So, Taliesin just made this video on the possibility of player housing in WoW, with comparisons to FFXIV and ESO and the thought that it might be coming in one of the upcoming expansions. So…what do we think? Is it coming? Do you agree with his theories and commentary?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUXNstQnb5Q
Subscriptions would have to be might low.
If we were talking about old Blizzard, I would have said player housing is likely never coming unless they tie some gameplay mechanic to it like houses give XP or minor stat buffs to justify adding it into the game as part of the experience. But lately Blizzard has been giving players stuff for no other sake but adding things to the game so its gone from a flat out “no” to a “not likely, but maybe?
I mean we already have assets and the tech with garrisons. Give us the ability to move that plot around and add some racially themed buildings/cosmetics with the already existing art in game and most people would be fairly content.
Cities would be ghosts towns though, even more so than they’re already growing to be.
I’m grossly opposed to it. Instead of creating instanced housing which would empty out the cities en-masse as we all flood small instances for super ultra private RP, Blizzard would do better by updating the world. Giving all of EK and Kalimdor the DF treatment. Expand lands, add buildings, update textures…
Even if not the entirety of EK and Kalimdor, an Orgrimmar / Stormwind update of the same checklist (more open buildings, larger, updated textures) would do great in repopulating places.
Sure, there’d be fights over who gets what square foot of real estate on a given day at a given time, but with plenty of shared space, the community would feel more included with everyone at large.
You can still go back and build up your garrison. That’s WoWs version of player housing and the closest you’re likely to get. It created ghost towns. They aren’t going to repeat that mistake.
But who knows. Its Blizzard after all and they have short memories.
According to Tali, Ion told him they’re working on it but it’s long-term. Still, he’s made a few vids about this/last year and has even speculated it coming before The War Within.
If they do it, I hope it’s not a lottery system or anything like in FFXIV – just make it a gold sink, put in dailies that send you out in the world to collect stuff in cities to increase city traffic. All that stuff.
That is misunderstanding what housing can and should be massively. Furthermore the reason why Stormwind is empty is because every expansion creates new central hub, instead of re-using capital cities. Housing wouldn’t change that at all, not even close.
I am personally all for it because I want something I care to grind for again.
I am so bored of the rep grind just for appearances that (again) I personally do not care for. Now, as an RPer, I grind for mog with a similar drive to those who PVP grind- relentless till I get it. Now, if given a grind for housing where perhaps I have to rep grind to unlock kaldorei themed furniture, I am suddenly driven to do content to unlock that. I think there is also the consideration for something new to grind for, too. Similar to the drive people got for the dragon appearances with DF, it’s something new and people want it.
While player housing could ‘empty’ the cities for private/small group RP- that does not mean they will allow an AH in player housing, nor a transmog NPC. Nor guild masters or bankers or profession trainers- etc. There will still be a demand to go to the cities for those things.
& also simply put, if it’s something that is desired and brings people in- whether it be as a gold sink or real money sink or a content grind, then implement it. I was just remarking to my friend how the Garrisons from WoD would have been SO much cooler if you could unlock race (such as Blood Elf or Pandaren) themed buildings instead of all the buildings looking like they were pulled from SWC/Org respectfully.
I like how he says it’s “inevitable”. Oh, to have that level of optimism again…
My biggest fear with Blizzard actually implementing player housing is that they will do it The Blizzard Way.
Just because Norman is a Gnome, does not mean he would want a house / plot that only has gnome designs.
Take the idea of “theme” and throw it in the trash. One of the biggest issues I had with the Garrison (which btw, was not even CLOSE to what player housing is) is that you could not change building styles or combine building styles or change anything at all.
Maybe I could sneak into Silvermoon and steal some Elfy curtains. Maybe I could trade with the Tauren and get some totems. I want player housing that doesn’t restrict what my player housing could be.
I want total freedom. Give everyone the ability to farm / gather / acquire ALL of the available assets that are available to EVERYONE.
I want player housing more than anything. I do not trust Blizzard to give us something that we’d be happy with.
I’d love for them to prove me wrong.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: player housing could and likely would be a net positive for WoW.
An MMO revolving entirely around content that is in some way tied to increasing player power is both an outdated mindset on a player’s part and an outdated design philosophy on a developer’s part. MMOs that incorporate what I like to call “lifestyle content” (completely optional game and cosmetic features that exist outside the traditional gameplay loop of level, gear, kill bosses, get more gear to kill more bosses, etc.) are already a dime a dozen—even Lost Ark has collectible housing items and an in-game posing feature similar to FFXIV’s gpose—and if WoW wants to stay relevant as a game and retain players who have grown weary of seasonal gearing, it would be silly not to lean into that.
