With player housing finally seeming to be a thing. I thought it might be worth discussing what we want, what we can expect and potential limitations.
What I want…
- Racial inspired architecture. (Nightelves, Pandaren, etc.)
- Ability to freely place and move things.
- The ability for friends to visit.
- Ability to use unlocked transmogs to “display” on weapon racks/armor stands.
- Expandable with “addons” like stable, multiple levels, etc.
- In game rewards from achievements/trading post that feed back into the housing.
- Space to accommodate a “Guild hall” (Garrisons can kind of serve as a guild hall at present). But it would be nice if the player housing could be expanded to where a Guild could have their own place where the members could then all have a hand in customizing their hall, etc.
- Affordable (receiving a starter house that could be upgraded through blueprints could be cool). It shouldn’t feel like players have to spend money in the shop or buy wow token to afford to even buy a house.
- Choice of location within the world
What I expect we will realistically see
- A few different styles to start. More to be added later.
- Items will likely have a few preset slots where they can be placed. As noted above this could be tied to unlocked transmog appearances.
- in-game rewards either blueprints, individual cosmetic home decor like paintings, etc.
- Player housing will likely support a few people but be short of what people may want for a guild hall. (I think the Class halls were some step towards a shared space but couldn’t accommodate a guild with multiple classes.
- A preset location that is phased similar to garrisons.
Player housing is something many of us would want ourselves. Putting together any package for an expansion is a mix of what thematically suits the expansion, what’s going to appeal to different types of players, but also what would be required to deliver that feature at that level players expect and deserve and what would we have to give up to make that happen.
Player housing is a big one. It’s one of those things to do right. It’s a big undertaking. If we were to do it, it’d probably have to span multiple expansions. It’s a large enough feature in terms of just the art.
Back in WoD, there were just two types of Garrisons – one for the Alliance and one for the Horde. A Blood Elf player who expected one with a Silvermoon architecture wouldn’t get one due to resource constraints. It’s very time-consuming and would cost us for example a raid tier.
The dream of player housing is still alive and it’s something we want to do, but it isn’t a thing we will be able to do in Dragonflight. - Ion Hazzikostas
“Dare I say it’s our most ambitious feature in a WoW expansion ever. Part of why it’s taken such a long time to present it is that we knew we couldn’t really phone it in and put out a barebones foundation, even if we were to build on it in the future. I think everything we do needs to be great, but especially something with so much expectation and so much history across the MMO genre. We know it needs to be excellent, and it’ll be a foundation for years and years of further development and growth upon those foundations to follow.” -Ion Hazzikostas
With Ion’s comments, I do hope to be surprised. If they are taking at seriously as he suggests, hopefully, we will have a greater degree of control over the placement of items. I don’t think we will see something as extensive or robust as say Epsilon WoW which is built to allow for players to build an entire city or town if they so choose with the ability to rotate, scale, etc. Epsilon WoW also gives players a library of almost all the assets of the game up to a certain expansion to do with what they please.
Examples in other games / Limitations
Some of the games that have “player housing” that come to mind include things like GTA Online. But you really don’t get a lot of customization options. Just a handful of presets.
Other games like Conan Exiles, Fallout 76, Palworld, Enshrouded have base building where you can build a house/castle, etc. I do not think we see something that extensive either where you get these modular/granular building components. I think what may be more likely is something prefab a bit like Breath of the Wild’s house Link can build where you can swap rooms, etc.
The other consideration is server space. FFXIV is probably the most notable example of player housing and it’s housing to my recollection (been a while since I played) is in a sort of “Grid” or “Residential district” and players can buy their own or buy a Guild house as part of a “Free Company”.
Five Residential Districts are currently available, and they each have 30 wards. The wards are divided into two halves, a primary division and a subdivision, with a total of 60 plots, 30 for each half. You will always teleport into the primary half of the ward selected to visit. If you wish to go to plots 31-60, you will have to use the Aethernet shards to teleport into the subdivision half of the ward, which is in a separate map. All subdivisions are rotated 90 degrees compared to the primary ward but have an otherwise identical layout. Some wards will only allow for private buyers, others only for Free Companies, and the remaining allows for both.
With 30 wards, there are a total of 9,000 plots per server and 27,000 apartments, which breaks down into 900 Larges, 2,100 Mediums, and 6,000 Smalls. As there is a limited supply of houses per world, acquiring a house, especially in more populated worlds, can be quite difficult and will likely require multiple attempts at purchasing via the housing lottery system.
Note: Claimed land and houses that become inactive (not accessed by its owner(s)) for an extended period of time will be reclaimed by the game (owner(s) will lose the land and house).
Personally, I found FFXIV’s housing system to be too…inaccessible. It felt like it was too difficult for a new player to even aspire too because an apartment would cost 300,000 gil alone. And then if you do happen to go inactive while I recognize the server constraints that are the reason for the game to reclaim these plots? It would still leave people with a bit of the “feels bad man.” And to have a core feature of a major expansion/content update be lottery-based I don’t feel is ideal for WoW either. I also think Blizzard have to be careful and exercise some restraint. I don’t want to see the only folks who are even able to get or purchase a house being the same folks who can plunk down $90 for a store mount. If they make player housing too difficult to engage with because only the most well off players can afford it? It will undermine any good will such a feature could yield.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts. Agree/disagree share your own.
