The Daily Quest; Of Mage lore, Elemental builds and Player Housing speculation
by Dan O'Halloran 
Mar 10th 2009 at 3:00PM
- Foofy has posted part 3 of her How To Moonkin video covering Idols and Enchants.
- CriticalQQ is exploring the major lore character of Azeroth that are Mages.
- The Thunderstorm blog has a new guide to speccing Elemental for Shaman.
- Blessing of Kings has a prediction about who will be the big winners and losers with the new Dual Spec system.
- The Druid Team has been writing a series of on-going posts detailing how they see Player Housing working in WoW. They have designed housing for many major starting cities as well as for Crafting, complete with floorplans.
- Part 1 - Stormwind and Thunderbluff
- Part 2 - Personal mailboxes, vendors and more
- Part 3 - Darnassus and Silvermoon
- Part 4 - Secondary profession housing items
- Part 5 - Orgrimmar
- Part 6 - Gathering professions housing items
Filed under: Druid, Shaman, Odds and ends, News items, Enchants, The Daily Quest
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Moonduh Mar 10th 2009 3:03PM
I really like the How To Balance videos. I think the first one is the best.
FifthDream Mar 10th 2009 3:12PM
Articles on "player housing": almost like WoW fanfiction!
peagle Mar 10th 2009 3:43PM
I like how he is against Blizzards current housing portal location - conveniently near the trade district. Instead proposing one way over by the cathedral against the far wall of the city. Yep, total win there.
bundee Mar 10th 2009 4:22PM
What a waste of time. I can fantasize about all sorts of crap, but making articles about that doesn't make them any more feasible.
Arashikou Mar 10th 2009 4:55PM
Wow, harsh crowd.
It IS fanfiction-y, though I don't mean that in a derogatory way; rather, it resembles fan-fiction because they both take something created by someone else and take it in a different direction. And, since imagination is freely available to all, this usually comes commensurate with a fairly informal tone, which the series definitely takes.
I went in rather expecting that to be the case - I mean, it IS a user-generated proposal for how something purely hypothetical would work. It didn't bill itself as an in-depth analysis of game mechanics or a tip guide. So I got out of it what I expected: fanfiction-y fantasizing on how a hypothetical, "wouldn't-it-be-cool-if" feature might work.
And is that so wrong? Is it not possible for the purpose of the article to be just to fantasize? As a natural extension of that question: Is it wrong to post fanfiction, fan-proposals, or other fan-wankery? Obviously the author thinks it's good, and statistically speaking, that suggests other people will enjoy it as well. (The comments on that site bear this out, if you haven't checked it out.)
Granted - they do set a foot beyond the boundary of pure fantasy by introducing the series as an attempt to show Blizz how easy it would be to design player housing, and to that end I think they're being naive. But I don't think that detracts from the overall pleasure that they and their readers derived from this fantasy trip. And it's certainly not worth tearing a whole article series down over that one conceit.
That said, I do agree with Peagle's assessment that The Druid Team's location choices are failing to win me over in most cases, often following either some inscrutable or ill-explained logic (why is it bad for the housing to be "too close to the Old Town"?) or the logic of "well, this is the only unused space I could find in town," which is flawed since, as Stormwind Harbor has shown, Blizz isn't against revising the layout of a city a little if they need more room.
But I thought some of the other content was quite good, such as the review of each race's architecture and how the various sizes and shapes of building already in the game could give rise to player houses. I never really thought about how Blizz had such a regimented architecture setup.
Overall, I don't particularly care whether player housing gets implemented as I'm rather bad at that sort of thing, so I don't think I'm quite in the target audience for this series. I found it good, but not great, as it didn't touch me personally. But seriously, guys, there's no need to be so harsh on it for being what it is. No need to tramp on their fantasizing, dreaming, and hoping for its own sake.
Geo Lara Mar 10th 2009 3:48PM
I've tried player housing in other RPG's (hell even Pokémon on Gameboy had player housing- "secret hideouts" I think they were called) and I didn't see the point. If Player housing comes to WoW I will quit the game.
If I wanted to pay the SIMS, I would do so.
