Neighborhoods are unecessary and pointless for most players

Community General Discussion
1

First of all. Love the announcement and im very excited.

But Blizz needs to seriously reconsider this concept as a foundation of housing.

Simply put, being around other players =/= being social. Or even facilitating social interaction. One needs to simply walk into a capital city in the modern game to see over a hundred players all crammed into one spot doing absolutely 0 social interaction whatsoever.

For a guild? Sure, Neighborhoods will be awesome and im excited for our guild Neighborhood.

But i imagine most people would enjoy the option to simply have an instance based house in an area of the world they like and have a connection to already. Versus a new housing zone that no one has seen or cares about. This focus on being social and such is a farce when your game has already been about spamming instances for years.

You dont create social interaction by simply shoving us all in the same space. You do it by giving us interesting activities that require other people to do.

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2

They should really offer both neighborhoods and private housing. Some people want to live in cities with lots of people around. Other people want to just have a cabin in the woods with no one for miles around.

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3

I am a bit bummed about neighborhood’s having rewards myself.

I am gonna be drawn into a guild neighborhood when I just wanna spell naughty words with my furniture to make me giggle when I zone in.

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4

Hey so can my rogue actually go in and steal stuff from your houses or can we not do that? Idk. I think that would be fun gameplay if rogues could pick lock the doors and then loot the stuff inside. In some MMOs you can do that. Just like in some MMOs you can loot who you kill in WPvP and get everything in their bags even if it is soulbound.

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5

Well considering the type of game wow is and the fact that weve never had full loot or even corpse runs id say no.

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6

Oh man, I can’t wait to read all the hottest takes about this over the next year.

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Many of us play the game to escape society and human interaction because we are forced to endure human interaction and chaos all day long. I love your idea of providing the CHOICE of a neighborhood, or living in seclusion.

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8

I disagree, I think there should be more things in WoW that require or enable socialization. Far too many people play this game extremely anti-socially.

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9

You can come hang at my house anytime Merp!

Beers in the fridge, help yourself.

:beers:

10

Housing is extremely boring without being able to show it to other people.

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11

Neighborhoods wont require socialization at all though is my point.

Its simply a capital city style illusion of being social when in reality its just a bunch of people standing around doing their own thing.

To make people be social you need to create content that requires other people to complete. Aka raid and m+. Idk about others here. But instanced content is how ive met all of my long term friends in wow.

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But keep in mind the hints they gave towards neighborhood progression:

letting players live next to each other, work together, and share in the rewards of being part of the Neighborhood

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13

Yeah i definitely missed that and it changes a lot.

If theres improvements to the neighborhood or things to unlock thats actually pretty neat.

I still believe that players should have the option of instanced housing in areas around the world like capital cities. BUT if there is a genuine effort being put into making neighborhoods more than just another capital city i am intrigued and understand them putting their attention in that direction.

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14

It looks like a typical Blizzard move doesn´t it?

Garrisons were isolated and you could only invite friends to fight bosses / events. It had a very low social aspect, except for the duells at your doorstep.

With Housing, they are now going all out with forcing us into larger cities, where the same will happen like at Stormwind & Co. Folks will sit on their mounts, blocking NPC´s, swearing, asking for boosts and goldbuying / services.

Blizzard is always operating in the extremes, they just can not find a middle ground it seems.

I am finding it hard to enjoy living in a neighborhood, that I am unable to tailor to my liking. Are we going to have leaders, that will only invite you if you pay, got a certain gearscore… or are we going to create our own neighborhood, that nobody wants to join, that remain empty?

Or will Blizzard just throw us into a shard and we are stuck with whoever we get like in Raid finder and layers?

It´s guilds 2.0 or another automated tool, where the term social is just a word, but not a function.

Don´t get me wrong, I can see the fun aspects in joining a neighborhood, ending up with a shack somewhere in a corner, because you are the new guy and nobody knows you. The next few years you need to climb up the ladder, to maybe get a chance for a bigger plot and better view.

But how realistic is such a romantic scenario? We are still talking about the WOW community, which is very toxic as we know.

In the end, neighborhoods may drive people away from housing, as our community is not nice and will surely find ways to exploit the system, so that you may never see anything but the first plot you had.

I am very curious about further details.

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15

Now I’m picturing the Stormwind guards walking into someone’s house with a search warrant and automatically CCing everyone inside until they’re done.:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

16

Two options. Public, or Private. Seems like we get the best of both. What’s the problem?

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It just seems as though they were saying neighborhoods are the only way to do housing when i think that it doesnt really do anything for most players. Like granted we dont know exactly how theyll expand housing but i think keeping it to housing specific zones would be a mistake.

18

They mentioned that specific zones were created to keep their own workload down compared to the ‘dream’ of being able to have a house literally anywhere you want to put one.

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For now they are specific zones. The article stated they intend to offer more locations down the line. Whether that is multiple zones with a phased home (like garrisons), or more neighborhoods, it is hard to say. But this is literally the first iPhone, not the 17th. Patience.

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Of course its the first step but that doesnt mean we cant offer criticism of the plan they present to us.