The topic of player housing came up in some other thread and it made me wonder… if player housing was added to WoW, what would it look like?
I’ve played a couple of MMOs with player housing but never really got into it–in ESO it seemed complex and too expensive, and tied in too much with the real-money crown store system to be much fun. I played FFXIV a bit too, but as I understood it there was a limited supply of housing and you needed insane amounts of money to qualify, so it was way out of my reach as a poor player on a high population server.
My most cherished video game homes have always been in single-player games. I feel very cozy in Tel Uvirith or my fallout 4 settlement, but I’ve never had a place to myself in an MMO.
So I don’t really know what a fun MMO housing system looks like! What games have the best housing, and how would you want to see it in WoW?
1 Like
I would want it to be like ESO but a little more friendly to leveling players. Maybe start off with a smaller house that would expand with the character as they level.
2 Likes
make it like in runescape. you get to put your house in a little empty plane and its in one of the towns accessible through a portal. you can build with prefabbed bits and pieces until you have something you’re satisfied with.
1 Like
Idk how to implement it in WoW as I’m not overly familiar with many other game’s except Final Fantasy and LOTR:O.
The former is a fun goal but it has its downsides (like not being able to take it with you if you transfer servers, which sucks) and the latter I vaguely recall as being cool for the time, with customizable insides and crafted furniture. Plus it fit where you bought it, in the Shire or Bree or wherever else the main ‘hubs’ were.
I don’t know if they’d implement it into WoW well enough to justify the resources required. Would be cool if they did but… I’m not too sure.
I had a max level character in ESO and I still never felt like I could afford anything more than the free apartment they give you, much less fill it with furnishings.
I’ll give a serious answer and say that Final Fantasy’s housing is probably closest to my ideal.
The housing in that game has three major things going for it:
- It’s non-instanced, meaning that anyone can go to anyone’s house at any time,
- They’re a status symbol, but one that can be reasonably obtained by the average dedicated player,
- They offer gameplay benefits without being literally required or replacing the outside world.
I think any housing solution that WoW comes up with needs to meet those three points for me to like it. The important part is that I be able to go into someone’s house without being in a group with them; that was the obnoxious part about garrisons and really prevented me from using them in the way I wished I could.
The only game I played a decent amount of that I recall having player housing is Star Wars Galaxies, but that wouldn’t work in WoW. SWG was an open world sandbox as opposed to WoW’s on the rails theme park, so there’s no giant open areas where players can just start building a town.
I like the idea above of making instanced towns, I think that’s the only way that it’ll work.
SW:G system with mayor specialization and all.
1 Like
There was a Mayor specialization? Like the actual person in charge?
Although I don’t know too much about how Final Fantasy’s system works it was really neat to wander around the wards and see actual player neighborhoods.
And I’m not sure if this is a major part of FFXIV’s housing system or not, but I remember that you got to customize your little assistant NPCs, which was a lot of fun. There was some merit in assembling a sort-of custom army in Garrisons, but creating my own wow army would have been a lot more fun if I could name, edit and create custom mogs for everyone or something.
Yep! I can’t remember if it was called Mayor or not, but there was a top dog that ran the township and managed the plot placement of folks within their territory.
1 Like
I’d say something akin to SWtoR would actually work really well.
Have it be smaller, ‘home’ options for the players themselves, then something akin to a big fort type thing for guild housing.
2 Likes
I feel like it should be mentioned that Garrisons are what blizzard handwaves toward when the uncomfortable mentioning of ‘housing’ comes up.
I think what they had in mind for garrisons was close to a workable scheme.
What didn’t work for me all that well:
- It was more of a game function station than a personal space. You went there to continue the grind.
- It wasn’t customizable. There is nothing you can say to make me think that this is a hill worth dying on. You got spikes or you got a weird ranch with a french street design.
- There were no personal quarters, not really. NPC’s/pets/ad nauseum had the run of the place.
That being said I think some of the issues could have been fixed pretty easily.
- Continued addons or additions: including new walls, structures, floors, added monthly or purchasable with in game gold or rmt store.
- Removing the grind function or at least making the daily mission/command board stuff optional. I would opt for having vendors/npc’s that you could remove.
