Garrisons were essentially one’s own city, with all the conveniences we used to go to cities for. That is not housing.
Right now we have a list of achievements. A list. Yawn. A house should be a visual representation of a player’s accomplishments in the game. Souvenirs and trophies! And we should be able to build using various in-game architecture styles. Crafting should be a big part of housing. HOUSING SHOULD HAVE ZERO CITY CONVENIENCES EXCEPT A PORTAL TO A MAIN CITY. It would make sense perhaps to connect the house to the secondary professions or maybe one of them…have a garden or a place to fish maybe, but that’s it. No city conveniences at your house.
And I would love an option to make it a guild hall. My guild has three members, lol, but we would still play the crap out of the game to make a nice guild hall.
The funny thing is, is that by adding player housing and craft able furniture, it opens the door for cash shop furniture. How long do you think it would take fore the cash shop furniture to cover the cost of development time/cost for implementing player housing?
Well let’s see,
My farm, all my characters had its full 16 plots, and none ever visit or work it now.
My Garrisons are the same. Aside from the nice hearth there for mig runs, it’s never used.
The class halls of Leigon are fading into memories. Except for the Druid, the only portals that survived.
Housing would be a one expansion hit, with the majority leaving them behind for the next. Would rather have content to run, not another tombstone in the backyard of a house.
I would rather they spent their efforts on trying to make the game fun. If they added something like that, it would either be forgotten in one expansion or a drain on development resources forever.
Im beginning to think that player housing can just as easily be used for and by guilds. While guild housing sound attractive I think it might cause issues where certain guilds would require participation in equipping and working on the guild halls and anything that generates elitism beyond that we already have would not really be good.
ESO has introduced player housing and it does not appear to have had any effect at all on their general game development. Players enjoy the housing benefits, the interest in crafts (professions) went up hugely since every craft can create things for housing, etc. Its an entirely voluntary activity (same as things like battle pets and other game activities) and for those who enjoy rp, it would be a fun addition to their gaming.
If it does not impinge on your playing (and I see now reason why it would, because Blizzard has repeatedly said that it employs separate development groups to work on different areas) then I see no harm in it.
But aren’t guilds kind of supposed to be about participation?
I do think it would be vital if doing guild halls NOT to make it about having lots of members. That just makes guilds recruit strangers then not socialize with them, really. It just leads to spamming for members.
If I were doing guild halls I would actually be very respectful of all the guilds who are really just friends and family, a few folks who play together. In many ways there is no greater tool to keep people logged in than real friends.
I’m surprised people haven’t brought up that you can sort of get a house on the Halfhill Sunsong Ranch if you did the Tillers reputation in Mists. You even can grow portals in your farm if you weren’t a mage or just didn’t feel like flying to your Vale Shrine (back when it had all the portals). You can set your hearth there.
You can’t really decorate it much beyond having the NPCs you have a high enough affinity with hanging out on your farm, but it is a super nice slice of Azeroth your character can have. It was my hearth for a long, long time.
It’d be cool if WoW did add some kind of player housing, but I hope they don’t emulate FFXIV’s. I have a house there, and while the neighborhood wards are a neat idea, they’re all deserted and plots are difficult for newer players to get into. Private instanced housing would be my ideal type.
But then again, if Blizzard just let us use the stupid tents from Warlords, I wouldn’t really care about having an Azerothian house, all the different flavor tents would be just fine.