It’s a rainy Thanksgiving day in 2024 and it’s time to revisit the topic of player housing!
This feature has been long-awaited by many avid fans and the news is a gift from the WoW gods! So with that, I want to go over what I would personally like to see when player housing arrives in the midnight expansion. I know the devs are looking for some ideas and feedback from the community so of course feel free to add your “must-haves” and “DONT ADD THAT IT WILL RUIN THE GAME” ideas. But, as we know, the best feedback comes after we can test, right!? I’ll start off with the basics.
- Plots
- Buildings
- Cost
- Decor
- Utility
- Professions
- …and what can we do
PLOTS
For the location of where our homes will be, I think there are two reasonable options to consider; Static housing and Skyplot. Those familiar with Final Fantasy or Wildstar might have a good idea of what I mean here. We’ve all played other games with housing, right?
- Skyplots!
So this would be akin to the system in Wildstar where you bought a floating island up in the sky and it was in no real location, but you were allowed to alter the sky-box to suit your interests. I think gnomish and Goblin engineers could be valuable here! - Static locations
Standard instanced areas in pre-designated locations around Azeroth and beyond. Self-explanatory! So long as they don’t interfere with questing they could go anywhere, assuming tech limitations and such. Do you want that empty farm in the back of Stormwind? Perhaps an undersea bubble in the abyss of Vashjir? Do we want to take over a huge cathedral like the one in Hallowfall? Maybe a large tree out in the dense forests of Grizzly Hills? How would we go about building our homes?
Buildings
Do you want to lay every brick and beam? Or would you rather purchase a racial-themeed stead for you human of the alliance? Whether it is pre-made or hand-crafted, BOTH are great options and offer the best of both worlds to different levels of need. But as well, I’m sure there could be limitations on how many items you can place, we will see.
- Hand-Crafted Homes
This, like many other games, is the experience many gamers look for with customization and homesteading. The sheer level of artistic expression could be quintessential to our new homes feeling like they are truly made for us. I’ve spent hundreds of hours in survival games just building things by hand from flower gardens to apothecary towers. Enshrouded, Valheim, Wildstar, Sims! Now, I know not every gamer likes building walls… so we will need some basic housing here. Pre-fabbed! - Racial-Themed Homes
For this option you can purchase or earn something like the Goldshire Inn to simply plop down in your little plot of heaven. As well, you can start decorating immediately! No hasstle! For me, maybe on some alt characters I would like to just buy a house themed after my race. You know, gilnean victorian buildings, a dwarven mountain “hobbit-hole”, maybe a lavish oil factory for my goblin, could be expensive though!
COST
Now, we can’t have player housing without thinking of costs! The two points I have here are: Gold which are easily obtained, can be purchased, and every player has some. (Do we want to teach people about money management and paying bills, you know, have some monthly renting of your plots with taxes!) -or just a one-time fee for the plot/building and call it a day?
Or Free! Not many people will argue against this I’m sure. But maybe this option won’t take much gold out of the economy. For the free option, I suppose it will just be earned like anything else in WoW. Play the game, discover your plot, settle down, and toss a little gold at buildings/decor… As well I’m sure there will be cosmetic options for the in-game shop. There’s no way around that, it will likely happen so I’m already chill with the idea as long as it’s not excessive and expensive.
DECOR
Now, whats a good home without the essentials -decoratioooons! We all love em, we all need em.
I’ve heard many players protest their desire to have trophies and I agree. While I think this is an intuitive idea, perhaps many old achievements could tie to our decor. Furthermore, it could bring players back into old content! For example (as I have said in another post) say I have been putting off getting Loremastter because it’s just for another title to drown in my list. If I complete the achievement, reward me with a beautiful, magical bookshelf that contains all the readable novels you can find spread around Azeroth.
If I have obtained legendary weapons, give me a cool statue to display it. Do you have Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros? Let it sit atop a rock surrounded by a lava pool and other friends can’t loot it because they take fire damage and die when they get close and a voice line plays “BY FIRE BE PURGED”. Stuff like that! Fun items, trophies, the usual decor items, armor racks, etc. And with that we come to the grey area, utility.
As an aside, I think a system like that in the game Planet Coaster could be utilized. The animatronics/effects that you can attach to rides and stuff for different things. Fire, smoke, explosions, ttimers for all that etc.