As has been mentioned, the dragon mount appearances are a great microcosm of something like this, but there’s only so much satisfaction that new transmog or appearances can bring when you can only ever have one equipped in any given slot at any given time. Housing, on the other hand, offers a LOT more potential for things to not only collect, but show off and enjoy.
I say this as someone who is weary of the seasonal gearing process. I just don’t care about gear as much as I used to. More horizontal progression—things you acquire and can keep adding to as the expansions go on, rather than replacing with each major content patch—is, in my opinion, an easy and major win for the game.
And for what it’s worth, I don’t buy the “it wouldn’t be worth it because we’d lose so much other content” argument. Blizzard regularly insist on committing to new expansion systems that are a gamble with the player base (artifact weapons, azerite, covenants, talent revamp and dynamic flight, hero talents and delves). Some of these were wins and some were flops.
I personally don’t see why it wouldn’t be nice to have one of these “gambles” be in regard to something that basically every other MMO offers and which has proven to be immensely popular among MMO players who desire more ways to make their persistent online world feel more like a home.
WILD 
STAR
Wildstar style housing, so much potential in WoW. Probably never happen, but wouldn’t it be nice… le sigh.
This is my worry. We’re not going to get a house we can decorate, we’re going to get a “War-Apartment” that we can furnish by purchasing one of twelve tile assets with Seals of Real Estate that you get by raiding, PvP and doing whatever the new crappy minigame is.
I went back to look at how many times we on WrA have beat this topic into the ground. It’s a lot. A lot of discussion. Here’s 3 completely different threads just in the past year or so, not to mention the number of other threads I found comments in as part of Blizzcon spectulation or what we want in an MMO.
Some of my comments over the past year or so, but in other threads:
Terra-forming and housing. I have the most fun when I can collect mats for building, put together a shiny new base and fill it with my stuff. If I can personalize the stuff, even better. If I can waste time watching videos or looking at pics online of other people’s personalized stuff for more ideas, that’s chef’s kiss. Give me a decent plot of land and let me diggy diggy hole, set up a mine, a pond, a mountain with a base jutting out the side of it. Let me add trees, building foundations, walls, ceilings. Let me populate it with NPCs I choose.
And this is going to sound weird, but…something to spend spare time and money on. Specialty pets, mounts, transmogs, companions, housing. Give me shinies. I’ll buy shinies. With actual money! I’ll work in-game to earn shinies. I’ll do old content for shines. Just…don’t lock them all behind top tier raiding and arena ranking. That’s just a turn off if I see something I really love that I’m never going to have the time or skill to get.
And
Blizz had better plans for garrisons. They apparently just ran out of time to do things. Garrisons were supposed to be movable to whatever zone you wanted. The buildings were supposed to be customizable so if you wanted an entirely Forsaken garrison, or Elvish, Tauren, Dwarven, etc., you could do that. The most we got were flags and guards.
And
With the resources and assets that are supposedly in the code, there are different walls, doors, windows, roofs, lighting, furniture, etc. I could see finding “plans” for some of these either in the zones they currently exist in, or learning architecture as a new profession and getting some things as a base recipe. Then you make the assets by gathering materials and processing. Then you assemble and decorate.
I could see the plot we’re given as being the same size as our garrison, but completely bare. Or it could even start with our Garrison if Khadgar found a way to magically attach them directly through portals in the portal room. The story could be that our Garrisons were abandoned and fell apart, but the economy of the area is relying on them. So we have to go back and steward the land.
Neat things could be added such as the Pandaria farm (remember that?), a brewery, a portal room. You could do entirely unexpected things like make the dock area a seaside resort, or theme the entire build to look like Drustvar with spooky witches. You could remove and replace things so as a DM, you could set up different RP scenarios to fight through. This would work well if we’re given placable NPCs. At this point, WoW is starting to look like a different game, and people who used SWTOR or Divinity Original Sin II to set up electronic D&D type content would be interested in trying this out.
