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Erik Oct 31st 2007 4:22PM
UO (at least the Defiance servers) had great concepts to housing for players and/or guilds. From buying home charters, to even donating additional money to the server to customize your house, their ideas were great. My favorite part was the lack of an instance feel. If you ran out of a city, you were immediately greeted by houses in the fields. It made playing the game extremely fun, because the more you played, the more stuff you could get and craft and put in your house. I absolutely loved their concept of Housing, and I wish Blizz would incorporate some of their ideas into WoW.
Buckshot Oct 31st 2007 4:31PM
All great ideas, both personal and guild housing would be a welcome addition. Hell I ever had a house in Vanguard. There are more than enough cool item models to decorate almost any house.
Tim Hettler Oct 31st 2007 4:33PM
I don't really see what it would add to the game. Virtual life isn't like real life. Communication isn't tied to physical location so there's no real point in adding a place to "live". I guess the only incentive I could think of is if in your house you had an obscenely large "bank" to store items. But the amount of gold I imagine you'd need for a house (10,000 - 50,000?)
Truthfully, if you bought a "ranch" in the Barrens would you really ever go there?
Ahoni Oct 31st 2007 4:45PM
Whats the point of housing? So I can put crap in it? WoW has a bank. What else? To invite people in to see my stuff? Why exactly?
Todd Oct 31st 2007 4:48PM
If guild housing became a reality, I think it would be a beautiful idea for Blizzard to implement a series of quest chains which opened up ports to other faction-related cities.
I say a quest because I don't think this is something that should be available so easy. Knowing Blizzard however, a large sum in gold will probably be utilized instead.
Minnow Oct 31st 2007 4:59PM
I've seen a lot of MMOS that had Housing but no-one really went there after they either got one or after the guild/a friend got one. If Blizzard would implement it, they should give players a reason to come into the house and invite friends over.
Heilig Oct 31st 2007 5:04PM
Player housing is not such a great idea, i think, because of the solitude it implies, but guild halls are a great idea. You could have trophies of each major kill. Mag's Head, Gruul's Eye, kael's Green Orbs, Illidan's swords, you name it. Have a way to post screenshots over the mantle or whatever. It would be a social area, especially if it had portals like shatt and vendors/repair NPC's.
Minnow Oct 31st 2007 5:04PM
And to anyone who have played Elder Scrolls: Oblivion - Who wouldn't want to own a castle like the ones in that game? :P
RogueJedi86 Oct 31st 2007 5:05PM
SWG had player housing too. Very cool in that. All items have a physical appearance when dropped, and players could move items around in a house very easily, adjusting heights, rotation, etc. So players would make beautiful statues/displays in houses using dozens of everyday items(like the SWG equivalent of Lockboxes).
And houses could be placed anywhere(terrain restrictions excepting) on most of the planets(2 or 3 high-level planets excepting). The most popular NPC cities on each planet would have a literal ring of player housing around them, where players had vendors selling their wares. But then, that was greatly benefited by SWG's robust crafting system(that put WoW to shame).
Lord of the Rings Online's new housing system sounds perfect for WoW to steal/copy/imitate.
The topic speaks of multiple instance portals for placing housing, but I only know of the locked gate in Stormwind. Where are others? I can't think of any on Horde side.
Angelus Oct 31st 2007 5:08PM
If you're even a moderate role player, where do you sleep? My avatar sleeps under the bridge in Lower City.
Many people log out with their character just standing in an inn. If you RP though, you find a place to rest your head.
That's the reason why. For some people they dont care, for some people they do.
Krick Oct 31st 2007 5:14PM
In LOTRO, you essentially "rent" your house and land by paying a monthly fee within the game. If you stop paying, your house disappears. I don't know what happens to your stuff inside it. This precludes people from temporarily suspending their accounts and then coming back to the game at a later date. It also encourages guild "frat houses" where the guild leaders have to charge the guild members dues in order to pay the rent.
Personally, I don't see the point. If I wanted to play The Sims, I'd play The Sims. I have a bank for my stuff. I don't need a virtual doll house.
...
Krick
http://www.tankadin.com
Milktub Oct 31st 2007 5:30PM
If they implemented housing, I'll roll on a RP server. But I don't see the point in buying housing in a normal server.
Tristan Oct 31st 2007 5:32PM
The problem with housing in Wow is that people are taken out of the cities because of it... The reason why there is no AH in shatt is because nobody but lowbies would populate Azeroth.
