Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsMore ideas for player housing
by Mike Schramm 
Jul 24th 2009 at 2:00PM
Spicytuna has a nice little writeup about a much-discussed but never implemented feature in World of Warcraft: player housing. Blizzard has borrowed (and subsequently improved upon) many of the most common features in MMOs -- they revamped leveling with ideas like rested XP and recruit-a-friend, they changed the endgame with the ideas of Heroic instances and daily quests, and they've tweaked PvP with battlegrounds, Wintergrasp and Arenas. But for some reason they've never taken on the idea of player housing: a place in the game for players to make their own. The reason we've always heard is that they never landed on a good implementation of it -- if they couldn't do it right, they wouldn't do it at all.
But Spicytuna proves there's no shortage of ideas. The main thought so far is that such an area would be instanced, as having actual buildings in the game as player houses just leads to emptied out ghettos of buildings left to rot.
Spicytuna throws in a few other great ideas as well: houses could give your character more storage space, or add bonus to your rested XP by sleeping in your own bed. A new profession could build furniture, and your house could reflect your travels: kill a certain boss, and see a memento from the fight on your shelves.
Lots of great ideas there, and it's strange that we've never heard a peep from Blizzard about acting on any of them. A little while back, we did hear confirmation that they were at least testing the waters of guild housing, but even with all of the current speculation about Cataclysm and the Worgen/Goblins, that idea hasn't yet come up again. Maybe we'll finally hear it at BlizzCon: it would be nice to finally have a place of our own in Azeroth.
Filed under: Engineering, Tailoring, Patches, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 7)
NathanTB Jul 24th 2009 2:48PM
So here's the Catch-22 of it.
You can't have player/guild housing incorporate features that would depopulate the world on a whole - giving access to, say, portals, mailboxes, banks, etc, regardless of how big a gold sink it is to get them, eventually turns world content empty. Why go to the Stormwind bank when your guild just pooled 30,000 gold to build their own? Blizzard has made a big move towards making content visible, even to people with minimal play time.
But at the same time, I doubt the player base on the whole would be interested in going after housing if there -wasn't- that incentive, something to get out of it, like a quick portal to Dalaran or a bonus to your stats. Think about it, honestly. As average-Joe-non-RPing-player... would you be interested in pouring time and money into something with absolutely no benefit? Guessing randomly, I'd say maybe 20% of the player base would stick with it after the initial release, unless Blizzard gave so much customization control that it became a game into itself. The time/reward ratio is not favorable - Blizzard would be spending months programming a feature that either makes their old content useless, or is little more than a novelty.
Somebody else made an awesome suggestion though - in-game player/guild ships, be they airships or just normal sailing vessels. Let's even take it one step further - a custom city. In the expansion, each race gets its own bare island on a grid, Sims style. Players or guilds commit their gold, and can pick out of a collection of building/unit choices. In the Northeast corner of Hordes and Caicos, player X has bought a watchtower, accessible by any player. Guild L, Z & Y have pooled together and purchased a flight path. To control overcrowding and keep it active, there can be world combat - the Alliance island launches random attacks, wipes out 30% of the land, players get a marginal refund through the Goblin-underwritten insurance policy, and start to build up again. Or random world events - you know that Naga attack is coming eventually, but you just don't know when or where!
Ringo Flinthammer Jul 24th 2009 3:57PM
Twenty percent is actually a pretty good figure, especially when you compare it to activities like the arena, which certainly are supported by Blizzard.
Jack Jul 24th 2009 2:49PM
Just make a small instance portal in each Inn. If you are the Group/Raid leader then folks can come visit you there.
benzime Jul 24th 2009 2:52PM
Housing worked perfectly fine in Ultima Online. There were no empty houses and they were not instanced. IF someone didn't lock their door you could walk in and look around. You could also design and build your house from the ground up. It was made by EA so they used the same design system as The Sims house designer. And were talking about a game touted as the first real MMO so the technology has been around as long as the genre
MechChef Jul 24th 2009 4:39PM
I never played UO, but I have heard that it had horrible urban-sprawl issues.
Platinum Jul 24th 2009 2:51PM
I have no interest in a static player housing feature, but I've always wanted the ability to set up a tent when out questing. Logging out while in the tent would provide the same rested benefit as logging out in an inn or city, without the hassle of traveling back and forth. So much easier when leveling in some backwater place like Burning Steppes and your hearthstone is down.
Candina@WH Jul 24th 2009 2:51PM
Player Housing. Lets all play a MMO so we can all go be alone in our houses.
For all of you who say 'but this would give us more room to store our stuff..'
There is a reason that Blizz only gives you so many bank slots. To add more 'storage' slots means re-engineering their entire storage metaphor (and most definetly the underlying programming classes). Not to mention the huge increase in data base space so that we never have to throw away those scourge stones (we'll never turn in), halaani battle tokens, and marks of Hodir.
You want to play home decorator? SIms 3 came out this summer, have at!
Josin Jul 24th 2009 2:55PM
Having a physical representation gives you something BESIDES just going "Hey, I have a lot of points!" It gives you something in game to show besides a meaningless number. Maybe epeen wasn't the right choice of word, but I think the meaning was gotten by most.
Dreadskull Jul 24th 2009 2:55PM
If there were a furniture making profession, it should be another secondary one imo. Also, what'd rock is if at certain furniture crafting levels/main profession levels you'd be able to make stuff based on whatever crafting profession(s) you chose.
Like...
Engineers - Could make mechanical furniture/add Jeeves the robot butler as a permanent NPC that walks around in the home and potentially turn their home into a Goblin/Gnomish engineering factory.
