What’s crazy, is the art and files for most of the buildings and decorations that could be used are already in the game. Maybe just a few changes here and there would be required. Then just write the code for the zone plotting and/or instancing, add player interface tools for decorating/moving objects, and voila.
Then things can be refined over time, more blueprints could be added, along with a much needed architect profession, and people would fork over mountains of gold. Mountains.
15 years of assets
On the other hand, I’d love to see us given the chance to create our own houses. A little game called Valheim lets you cut down trees and collect stone and make your own house; walls, floorboards, roofing, doors, etc. I’d love it if we had a selection of instanced locations across the game where we could learn a skill like Woodworking and the ability to collect or cut down trees (which was a skill available in WoD actually) and use the materials gathered to construct a home.
I know, it probably wouldn’t happen, but at least it would be fun to have a questline to open Housing for a character that involved staking a claim, learning how to build a house and choosing a blueprint based on the design we preferred, and creating our first home. That would be a lot of fun.
It’s too late for player housing.
The problem is that they don’t care - the ‘social’ element of the game has never been Ion’s (or his lackeys’) ‘bag.’ They’re interested in one aspect of MMORPGs and one aspect alone: progression. Every element of the game has been tuned to feed that beast. Not only do they not care about things like housing and and player-generated content - they’re actively disdainful of such distractions because it risks draining resources from their precious lone pursuit.
No we don’t. None of those are housing. They’re instanced spaces that players can make a few almost irrelevant choices about. They are in no way a space one can customize as a home. They’re more like a set of hotel rooms one can choose from that are furnished in slightly different ways but will never really be homey and always retain this base default choice about them that cannot be altered. A proper housing system would have millions of combinations, a hundred combinations just of the house style itself and location.
As to the farm it’s just a tiny plot of instanced land maybe 20 x 20 yards at most in size (the part you can customize that is, the field), you can plant things in it and add sprinklers and a plow to make it easier to manage. It has relevance only to MoP as you can only grow MoP era trade goods (cooking ingredients) there.
As to the garrisons. They are not homes. They are explicitly military bases full of wandering soldiers and people you recruit. The customizeable elements consist of being able to choose the race of soldiers that patrol around, add a few NPCs you find around draenor like the tree guy, and choosing buildings that have no personal relevance to the player, I can choose a barracks or a place to build siege tanks, not the kind of customization anyone is talking about. Lorewise none of that belongs to your character, it’s assets of your given faction placed under your command for military purposes. You do not have a house, a room to sleep in, a closet to hold your stuff, a table to work at, a room to fill with your junk, etc. Everything there is geared around being for the NPCs, you’re just someone who wanders in and gives some orders occasionally. I should also note there are very few customization options. And the NPCs run the place, they’re constantly walking around so you don’t feel like it’s a place of your own (unless you feel at home with random strangers walking around you) so much as a place you issue commands from.
As to the shop. It’s grasping at straws that you bring it up as if any space that has any player customization/choice (however little and unimpactful) is somehow game to be compared to actual housing.
What about the RPG part? The part that’s been all but abandoned. WoW’s player choice is abysmal. An RPG that has races with only 3 faces? Anyways WoW has one of the most toxic communities in any game I’ve ever seen and that drives isolation to a degree, people are just mean. It also has (10+ year player here) one of the communities most prone to doing stuff by themselves and this has been the case for the past decade.
This will not make the problem any worse. In fact it will give players an excuse to be social to show off their homes, to meet one another in smaller groups instead of standing around in silence outside the bank or auction house waiting for queues to pop. The isolating systems like LFD, LFR, BG queues, etc are all already in place and have nothing to do with this. It will be a blessing for RPers like myself to have a space our own, it will really revitalize things for us and bring us further into the headspace of our characters.
The problem with garrisons was they were NOT housing. The problem with garrisons is they were city replacements.
You could sit in trade channel in them, you could auction in them if you gathered the parts, you could even view the black auction house. You were incentivized during the expac to do missions and as many as you could both to progress your followers and level them up, to progress the storyline, and to make gold, and because there really weren’t any other cities to sit in. Core questlines and progress were tied into leveling and developing them. Where else could one go during WoD to be near the current content (e.g. not sitting in SW/ORG)? The Ashran bases? They were portal pit stops, not proper cities, if you idled in them you were missing out on turning in your missions and queuing up new ones. Unless you were there waiting to join an Ashran group or browsing the pvp vendors there was very little reason to spend time there. You ported there, then used a port to elsewhere. There was no questing, no questhubs, nothing. Proper player housing is not understood as place for any of those things. Players would have reason to go there and then leave for a city because cities would have services they would need. The only reason to sit there alone by yourself would be because you have literally nothing better to do with your time and if you didn’t have player housing I guarantee that person would be idling in a city and ignoring the world around them just the same. This is very much something we do not desire to be core to a specific expansion. Players should if they wish be able to ignore the housing system and still raid.
Others have already mentioned how they do not isolate people in other games in practice and I hope my reply is illuminating as to why it will not be the case in WoW and why specifically garrisons caused that issue.
Covenants are just a failed re-implementation/re-conceptualization of class halls from legion which were themselves an attempt at a more social version of garrisons. I agree with you though that they are a disaster and never should have been attempted as anything but a lore flavored choice with maybe transmog sets and a shared hub. But players are quite literally forced into these things. No one would force you into player housing and you wouldn’t get any quests in player housing.
Player housing has to be a thing.
It also needs to include different buildings for each race.
Both of those things would increase player engagement for a long time and make people more invested in their characters and the game.
Tldr: no. it wont.
It is never too late. Transmog came in Cata and by MMORPG standards that was late too. Anytime you can add in a system that has lasting value and can be built upon with each successive expansion is a win for WoW. And WoW needs some wins right now that are easy and player housing is a good starting point.
Right? They have all the ingredients to make fantastic player housing if they just put it together.
I’m guessing this is the thread proposing future monetization ideas to Blizzard? Is that the end of the line over there? Cool, thanks man!
I’m guessing you are bringing in your trauma from the TBC boost here?
This thread isn’t talking about selling anything on the store.
Never a good idea to assume
You did with your first post in here…
It wouldn’t save WoW for me. The classes are not fun and I get tired of having to relearn my class/spec every Xpac because the skills I used last Xpac are gone or changed. Blizz has stripped anything I’ve ever enjoyed about WoW and it just is not enjoyable for me.
But if others would find that enjoyable then I am all for it. Games are SUPPOSE to be fun IMO.
To each their own.
I didn’t though…so…
That’s why if you read the other comments and parts of the OP, you would see that this is about design philosophy just as much or more than it is about player housing. It is even noted in the OP the need for permanence in content, and the current lack thereof. Your point is raised and met in the text. It’s a shame you missed it
No need to guess. Have a read
Watch them add player housing and lock it behind an anima grind (or whatever the expansion currency is)
Just sounds like more time sink metrics to me
Fine by me.
If you don’t like grinds, you’re in the wrong game genre.