This was the idea I had for player housing. Since Blizz is cool with their Pokemon inspired Battle Pets system I say go all in on player housing and be inspired by animal crossing.
So imagine this. You run into a goblin mage who tells you you’re the only hero capable of saving an orphanage for kittens that’s on fire and you need to follow them through this portal to rescue the orphanage for kittens that is on fire. Well what are you going to do? Let an orphanage of kittens burn? So you go through the portal. Turns out the goblin mage tricked you, well what are you gonna do, eh? Goblins, they be trickin’. It’s kinda their thing. But wait the goblin mage had a good reason for the deception. They actually wanted YOU to be the mayor of the town. You see this town is located on an island just off shore from some coastal zone (ie. the island’s terrain is basically the same as the randomly selected starting zone (don’t worry if it’s a zone you don’t like, we’ll get to that)) and the island’s economy is crashing because nobody visits it. The few remaining villagers are starving and on top of that, on the other end of the island is a cave with a big baddie in it who keeps stealing stuff from the town. Can you please go put that big baddie in his place and save the poor villagers.
Well, it’s no blazing orphanage for kittens but they are a pretty pathetic bunch. So you do what a hero does and go deal with the jackass in the cave. A couple of the villagers have some quests for you too. Leather worker needs hides, blacksmith needs ores, etc. can’t get it because of the jackass in the cave. Fine fine fine, that’s to be expected in the hero biz, I’ll kill some beasties, mine some ores, catch some fish and pluck some herbs along the way. You get to the cave with the the big baddie and you beat the crap out of him because you’re the hero of Azeroth and he’s just a loser in a cave bullying people. The fight is pathetic. The baddie is pathetic and begs you to spare them. They’re just trying their best to survive on such a miserable island. So you spare them on condition that they return what they have stolen to the villagers, and work together as a community to help each other survive on this difficult island. The baddie agrees and runs back to the village with the stolen goods. You make your way back to the village to turn in your quests.
You get there and the leather worker thanks you for helping them get animal skins to turn into leather now they can start selling some leather stuff, the blacksmith is happy you got the ores because now they can start selling cool weapons and armours, the tavern owner is happy because now they has fish and ingredients to make meals. The cobbler is happy because the leather worker and blacksmith are back in business so they can make boots. You get it! Your act of kindness sends ripples through the village that make everyone’s lives better. The big baddie now helps the villagers with whatever their special talents are. The big baddie tells you they wish they could reward you with the big shiny that’s in the lower level of the cave. Big shiny? Yeah it’s a big shiny that’s guarded by an even bigger baddie.
So back to the cave you go, now you find a passage way to a lower level in the cave, kill some minions, find the second big baddie, fight it and it agrees to give you the big shiny in return for sparing its life, so you make the same deal big baddie 2 has to also serve the village. Big baddie 2 agrees. You return to the village with the big shiny. The blacksmith is amazed this is the legendary big shiny from which it is possible to make something really awesome and out of gratitude the blacksmith makes you the really awesome thing. As you’re getting ready to leave the island this little waif comes running up to you.
Little waif? Oh yeah, the last quest as you were leaving the village was this miserable little waif who had a lemonade stand selling lemonade for only 5 copper. “Only five copper cough cough brave hero. Best lemonade on the island.” You bought the lemonade and completed the quest getting a rather mediocre, warm glass of lemonade. So this waif now comes running up to you before you can leave and stops you. They transform into the goblin mage who brought you here. The goblin tells everyone about how they made money selling your lemonade and how making money got their little goblin brain turning and they came up with the brilliant idea of “if ONE brave hero coming to this island brought me money and helped the village improve imagine what A HUNDRED brave heroes could do or life on the island!”
So this is the goblin’s plan. You become in charge of the village, you’re given an okay house. Not the best, but the best one on this miserable island. Yours to do with as you please. What they want you to do is do what you did when you got here, make their lives better, make the village better, make the island better, make the baddies caves better. Oh yeah, the awesome thing the blacksmith made you? Yeah it’s a magic want that let’s you terraform the island. You were just going to sell it to a vendor when you got back to the mainland because what good is an awesome thing that only works on one island you never plan to visit again?
The blacksmith tells you there are places all over the world and even on other worlds where you can charge the wand with different abilities. You can upgrade it just by travelling around Azeroth… …ALL of Azeroth. Each and every zone has scaled quests that reward with different wand abilities to make terrain that matches that zone, different buildings, different plants, different geological features. You can now mix and match all your zone’s aesthetics by doing daily quests in different zones of your choosing, your rewards will always be a new ability but randomly selected so it might take a few days to get the thing you wanted. As well furniture and architectural features are looted from dungeons, all dungeons. You always get something new, but randomly selected.
You get to expand your island, expand your village, improve your house, and improve your dungeon just by doing daily dungeons and zone quests in World of Warcraft. It will give you a reason to visit old expansions and neglected zones. The quests are scaled so everyone can enjoy them regardless of level.
Oh and you have the ability now to put an ! over top of your villagers so they can give quests to the visitors to your island and let you tell a story. The baddies in your dungeon all have a fool proof way to cheat death but will make it look like a convincing defeat to the rube… er… adventure tourists and you’ll be able to give them dramatic dialogue to help move your story along. When the adventurers run your dungeon after fighting their way their through the wild terrain of your island (which you’ve populated with beasties you got on daily quests in different zones) then they can bring a legendary big shiny to the blacksmith in your town and the blacksmith fashions it into a completely random thing to charge their wand with.
Now your dungeon starts out with two baddies, but you can expand it up to five layers each with its own baddie. If you want to replace a baddie then you write it a letter of recommendation which you sell on the auction house. Whoever buys it can now add that baddie to their collection of five baddies. As well your island starts out with a village of a half dozen or so but you can expand it through daily npc quests you encounter on Azeroth. There’s a maximum number of npcs you can collect but like the bosses you can write them a letter or recommendation to sell on the auction house if you want to replace an NPC.
Oh but there’s more. The goblin mage who brought you here. They were the mayor of the village but realized for the good of the village it makes more sense for you to be the mayor and they’ll just run things for you while you’re out doing your important adventuring stuff. What is more, when heroes come to your island the now assistant mayor goblin mage will shape shift into you and be part of the story. You want to be the secret final big baddie of your island. Hey make your house look like a spoopy mansion and have it at. You want to be the kindly sage who helps the hero on their quest, you do you. Or more like your assistant mayor goblin mage will do you, because you’ve got important stuff to do. And when business is slow the goblin mage will be standing outside the capital city calling all adventurers to come answer the call (ie. there will be a goblin mage NPC standing outside every capital city that will let players visit each other’s islands).
So that’s it, not just player housing, but an entire player zone, fully customizable in an Animal Crossing sort of way, a zone where they can make a main quest and side quests. Where they can script their baddies and design their dungeons.
I’d probably deal with it as a separate game that runs on the player’s computer not needing to be online for all the island design stuff, letting the player run “dress rehearsals” of the island’s quests. The island’s saved file is stored on the player’s PC and also uploaded to WoW’s servers like with Animal Crossing. The player can then take time working on their island before going live with their changes in the MMO. I’d make it available to veteran and subscribed players alike but obviously you’ll need a subscription to access the quests for loot from the current expansion.
It’s very Animal Crossing like, sure, but as I said the pet battles are basically Pokemon anyways and this will be different enough from Animal Crossing to stand on its own merits. Anyways, that’s how I’d implement player housing if I was in charge of this place.