Leatherworkers - Could cover their home in fur furniture (harhar, get it?) and possibly add in stuffed full scale animals (bears, wolves, lions, etc.). Maybe have a station that can add the armor patches or w/e they're called.
Tailors - Could create several fancy pieces of furniture and eventually turn their home into a house filled with exotic and vibrant cloth furniture. Possibly have the ability to create a rug that randomly will hover up a few yards in the air. Maybe have a station that can add spell threads or whatever they're called to leggings.
Blacksmiths- Could create all of their furniture from metals, and place fancy weapons/armor on display. Also, they could create anvils that they could use in their home.
Alchemy - Would be able to potentially turn their home into a giant alchemy lab. Possibly have stuff like permanent cauldrons in the house that'd give free potions/flasks/elixirs.
Enchanting - Would be able to decorate the place with powders and whatnot to make the place look... enchanted. >_> Also maybe there could be an in-door "enchanted pool" piece of furniture that weekly can give the player and his guests a random enchant on anything they "toss" into the pool.
Jewelcrafting- Would be able to turn their home into a sparkling and shiny jeweled home. For their specialty or w/e there could be a furniture piece that players could daily pull out a blue quality (and on very rare occasions an epic) uncut gem.
Inscription - Scrolls and rune-covered furniture galore. They could add in a lexicon of power eventually and maybe be able to create a card game table (which could be sellable so any home could have one) that could play some basic card games if you have friends over.
Mining - Could add in displayable mining picks and a usable forge.
Skinning - Could make rugs and drapes that were made from skinned hides.
Herbalism - Could add in vases filled with flowers and a mini herb garden.
Also with your secondary professions you could add stuff, like... for fishing you could have trophy fish on display, with cooking you could set up a fancy cooking area or even possibly a permanent feast on a table in your home or something for you and your guests to enjoy, and with first aid you could set up a... first aid kit decoration xD
Ooh... and maybe add in a single class based furniture piece. I'm out of creative juices to come up with everything, but like... warlocks could make a demonic ritual circle in their home or something, and priests could put up altars.
Oh... also, a pet kennel where you can place all of your pets to show them off. And if they add in like... an area that you can go outside of your house, a stable to show off your mounts.
Cakey Jul 24th 2009 2:57PM
Is this WoW or Barbie Playhouse?
Jason Jul 24th 2009 2:58PM
Would a rogue be able to pick the locks to my pad and steal all my useless pixels?
Dragundam Jul 24th 2009 3:02PM
Only the Grand Masters.
Mordockk Jul 24th 2009 3:02PM
Guild housing would just turn into Frat Houses...I could never walk by one in college without getting in a fight.
warigami Jul 24th 2009 3:08PM
There are already so many types of vanity items in the game that I fail to see what harm having player housing would bring. The extra storage space would be nice, as well as being able to display trophies/armor. Plus, as Dreadskull said, every profession could get some patterns for housing items, which would only help the economy. And for those people who seem to get hung up on worrying about the cities becoming ghost towns, I wouldn't worry too much. As long as there are auction houses, banks and trainers in the cities, they'll be fine. Myself personally, I don't really care if I never see the cities bustling with the usual begging, gold sellars, people sitting on the mailboxes and naked dancing night elves.
Salimar Jul 24th 2009 4:26PM
Take a look at Starwars Galaxys.
Great idea, but limited space, alot of the time you could pay a person to 'demolish' their house, in case it was in a great place (Say..on top of a mountain, waterfall, or near a river).
Instances would help :D
((btw
maeby Jul 24th 2009 3:12PM
they can barely handle instance servers now.
you will never see player housing in wow, never.
Kaithar Jul 24th 2009 3:32PM
Why does it have to be instanced? Take a trip over to mapwow and look at all the empty unused space there is north of Stormwind. Maybe its just me, but it seems like the perfect place for a small city of player housing. I am just glad the developers aren't as close minded as you.
Mike Jul 24th 2009 3:14PM
I think a good addition would be to also to have the same house accessible by all your characters on that particular server (or even all servers), by having your other characters appear as though NPCs (or rather, AI-controlled player characters), allowing you to quickly transfer items and money between your characters, see alt's gear, perhaps even quickly switch characters without having to logout/login.
Oomu Jul 24th 2009 3:16PM
a housing system is good to add a new layer of character customisation
to give a way to show achievements
to give tools to character and a place to add it and pay them (with a limit :you have to be in your house to use them, it's prevent the game to be trivialize by giant banks)
to give new arts (new arts for houses, new professions with epics stuffs and so on)
it's just a new layer and a mmo needs layers to encourage people to stay on the game, years after years
maybe you will never play it, but I will , and if I stay to pay, blizzard will have money to continue to add new raids, if you love raids. or new BG, or new arenas ideas or whatever
it's good if blizzard can attract different publics and tastes in the same place.
-
I thought player housing could be like Giant Mounts you can use when you want, able to "build" it in some free places (and there are _many_ , kalimdor has huuuge free place available with some work) and staying there for a time (one week or whatever)
it will prevent player to paid fortunes just to buy a great place, because if you forget your house for a time, it will pop out and you have to come back to place it on the same spot
it will add flavor in some forgotten old zone to see house and see if someone is here (on the side of many, blizzard can add "buildable zone" , it's enough to satisfy enough player base by realm)
Raiding a guild house, giving Guilds duels, or anything.
and whatever crazy idea the game designers can imagine for ME, the customer.
Leshrac Jul 24th 2009 3:17PM
To this day Asherons Call has the best player housing implementation of any MMO I have ever played, and I pretty much played them all.