I do see your arguments here. However, seeing the current state of the game, this might actually be a solid idea! IF done right, Blizzard could manage to pull off two major things from player housing.
One:
Something to keep a vast portion of the player base occupied. Which lately hasnât really been something Blizzard has accomplished very well unfortunately. Really take the time to understand what could come of this, Blizzard could do something like Old Republic does where dungeons, raids, world drops, etcâŚall drop furniture which in turn can add more motivation for content progression. It seems tedious but lets be real, a large amount of people will raid just to get a single wall painting to show off they did the raid on Mythic or something.
Two:
It adds an opportunity for Blizzard to follow ESOâs footsteps and make money off just the idea alone. Player housing doesnât have to have any significant relevance to progression content other than just displaying stuff. I feel housing would be used for more RP related groups or even as a hangout area. When you said âjust to AFK inside a Building?â, I immediately think of the countless hours Iâve wasted being AFK just for a dungeon queue. So as I see it, why not decorate a house until your queue pops? Obviously Tanks/Healz wont have that issue, but not everyone wants to tank/heal.
IF you really think about it, there have been multiple attempts by Blizzard to do something similar already. In MoP, you straight up build a farm and actually have to do farming dailies. Over time, the house that was just a shanty gets upgraded as you progress into a nice looking Pandaren house. Now I know thatâs not player housing, but that small detail is interesting. We had a farm and spent hours being in-game farmers for a rep grind. That goes back to my previous statement though of housing not having a significant role in content progression. Look at how Garrisonâs flopped in WoD. I loved the simple fact that I literally had fort/Garrison that I could call my own. Only reason Garrisons didnât really work is because they became dependent on the story. Itâs one thing to implement a Garrison through story, but we literally ALWAYS had to be in our Garrisons for some reason related to the content of WoD and you could just sit and farm professions all day inside your little town. If Blizz made it more for fun and less for dependency, I could see it working. I liked Garrison invasions too so they couldâve set that up for fun or even for further decorations. Though the Garrisons werenât the greatest, they still made me feel that for once in WoW my character was more than just a champion to some faction that doesnât care about what weâve done. I could upgrade it and design the buildings how I liked, and itâs citizens/troops respected you as their leader. Like really sit and think, we defeated Câthun, Yoggâsaron, the Lich King, Deathwing, Garrosh twice, SEVERAL major demons from Warcraft Lore, 2 freaking Titans, Nâzoth, and now the Jailor. Doesnât it feel odd that after doing all of that you have nothing to show off or the Faction leaders treat you like you never did anything at all worthy of even having a worthy position in their court? Look at âThe Lord of the Ringsâ movies, Gandalf was respected as more than just some old man in literally every city he walked in. They knew who he was and the though the leaders held the power of the people, those leaders still knew very well enough that Gandalf was someone to listen to/hold in high regard. Gandalf battled a crazy powerful ancient demon that not many would know how to even fight it, AND won! Imagine doing that just to come back to Aragorn going âWho is this old peasant? Get him out of my sight!â. No instead they knew the old wizard was powerful and respected him. My personal opinion is that the character we all play as in WoW has no real significance themselves in the story of WoW, like you could straight up run Antorus and defeat Argus again, just for Genn Greymane to say, âWelcome back Champion! Sylvannas is too powerful for any of us, so go spend hours in the Shadowlands until you get another raid group to wipe on her 10,000 times, just so we can take the credit for your accomplishment!â At least with player housing one can feel like their actions mattered and theyâre not just some random âChampionâ that gets treated like a brand new player each time. The point is, player housing will give some players a bit more of a feeling that their character actually exists in the game instead of always being treated like a servant who secretly has crazy levels of feats on their belt like defeating a Titan. Besides, whatâs the point of being an awesome hero if you canât have somewhere to hang your hat?
Thatâs just my take on this matter though, I still understand where youâre coming from, I just simply wanted to try and give you a different perspective on why people would/do want player housing. Try to have an open mind on this, if you still donât agree with anything I just said, then hey, thatâs your opinion and I respect it! Thanks for reading my rant anyways 