I support the idea of a guild hall, it would help knit guild members closer. Plus it'd be neat if the guild hall was a place to display your guild progress. Adding a new trinket for every downed boss would be nice.
But, beyond a gathering place, i think that a guild hall shouldn't do much else... maybe ports to your favorite instances or city, maybe a dueling ring with some heals for after the fight... each carrot tied firmly to a stick (quest not cash)
I would avoid repair/vendors, that would make one less reason for players to visit the city and i am pretty sure that is the main reason why something like this hasn't been implemented...
Guild halls should grant solitude... a good time to discuss without being spammed with general or trade chat... if you wanna engage in trade, go to the city
It'd be a place to invite prospective recruits to let em know what your guild is up to... only guildies and people in parties with guildies could enter...
Oneiromancer Oct 31st 2007 5:40PM
"As much as I love the idea of creating my own house for my characters, the one thing I noticed about the housing in EQII for instance that I did not like was the solitude."
Er...at least back at launch, in EQ2 you could enter anyone's house and visit, although only people on a certain list could make any changes. I know that today, many people still sell items from their homes (buying directly from someone means you don't have to pay the broker fees, the seller gets the same amount regardless). They might have changed how the permissions to enter a home work, I suppose...I haven't bothered with that in the limited time I've played recently. And guild halls are a big part of EQ2...
In general, and this includes WoW of course, I think that but individual player housing is pretty pointless without a way to personalize it. But guild halls can be a lot of fun. The suggestion to be able to hearth to the guild hall is a good one, and to be able to be in the trade channel. Other options are having private bankers and AH reps, and vendors/repairers...but there are pros and cons to all of those. And it will probably cost a decent amount of gold, and with all the complaining from the guild bank costs, that won't go over well. Oh well...there's a price for anything worth having. ;)
Blau Oct 31st 2007 6:49PM
I am also going to be the devil's advocate.
I agree with Tristan 100%. All homes would do is depopulate the cities and make it a far less social game. WoW is popular because of this social aspect.
I've played FFXI for a pretty long time and I've come to favor the way WoW is set up. Maybe implement housing on RP only servers?
Matt Nov 6th 2007 5:30PM
I have played Tons of different MMO's from SWG, Vanguard, WoW, LOTRO, COH/COV, and honestly i love the idea of housing, in SWG it was a huge thing, to have your guild get large enough to have its own city on a planet somewhere, with a travel point on it. Unfortunately WoW is one step behiend in that it would HAVE to be instanced housing, otherwise the questing ground of the barrens and mulgore would be crowded to all hell with houses...also GW had the instanced Guild Hall which was cool, as you could have vendors, repair guys, trainers, ect in there...imagine a guild hall where everyone could hearth to (with a 0 cooldown Hearthstone) get their arrows, bullets, reagents, repairs, and possibly practice PVP with a dueling hall of some sort...sounds to me like id spend as much time in the guild hall as in the actual PVE world environment, also this would add so much content for Role players, Please blizzard, copy LOTRO and GW and give us instanced Guild halls, that we can pay for vendors, portals to main cities, trainers, and duel halls, It would bring a whole new element to WoW and more people...now GET TO WORK!!! LoLz
Merus Oct 31st 2007 8:05PM
I doubt it'll ever happen. Blizzard seem intent on keeping the 'theme park' nature of WoW intact - no permanent player changes.
Amanda Oct 31st 2007 8:48PM
Solo player housing is no fun.
In FFXI, you could jazz up your house w/ event items, 10 million gil queen sized beds, and everything...but no one but you could go in it. What's the fun in that?
If you go to that site you featured on a topic about secret zones, you'll see there are different lvls of housing. I believe that if there is to be player housing, you should be able to invite more people, the bigger the house gets. That way there can be RP events, and you can show off your works.
Guild housing would be awesome in PvP zones, but there's really not that much room... Unless they made a way for guilds to send out challanges cross faction, and within faction, to port them to a sort of, larger arena. Then the guilds could battle it off, and win points towards spiffing up their guild halls w/ large meeting rooms, or snazzy trophys.
Eclipsaa Nov 1st 2007 3:52AM
Personally i loved the EQ2 housing system, get to choose where you live, allow people to viset and still make it a custom home and location. I would hate to see houses pop up everywhere and personally i like having a place of my own.
Caribbean Nov 2nd 2007 6:22AM
Two words......HOUSE PARTY!