And
In-game economy is stimulated as people find new reasons to play. Every character can have its own housing so there’s a reason to level your alts (and there’s the metric, Blizz), and guilds will have an even larger plot of land that can be built on. Guildies can attach their homes if they wish - regardless of faction - and while in the guildhall, everyone can speak and understand each other without an elixir. New plot sections can be given out with major patch content. Entirely new bases can drop per expac. Characters can have up to 5 bases each.
I’ve messed around with building in ESO, SWTOR, Ark, Pixark, Minecraft, Conan. Valheim, 7 Days, Icarus, LOTRO, Raft, Sims, and Divinity among others. I like Conan’s system because there are modders who drop everything from entire maps to furniture lines and building sets, so the base game is crazy customizable. But with games like Conan, the servers limit things like how many characters you can have, how big your builds can be, etc. There’s never enough to do once you’re ready to take a break from building. Conan world content is highly limited. Here in WoW, that’s not an issue. I can have 25 characters with 25 different background ideas, run them through different zones for content, farm transmogs, etc.
Do I think they’ll give us this? No. I’m not even asking for terraforming here, but I feel like Blizz is still having that “you think you do, but you don’t” moment and haven’t learned that every time they actually give us something we’ve requested for years, it’s a big positive for the community.
Right now their marketing department has the issue of finding something that will appeal to new and existing players, but will also draw players back in who aren’t playing right now. Some things like Classic expacs and Hard Core are a good start. Player housing as an ongoing perk and not just something that drops with the next expac and then gets abandoned would appeal to:
And
My overall take away is that if no player housing is coming for 3 upcoming expacs, that means no player housing. Guess I’ll keep spending my disposable income in Conan and ESO. I’d rather spend it here, but WoW won’t give me a reason.
At this point, I no longer expect player housing.
Ever.
They really think the Garrisons counted.
And
I’ve already given up on player housing. It’s not coming. If it was, they would have announced it for the next expac. It would have been a nice topping on the anniversary cake, being probably the most asked for feature in the history of the game.
There was no announcement. The Blizz devs can’t figure out how to add it, where to add it, etc. All they see is that they think we’ll all go “hide” in them. Right now they’re using capitol cities like Valdrakken to prove to players that there are people on their server. They think they have to keep doing that.
We should just stop asking before one of the devs crawls out during a stream and tells us that if we want player housing, garrisons are there waiting for us…
We’re murder hobos. If you give us permanent lodging then we’re just murderers
Every single word of your post. Every single one. I love threads like this because I really want player housing in this game, but I also hate threads like this because Blizz continues breaking my heart by not giving it to us.
I think what befuddles me the most, is that this game came out in 2004. Player housing was actually a discussion when it did and it was supposed to come out…back then. There was a literal portal in SW that was put there TO PORTAL PEOPLE TO THE PLAYER HOUSING AREA.
Over the past 5-10 years, building games, creative games and cozy games have become an entire gaming industry. For many games, you almost have to release a “creative mode” or people won’t buy it. FFS, zombie survival games include creative mode where people turn off the zombies and “survival” and just build / collect.
As much as I love Valheim (which is a lot), it didn’t sell the number of copies it did because it’s a great game. It sold because there was an immediate way on release to free mode / god mode/ creative mode / add mods and change the terra and it was easy to do, even for the dumbest of computer people.
I bought it. Logged in and within hours, I was building castles and every other thing I ever wanted to do in WoW, right down to individual logs and stones.
I am chomping at the bit on Enshrouded, because the building system looks beautiful. Once they get creative mode, I am opening my wallet.
So many features in WoW are “expac exclusive” and we never see them again no matter how much we love them.
Player housing would survive and outlast every single expac they could ever release. I talk to people who used to play and every single one of them says they would genuinely consider coming back for it.
It is LITERALLY STUPID for them to continue to ignore it.
They could make a SH-- TON OF MONEY IMPLEMENTING IT. If only for that reason?
Why they won’t do it is absolutely confusing.
Heh, yeah, ain’t no way no how…WS housin’ is the best there ever was anna best there ever gonna be. Ain’t too many devs basically hand ya the keys to their dev toolkit an’ letya go nuts with it.
Still mad, by the way. Forever.
Wildstar was the goat player housing. It is the standard I measure every other housing system against. They all fall short.
Now, what if you got player housing, but a different player furnished it and you didn’t get to leave and whatever was in the house was all that you got until the other player decided you could have more?
What if you were in jail is what I am asking? Would you consider player jail a form of housing?
Do I get a harmonica?
If you complete enough JailTime quests.