The WoW community in a nutshell lol
“Give us the best thing ever, but there better not be any effort involved on our part to earn stuff for it.”
…how does a player earn an xpac defining game feature?
I was talking more broadly about the things for it. Appearances, decorations, etc.
Its foolish not to scavenge good ideas from your competitors. In the case of Wildstar, the game failed because it catered to the super hardcore crowd and that crowd is too small to keep a subscription based mmo running. It still makes me sad because Wildstar had so much potential only to crash and burn due to stubbornness. (For the record I think Ashes of Creation will fail for the same reason)
I agree with the others in this thread that Wildstar’s housing was the best I’ve ever played.
It would be more accurate to say, “Copy what these other folks did 10 years ago”.
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really? i got to endgame before there was an endgame and everyone was just twiddling thumbs in some city. “catered to the super hardcore crowd” isnt a concept that crossed my mind at all with wildstar.
by the time it finally got endgame (apparently) i was already out of there.
When Wildstar launched their endgame revolved around challenging 40 player raids. So not only was there the logistical problem of getting and keeping a 40 (plus backups) roster, but the content itself was difficult for the time.
They eventually backed off and introduced some less challenging 20 player raids, but the damage had been done and the game had already lost all of its momentum.
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Wildstar had alot of problems over its lifespan. Difficulty in “hardcore” pve, unbalanced pvp, and bugs were a big ones in the beginning. Some of it got smoothed out over time, but it was definitely enough to poison the well. It was also at a time when new MMOs seemed like they were dropped every other month. There were alot of factors that lead to the game’s downfall, housing was not one of them.
I am confident that the WoW team will take the best of other games and make it into their own.
Now, about guild housing …
If WoW were to indeed copy Wildstar than you would be able to connect multiple lots together and build actual city sized environments. You would be able to easily build guild hall. Hell, you could build a guild capital!
Every player still owns his/her lot, but they can give other players permission to build and change structures on their lot even if they aren’t online. So in theory the GM could set their home lot as the main hub and assign offers the permission to connect their own lots and all collectively build together.
This was done years ago. WoW could do it again. Will they? Don’t know. But they could.
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1st they need to pick a good interface for the whole thing.
2nd they need to take every asset they have and make it useable in this interface.
3rd they need to delegate those items to venders, quests, crafting and achievements.
If I know my Blizzard 99% of the effort will go into the 3rd step so they can maximize milking play time.
Good point. I think they should make it like a character creation screen where you can sample all of your choices before choosing.
Wildstar housing was good, and the buffs / activities were nice, but it was still a hook system.
Rift’s housing, from a pure freedom standpoint, is far superior.
My prediction on how WoW’s system will go:
- Hook / node system to save on technical resources (processing / data storage)
- Base level houses, but similar to Wildstar in that it will have an exterior area along with house.
- Houses will be available after reaching a certain rep level in the area you want to build.
- Your player alone will be able to see your house in the world. They will not allow for random / persistent houses to be displayed without heavy limitations (can’t risk displaying an “offensive” design to random people).
- You’ll be able to invite people to your house / whoever is leader will have their house displayed, similar to garrisons.
- You’ll be limited to a fairly small amount of decorations on the base level with the option to purchase additional item slots via cash shop.
- The best looking items will be available via cash shop / traders post / rewards for multi-month subs.
- Basic decorations will be obtained via drops, quests, professions and vendors. Vendor items will be functional, but will cost quite a bit of gold to obtain (need a gold sink)
- Houses will have a maintenance / tax for additional gold sink.
- Guild houses will be available, and larger, but will cost a very large amount of gold.
- They will not go the free placement route due to the inevitable “inappropriate” designs that would come from it.
Everything but the “plot” aspect. Feels too much like a garrison at that point.
I agree this is what they will probably do. This will also be what kills it.
There is no point in decorating if wandering people can’t see it. No one asked to see other people’s garrisons after the first week.
HGTV exists because we love showing off. If that’s taken away…it’s over before it starts.
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It depends what you expect I guess.
The endgame at Wildstar was pretty tough and fully focused on groups. Not everyone likes that, for me honestly, the time commitment was too much.
As for housing, I actually never liked it that much. I did not see the purpose of it, but it was also too complex and non visible to others. Just like with Lost Ark, it´s not a housing system I would like to spend time in.
My favorite housing was Ultima, SWG was fun too, but way too complicated for todays generation of gamers. It would also be exploited by trolls, since you could place your home freely in the world. People would just put their house at the best farm spot and become rich, or block paths and streamer guilds would take over entire zones.
If we look at the trailer then we see a lot of the system already. It´s a room, that we can decorate based on our achievements. We can have Nefarians head there and the home will be located at Stormwind or Orgrimmar, as the two carpets on the floor indicate.
While I would prefer a Garrison like implementation, but in the old world, with more freedom, I am afraid it´s just going to be a room somewhere.
While I am excited, I’m doing my best to remain neutral on this.
At MINIMUM I’m assuming, would be like SWTOR’s system. Where you do get pre-made houses, BUT, with the hooks, you can put nearly anything down and move it around to an extent.
Feels like this might be the system they’re using.
Or I’m completely wrong and they’ve been secretly ninja developing a new system right under our noses.
I would definitely agree that Wildstar’s housing system is the peak. Being able to manipulate objects in your collection, changing their size by an order of magnitude, tilting and rotating items… It really opens up some crazy cool ideas.
But even going a bit less ambitious, I think FFXIV is probably the next best system that WoW needs to “compete” with, imo.
I do think some kind of “social element” is included. Even if your house is totally instanced, it might be cool if there is some sort of monthly “leaderboard” where you can upvote houses in different categories, and make it easy to visit other players’ houses.
So maybe you can browse “Cozy” houses, and see what the top voted houses are and get inspired. Or maybe you get bored and decide to change to a “Military” theme, or even a “Horror” or “Roleplaying” theme.
Just little ways to inspire creativity, and push for that social interaction even with your house.
Nothing will ever beat swg house customization. I remember getting a massive fire pit, turning it upside down, and putting it under the floor, so the smoke and steam would rise from the floor. Looked like a sauna.
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I could spend a saturday setting up my house and crafting…and counting my materials. Server best X feel the warmth off the shine.
I saw Wildstar in the post and had to come here because I miss Wildstar. As for the housing I never did get too into it but I’ve seen some of the crazy stuff players built. That would be amazing if Blizz pulled off something similar.
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