Remen Mar 10th 2009 3:58PM
The only plus I see to player housing is an ability to show off relics from the different dugeons you've cleared (from VC to 25 man Naxx) and other "trinkets" based around completed achievements. Aside from that I don't need to build myself a "grown up doll house". But man it would be cool to get deco items to put in a house every time you down the final boss of a dungeon. /stroke e-peen
MrBlue Mar 10th 2009 3:56PM
You are aware that if there was player housing you wouldn't have to use it. That's like a PVP player saying that Ulduar will make them quit, it won't affect you if you don't use it.
Liel Mar 10th 2009 3:58PM
If you don't see the point then why would you quit?
JustSomeGuy Mar 10th 2009 4:14PM
Blizz-
Please don't put in player housing. That would be... quite lame.
Tell the people requesting it to /logoff, and go play with their dollies.
bundee Mar 10th 2009 4:25PM
This! I have a difficult enough time explaining this game to other grown ups without sounding like a complete moron. Gearing up sounds like too much like "dress up" for the uninitiated, and having player housing makes it sound more and more like a "lets play house" game. No thanks.
Arashikou Mar 10th 2009 4:59PM
I've often wondered if one of the reasons hunters are so popular isn't because of what you just pointed out, Bundee. That people can relate the real world to "buying a better gun" better than "getting better clothing."
Liel Mar 10th 2009 8:44PM
Yes because playing a game with an avatar changing clothes the more you play is so different than playing with dolls.
JL Mar 10th 2009 6:42PM
I think a better idea for player housing would be guild airships. They could release them next expansion if they reconfigure azeroth to allow flyers. The airships could have all the stuff these guys were talkin bout including mailboxes, banks, innkeepers, guards, vendors, proffesion shit. They would half to stay at a same alltittude to prevent camping and they could be attacked by other faction players. if it gets destroyed, u could go rebuild it by talking to the goblins at undermine for a nominal fee.
Kar On E Mar 10th 2009 6:42PM
Though I'm not fully convinced by most of the arguments in the article on Player Housing, I think the author is onto something good when they talk about how to implement gathering professions. I would love to have an Herb Garden that I could use for inscription mats.
Also, I've not heard a lot of good arguments against it, other than possibly development time and server space. For those saying it'd make the game seem more like the Sims and a child's toy, I ask about all of the things we already have that make it seem that way: Barber Shops, Critters, Dresses/Tuxes, Dances and Dance Studios (still coming last I heard), poop quests, etc. Is Player/Guild Housing going to make the game seem more like a child's toy than most any of those?
I think that guild halls would be a great compromise to this issue. I've heard almost nothing in the arguments for Player Housing that couldn't be done in a guild hall with players having their own rooms (herb gardens could be added, critter areas, item racks). Plus, this would add a nice opportunity for PvP anyhow...and just imagine how wild it would be if your guild could capture certain bosses (maybe making a copy of 3 or so of them) and add them in as part of your guild's "security system" to be used when other guilds try to invade.
Stephanie Mar 11th 2009 10:23PM
All the other MMOs I've played with the exception of Vanguard (SWG, EQ2, LOTRO) have had player housing. It's the one thing MMO-ish I miss in WoW.
If Blizz eventually implements it, great. If not, oh well. I'll still play.
Amoo Mar 10th 2009 9:56PM
I hear the words aerial combat coming to mind with big airships. Cannons inside that you can get on and shoot at other guild airships?! Would rock, + get some honor or such for downing said opposite airship. Obviously could be like wintergrasp so bliz could control it abit and not just have battles raging all the time + server lag. Would be quite cool, and put abit of progression into pvp, like having to save up different mats/currencys to make one? Plenty of room for development. Just throwing some ideas out there so don't shoot me!
/discuss
Zach Mar 10th 2009 10:13PM
I don't know why there are so many haters. The series was freaking awesome. If you're not interested in it, then don't buy a house. Just like the Battlegrounds or dungeons... if you don't like them, don't do them. The option being there for some people is really good. I'll never be able to afford one, but I'd love a house. I think it's cool.
zweitblom Mar 11th 2009 2:46AM
The Thunderstorm blog has got to be one of the most annoyingly written "guides" I'd ever had the misfortune to come across. Full of spelling and grammar errors and 'ZOMG speak'. It also shows a disturbing lack of knowledge substituted by childish attitude: the author does not for instance seem to know about the Thunderstorm glyph but instead thinks it funny to make a tank's job harder - good luck getting and keeping a raid spot with that behaviour.