It’s… um. Meh? Not the worst, but could be better. Still, if WoW incorporated the same style as SWTOR it would not be too shabby.
It’s definitely coming. They’ve been heisting things from other games this entire expac, and that’s a good thing. There are people who would keep up the sub forever just to have a house to play with and I’m sure they know this. After what’s probably an annoyingly long and expensive development period, it would be like printing money.
I for one, just want to be able to farm those green candles from classic scholomance for my grimdark mansion of despair.
Honestly not sure what housing will end up looking like in WoW but I hope at least the level of FFXIV customizability. Perhaps more ‘farm’ like overall, giving us a pumpkin patch mini game or something. A system like FFXIV’s subs and ships instead of a mission table for gold farming. (please don’t make us click on the stupid placards though, that was a bad idea). There are so many options it could be, I have no idea which page out of which book they’ll steal, I just hope it’s a good one.
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Once again touting the greatness that was/is Wildstar housing.
The housing lots had “sockets” that a variety different mini-game “prefab kits” (among other things) could be added. They typically rewarded currency that could be spent at the Housing vendor to buy more items to use in your lot!
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What is the story behind wildstar not existing anymore anyway? Was it just not fun outside of the housing everyone liked?
I think I played it for like an hour when it was FtP but I have no memory of it other than that I was a space undead or something
Endgame was designed by people who think vanilla wow was the only valid way to play wow. As a result, the grind to unlock a 40 man raid turned so many people off. It never quite reached a sustainable population, and had to go xfaction much earlier in its lifecycle than expected. Devs didn’t have enough money to consistently produce content for it, so eventually it was just not profitable.
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Whew. That’s a loooong discussion but the short version, from my anecdotal experience, was alot of mismanagement/bad decisions early on that really hurt the initial playerbase. Hardcore vs Casual being a big one. The combat and artstyle being another.
It was alot of you love it or hate it. No middle ground. Add in a splash of really bad word-of-mouth spreading around misinformation and it all just dwindled down to death.
Not to mention being published by NCSOFT, so there’s that.
Oh, I would like to add that the devs did try to address alot of the issues over time but the damage was already done. I really think if the game was re-released today at the same state as it was when it closed, it would be alot more successful.
Edit edit: Also, also, Wildstar was a brand new IP with no pre existing fan base to draw interest from. And a really weak marketing campaign. There were some fatactic cenimatics made but they didn’t really make the rounds unless you already knew about the game.
Launch Trailer
https://youtu.be/x-NXdWk9sm8
F2P Release Trailer
https://youtu.be/Haw_20wqWBM
…and now I have made myself sad.
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It was largely a case of the hardcore playerbase complaining WoW wasn’t hardcore enough so when Wildstar was hardcore enough it turns out those hardcore players were mewling babies who were just spewin’ ego through their exhaust ports
Much like WoW I aint gave two farts inna windstorm about raidin’ for 15 years now so everything else in WS was all aces imo, not the least of which was my own personal housin’ plot wherein I placed every freakin’ piece of decor by hand an’ it was the best place I ever wanted ta be
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tbh i wouldn’t know if it’s that or if it’s that the hardcore MMO playerbase is louder than they are big or sustainable. it’s why most hardcore MMO experiences fail, and ironically why WoW succeeded-- it’s always pandered pretty hard to casual players. speaking AS a casual player, the game has always been For Me. hitting 10 in vanilla WoW was way more fun and less punishing than hitting 10 in Everquest.
besides, it’s also noteworthy that a lot of the hardcore whiny babies don’t actually push mythic+ or mythic raid, which are notably more difficult than any vanilla dungeon/raid. they’re just mad that there are modes of the content that ANYONE can do without a several-week grind.
One of the things I remember about raiding in WS (and its combat in general) was the skill ceiling was massive. But also the skill floor was waaaay above average. And at the time its raid mechanics were pretty far out ahead of the curve compared to where WoW was at that time.
WS really was ahead of its time in almost everything, but when 9 out of 10 players can’t even finish the first dungeon, you may wanna take a look at your systems.
The game really could have hugely benefited from Mythic style stacking difficulties. They kind of had a small foothold on the concept in these mini dungeons they called Expeditions (you could actually put the entrance “portals” to these dungeons on your housing lot as decoration). They scaled from 1 to 5 players getting progressively harder the larger the group size.
I wish they carried that over into the dungeons and raids.like WoW has done, may have helped keep more folks around.
Sweat-Lords and -Ladies ruining it for everyone once again.
But in all seriousness, I would happily pay for a Wildstar Housing system, if only because it was good. Even if housing ends up in a specific area and you can only see the houses /farms/mines/wizard towers/pernicious dens of vice and sin of people on your Friends List/Guild, so be it.
Player housing in MMORPGs tends to be a mixed bag at best. In FFXIV, if you work full-time and can afford an old Kia, there is probably not enough time to obtain the in-game currency needed for a house. LOTRO makes it feel like you are paying a second mortgage in real life, just hideously boring. SWTOR is one of the better ones because you can just use coins earned from your monthly sub to buy things for the house. In games like Ark Survival and the upcoming Dune Awaking, player housing is an integral part of the character leveling progression. I have BEAUTIFUL bases on Ark Survival that are very useful for raising dinos, crafting, and even taking a mobile base ship out to sea for gathering and crafting. In WoW, FFXIV, SWTOR, LOTRO, player housing is near useless. Maybe invite other players to visit? Well, that can give others the creeps 
In my experience playing on Ark clusters, you have to give the overall community reasons to visit like having a public teleporter, public crafting stations, free eggs, etc… Can WoW have useful player housing? Sure!! I played on a private RP-PVP server from 2012-2015. Housing assets from the alpha version of WoW was activated and we could have not only player housing but USEFUL ones too!! There is a drawback, however, and that is the server can not host as many players at once. Have housing in a destructible world like Ark, and you are limited to about 100 players per map. On a world map size of current Azeroth and offworlds, you will need some serious computing power!