I agree. Player housing would add a HUGE shot in the arm for WoW and probably add many many years to the life of the game as a whole. Honestly dont know why they havent added this already.
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I do remember this video back then, I was so stoked after I watched it! I couldn’t wait to play it and I was an avid wow player still. I did start with EQ way back (started in 2000 or 2001) and had played til 2005 when I transitioned to WoW.
I wished it came to fruition tbh. I love WoW and don’t really play any other MMOs than WoW anymore, but I would have loved to try this out.
(Edit: Forgot to add) OP, very well written and thought out post! I mean, I know garrisons weren’t considered player housing at all and I know the reasons why. I personally loved my garrison and still do to this day.
I think these are great ideas about how to obtain décor/themes/customization options. If done correctly, the customization could be practically endless and that is exciting! (Personally, I would love to have ICC themed buildings or a room that looked like the Lorderon throne room!)
I agree, that it should be optional in the way that if people didn’t want to participate and do that sort of thing, they wouldn’t have to. I also agree that it shouldn’t be instanced so much that there would be 0 interaction with the major cities.
I also agree a guild hall would be cool. Hanging with your guildies and having some customization there would be an interesting feature.
I think Blizzard is very capable of making this amazing.
Thank you for taking the time to type all of these great ideas and that they may take a step back and rethink some of their philosophies as of late. It gives me hope to think that maybe they would consider something like this (not that they will, but who knows?). I also appreciate your responses to those that even reject the idea or even the ones that agree. You’ve been very straightforward and thorough. 
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Oh 100%, if they didn’t screw it up with their transition to Landmark, and lied to everyone about the state of their development, what could have become of Everquest Next is something to imagine. Would have jumped ship to EQNext for sure.
It’s really a shame with what happened.
This video was so cool to watch at that time.
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IKR. It’d give people (another) reason to do legacy raids to collect decorations, it’d provide an entirely new set of achievements for PvE and PvP-related trophies to hang, it’d give a lot of people something FUN to do for years to come, which is valuable–both literally and figuratively–to the game because it contributes to long-term stability and player contentment.
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I personally think the idea of guild halls is a little less inspiring and more problematic unless they’re kept very simple. For the simple reason that WoW has a huge community of loners or people who just don’t have much interest in guild life/interactions outside of raid time and I think it would be a waste of resources and time. Now if they can keep it simple, a re-use of large existing buildings with 2 rooms, one big one with a huge table with tons of chairs for meetings and not much in the way of customization mechanics I think it wouldn’t hurt anything. Maybe a wall with plaques or trophies the guild unlocks by doing guild runs of PvE content or achievements like crafting in a given expac but I think these should be kept fairly generic beyond a mouseover description or text descriptive window one can examine and open. Even as an RPer I acknowledge many people join guilds for perks but don’t want to be forced to be overly involved in them. I’ve seen as much with RP guilds that don’t even raid with people joining them for access to events and a community but not wanting to be forced into going to every event.
Ideally with well implemented housing that can be customized in decently sized houses and which you can invite large numbers of friends to you wouldn’t even need the guild housing necessarily for say RP purposes as you could just meet in someone’s house (this is also a reason I think houses should perhaps have a yard for larger gatherings).
A new dev team could possibly save WoW. Player housing alone will not.
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Good thing nowhere in the post claims player housing alone will do it. As the OP and entire thread speaks for itself, over and over, that this discussion involves significantly more than a house or housing mode. Glad you read the title at least, though.
If I’m AFK in Stormwind/Org, it’s usually up in the air where nobdy can see me anyways. My main AH hub is actually New Dalaran too, which is where I spend most of my “sitting around” time.
If people want to hide, they’ll hide.
It’s not a huge deal.
Final Fantasy has player housing and yet their cities are absolutely packed with people just chilling and hanging out. Only time it’s an issue is if the entire game’s population is low, which is what the games people cite were; niche low population MMOs.
Also, they do have the tech to share housing. Garrisons already have it.
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Imagine if all the time spent on Torghast had instead been used to develop housing.
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I really enjoyed Garrisons, but they got pretty lonely. I just wished at the time they were guild-based, not player based, guilds have a lot of interesting history and play a big role in Wow. I think there’s a lot of potential there and some pretty good ideas in here that could also apply.
Idk why some people think this is somehow beyond the game’s capabilities. Freaking Runescape added relatively expansive player housing in 2006. I’d also be in favour of Guild Halls, but I guess that’s a bit of a different topic.
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No. It’s an expensive resource sink that people will get bored of within a week to a month, just like our garrisons.
This idea’s been going around since the mid-90s & it always goes the same way.
Source?
I don’t believe so, many people want this, myself included.
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never give up the dream
Player housing by itself can’t save it, but it can improve things for sure.
It wont. Also it needs to be done right. Do housing like archage or FFXIV and it will be worse than not having it with this community.
But really housing is side dish content, the game needs work on its core, badly.
I like building bases in Minecraft and Valheim. Loved housing in SWG. Love building parks in Planet Coaster.
But this just isn’t the game for it. Almost nothing in your inventory has a in game model for it. It’s all icons. Even most of the gear is just modifications or coloring transforms for your character.
It’s a theme park MMO that already has asset issues requiring SSD’s to be playable. And there isn’t any in-game space for thousands of houses. So at best we’d get an instanced and watered down garrison with a select from these 5 decorating choices. Kill boss X for a sixth.
I spend a lot of time building bases in Valheim. One of my favorite parts of the game.
I wish WoW had a sandbox mode like that. I don’t even care if it’s instanced and has nothing to do with any storylines. Let me build stuff.
I’m in the “give it a good try” camp. Use the best housing ideas from previous and existing mmos. Don’t tie it to some spaghetti system and let people have fun with it.
What does wow have to lose. They are literally the last mmo to do this. I speak for myself only. If it is done well I would love it. Make it accessible to everyone! Not behind a grind or system.
I often play Valheim instead of playing wow. Loving the building aspect of it.