- Some sort of verbal committment or acknowledgment that this is a work in progress but they will keep at it.
Would be a great start.
4 Likes
Wildstar has/had the best housing of any mmo in terms of pure creative freedom. The houses I’ve seen in WS are more fantastic and creative than any other mmo I have played. Most of this freedom comes from it being instanced. I know not everyone is a fan but I feel like the advantages of instanced housing so far outweigh the downside it’s insanely worth it. I would like WoW to copy paste that system, I would literally shovel money into my computer screen for such a system.
3 Likes
The concept of guild halls came up in the other thread and since it’s tangentially related I’ll plop and idea I had here.
Mobile operations/command centers! The idea is that you have something that the guild can customize and park at your latest raid/event/whatever. By default it would probably be some kind of variation on zepplin/airship, but you could also have it be like…Jaina style flying boat, Dalaran style floating island, whatever.
You would customize it with trophies, banners, vendors, NPCs of various types. There would probably be a special guild hearth. Maybe some individual quarters? Maybe you could bring guests to it.
Sky is the limit, so to speak.
2 Likes
I’d like to see something a bit like the buildable houses from that one Skyrim DLC, but with more available locations given that WoW’s world is bigger. Preferably at least one per playable race, plus more in various higher-level zones.
It would be great to be able to choose between architecture based on your character’s race, other races of your faction, other subfactions, or inspired by the zone you’re setting up in. Unlocking new architecture sets could be a neat reward for hitting exalted with somebody.
The plot could include a small area of land, and a little one-room building that you can add onto, a la the Skyrim DLC, as you gain the gold/resources/blueprints/endtables to do so.
The plot could be accessible to party/raid members, or possibly it could be a bit like in-game communities, where you create “keys” to give out to as many other players as you like, who can then enter without a party being necessary. The ability to use the housing as a 24/7 RP hub for your friends would be great, but I wouldn’t want to share my space with just anybody who happened by.
A larger version of the plot with more building spaces could exist for guilds to build and use as a communal effort.
Also worth noting is that the quality of the housing system often relies on part to the quality of the chachkies that come with it.
FFXIV has all kinds of furniture and art and little trinkets for you to put around both your house in your yard. In contrast, with garrisons, you could like…put down guild banners? There was also a trophy room that I never figure out how to unlock.
This too is why I love WS housing. It has hundreds of random objects you can place on a free X,Y,Z 360 spherical axis. So you can shrink/grow/rotate place and combine objects to make new things. I made custom furnishing like videogame consoles, tv’s, motorcycles and spaceships. Literally you’re limited only by imagination.
3 Likes
Actually going to disagree on ESO housing being all that tied to the Crown Store system. Crown Store as with most of the game is really just a way to get ahead if you have more money than time, and while they don’t scream it from the mountaintops almost everything you could want to get for your home outside of premium convenience items (I.E, personal standing stones) a version or the same thing could be built by other players, the crafting system is just a little weird and doesn’t have a whole lot of in game support to explain it.
In addition - Achievement Vendors. Become a level 50 Blacksmith? You can buy a blacksmith vendor sign to hang in your personal forge. Kill any dungeon or raid boss? Get their !@#$ing head to mount on your wall. Kill any dungeon or raid boss on hard mode and get a bronze bust of the same.
PvP Achievements, exploration achievements, questing achievements, yadda yadda all either give you a house item or let you unlock the ability to buy it (with gold, not real money), and these and the aformentioned are where the “I did that. That was me.” points of pride come from.
But yes if you just want an entire box set of fancy cutlery and bedroom settings you can toss Crowns at the problem but you can’t just real money your way to any of the above.
This is also, incidentally, my answer to the overall discussion. One of my fondest memories in the Garrison was unlocking the statues and putting up my archaeology finds. I want “I did that. That was me.” items in spades in any housing system now, just like my shacks in Skyrim are a-glitter with ancient artifacts and people’s heads.
Sorry. Death Knight.
Not that it matters since we’re three expansions passed by now but if you mean the one in the town hall, it’s where “Pristine” Archaeology items go, you just have to find / make one and a turn in appears.
1 Like