UTILITY
What can player housing offer the player? What CAN be offered, what SHOULD be?
Controversial as it is, I think there’s value in more.
- Repairs, AH, Vendors, Portals, Training Dummies, etc
- Profession areas much like the Garrisons in WoD but with limitations?
I know many people think having profession ties will kill the game, but why exactly? It’s not like you will have a farm of 2,000 flowers that grow in one hour, right? The same limitations were on the garrison farms. It was nice to have, but I don’t think it took away from me collecting flowers out in the world.
As well, maybe all the profession things you can do on a housing plot could be just for the house itself. Get the feeling of having a farm, but it’s not just handing you herbs to sell. Perhaps it could be flowers for changing the color of a housing item/wall. Either way, people will be out in the world or inside an instanced housing plot and that’s not so different from what already exists in the game currently.
I know this can be tricky, but I don’t think it will de-populate the game world outside of its initial reveal. Works fine in other MMORPG’s doesn’t it? Due to this being an evergreen feature, I feel most things can be ironed and re-formed as needed. So, at least for me, the whole utility argument is a little overrated. We have portable AH mounts, transmog, banks, mail boxes…
I see no harm being done to the game if utilities are provided.
PROFESSIONS
Simply, add cosmetic housing item plans to every profession! Much like Enshrouded or Valheim, discovering these plans out in the world by doing activities, killing specific creatures, quests, dungeons etc would be fabulous. As well, hidden or secret cosmetics could be added for the players to find which creates more player engagement and fun! In this way we have a little bit of profession refresh, more economic reasons to use professions, and more collectibles!
WHAT CAN YOU DO! Will add more in time. I’m sleepy now.
-Build things for players. Why not make a public plot with a jumping puzzle and the winner collects a bag of gold at the top? Why not make your own dueling arena?
-A racing loop with obstacles
-Perhaps we can summon and fight any boss to see how they work
-Build your own dungeons/delves! Create more content for people to enjoy and have fun with.
-And with that, feature a plot of the month to showcase a cool build. A fun map, a fresh new idea or take on an existing gameplay mechanic. Would add a lot to the community.
-Tie the feature to Warbands as well which is a popular idea. It’s a great time to do so! Lets have our alts walking around with us.
And for my own idea that I hope Blizz takes- The Cartel from Shadowlands!
We were presented with these dimensional collectors in Shadowlands and I feel they could be turned into a valuable asset. Say for example these cartels are the ones running this housing business. They like to collect, and we like to collect. Mutual interests! So why not involve these trade cartels. We earn tokens and exchange them for their goods, you know, the stuff they find all over different planets/times including our own. They’re ethereal, aren’t they? Either way, would be cool. Maybe they can team up with goblins and gnomes. “Interdimensional acquisitions and purveyors of exquisite antiquities and liquid assets!”
Now, for my personal wishlist for housing:
- Legendary weapon trophies
- Portal room for sure. WoW is too big to rely on hearths all the time, let me enlist a Kirin Tor Mage who can send me places.
- Gardening/Farming/Husbandry sim for SURE. Halfhill Market was lit and I miss it.
- Free-floating blocks to make jumping puzzles.
- Terrain alteration would be amazing but I think we are a little way off for that atm. Maybe this will be determined by pre-made maps.
- Ponds, fishing areas, waterfalls
- Let me place trees and plants, alter their sizes
- Weather preferences anyone? Skybox changing
- Juke-box from garrisons would be rad
- Boss trophies (like Valheim)
- Armor stands
- Profeession buildings/cosmetics
- Warband transferable so I can use it on alts
- Trusted partner/neighbor who can help me build our home together
- Rested XP of course. Valheim/Enshrouded = More decor is higher rested XP
- Group summon to my home
- Achievment cosmetics like the bookshelf idea
- All sorts of items that can be used to change my character position (winds across platforms, grappling, ropes, teleports, etc)
- Windows that I can actually see through
- Vault. But like a personal one only I can enter
- Transmog comps with voting table like at the 20th-anniversary faire
- Battle pet stuff and things
- Secrets.
- Let my favorite mounts fly/run around
- Training dummies/AH/Bank/Mailbox
- Cosmetic vault! Like the great vault but for cosmetics/furniture? Or some such idea…
