Poll results have been posted below as of 1/6/2020 2:28AM Eastern Time.
It’s late and I will update with the details of “Other” responses tomorrow evening in full once I have the time. So everyone who took time to type in and share your opinions, if Blizzard has read this at all, I will be sharing them soon in the hopes that they are observed with this tiny poll’s results.
Player Housing Poll Url (POLL CLOSED)
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfCl6QVpLd1oVmEEgxLt3PzJKOjWWSDZC-saW7vf-_ZuusW2Q/viewform
Poll Results Posted Below
Total Responses: Exactly 200, go figure.
Would you like to see Player Housing added as side content to World of Warcraft? (The only mandatory question)
Votes: 200
- Yes: 73%
- No: 27%
If you don’t want player housing, what side content would you like to see more of?
Votes: 167
- Warfronts: 4.2%
- Island Expeditions: 4.2%
- Artifacts: 4.8%
- World Quests: 3.6%
- Invasions: 7.2%
- Pet Battles: 1.8%
- I want play housing! 56.9%
- Other: 17.3%
Do you think Player Housing should be similar to Garrisons, a fortress with different buildings to place? Or should it focus on a single plot of land where you choose to place a home and customize it?
Votes: 177
- More like garrisons: 13%
- A fully customizable plot of choice: 87%
Should player houses be shared between characters and account-wide?
Votes: 179
- Yes: 67%
- No: 33%
Should there be a level requirement to access player housing or should it be integrated to pursue from level 1?
Votes: 178
- An appropriate level requirement would be okay: 66.9%
- We should be able to begin unlocking player housing from leveling 1: 33.1%
Do you think players should be able to fly in their player housing area?
Votes: 179
- Yes: 63.1%
- No: 36.9%
If player housing options on the Virtual Shop made the feature more likely to happen, would you be okay with some cosmetic only items appearing there?
Votes: 175
- If the Virtual Shop revenue made housing a viable feature I would be okay with it: 61.7%
- I am not okay with the Virtual Shop under any circumstances: 37.7%
What do you think should be the primary means to unlock different housing plots and styles?
Votes: 178
- Reputation: 12.4%
- Achievements: 13.5
- Quests: 30.9%
- Gold: 15.7%
- Explorations: 7.9%
- Other: 19.6%
Should player housing choices be faction specific?
Votes: 178
- Yes there should be faction specific housing choices (not fully account-wide): 73.6%
- No, all housing options should be accessible for both factions: 26.4%
Do you think professions should each have options to craft unique decorations for player housing?
Votes: 181
- Yes: 92.8%
- No: 7.2%
Do you think a new profession should be introduced just to focus on player housing items?
Votes: 180
- Yes: 56.1%
- No: 43.9%
If a player housing profession is introduced, should it be a primary or secondary profession?
Votes: 181
- Primary Profession: 16.6%
- Secondary Profession: 48.1%
- I do not think there should be any player housing focused professions at all: 35.4%
Should player housing have any statistical bonuses? Such as eating a feast at home increasing movement speed, or an increased rate for accumulating rested experience?
Votes: 179
- Yes: 34.1%
- No: 65.9%
Do you think players should have access to utilities of any kind in their homes (bank, transmog, rest, etc.) or cosmetic only?
Votes: 179
- Access to many utilities (bank, transmog armor racks, cooking furnace): 48.6%
- Access to only some utilities (local bank space, rest): 36.3%
- Access to no utilities (cosmetic only): 15.1%
What utility would be most important to you in a home?
Votes: 176
- Account-wide Bank Access: 30.1%
- Local Bank Access: 8%
- Transmog: 11.4%
- Profession Crafting Benches: 10.8%
- Mailbox: 23.3%
- Auction House: 6.3%
- Other: 10.1%
Do you think there should be cosmetics tied to means other than crafting available to decorate your home (achievements, exploration, rare drops, etc.)?
Votes: 180
- Yes: 90%
- No: 10%
What method of obtaining house decorations would you prefer in your spare time?
Votes: 176
- Pursuing profession recipes: 13.1%
- Achievement Hunting: 13.6%
- Farming rare drops: 4.5%
- Reputation grinding: 5.1%
- Housing specific quests: 22.7%
- Fishing up lost treasures: 0.6%
- Archaeology: 5.7%
- Running old dungeons and raids: 21%
- Pushing current content difficulties: 6.3%
- World quests: 2.8%
- Secret hunting: 2.3%
- Virtual Shop: 2.3%
Was this poll helpful in covering commonly discussed housing topics and questions?
Votes: 182
- Yes: 86.8% ( Thank you! )
- No: 13.2% ( I’m sorry I disappointed you, but thank you so much for your time. Seriously. Thank you!)
Will you share this with a friend?
Votes: 186
- Yes, this was great and I’d like player housing in the game!: 32.3%
- No, but this was a helpful poll: 28.5%
- No, but I was happy to voice my opinion: 39.2%
Not to be confused with Garrisons. Player housing is everywhere in the MMO universe. Final Fantasy 14, Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Aion, Rift, Black Desert Online, and many, many more competing MMO’s offer this feature. As a cosmetic incentive, housing offers far more opportunities to give a player a reason to log in and participate in content than any side feature recently introduced in WoW bar, perhaps, Mythic+ Dungeons.
A Very Brief History of Housing WoW:
Since the launch of WoW, player housing has been a feature on the minds of the developers. The portal to nowhere in Stormwind before the Cataclysm was a remnant of the nascent feature which the developers eventually abandoned.
Years later, Warlords of Draenor would attempt to address player housing less as a permanent feature to be enjoyed and iterated on continuously by the community and instead implemented as an expansion-only mechanic with either an overly ambitious scope or far too narrow depending on how accurate our knowledge of the Garrison feature is these multiple years later.
** Player Housing & The Failure of Garrisons**
Whether Garrisons were a symptom of a bigger problem in Warlords of Draenor or the root of it is unknown, but as a feature they did far too much and far, far too little all at once. Where to begin?
At some point Garrisons were conceptualized to be planted in any zone of a player’s choosing. While eventually these plans were reined in and the features are now settled in either Shadowmoon or Frostfire depending on your faction, the functionality of Garrisons seems to have remained largely intact, for better or worse.
Where Garrisons Did Too Much:
For players who were not present for Warlords of Draenor, or simply don’t remember, Garrisons were a cavalcade of convenience in such a way that an avalanche of gold is also a convenience. When participating in Garrison content a player could do almost everything in the game that they could also do outside of their Garrison.
- Gathering: A player could simultaneously mine, pick herbs, and fish inside their Garrison. Don’t have herbalism? You didn’t need it. Don’t have mining? You didn’t need that either. You could mine and herb, though less efficiently, regardless of whether you had the professions - and all while never leaving your Garrison. Every Garrison also had their own fishing pond in wish you could fish peacefully without the terror of being attacked on a PvP server - in addition to the other gathering skills. Have alts? All of your alts could also level their Garrisons and pool these resources to an almost unlimited end.
- Gold Farming: Using the mission board provided in Garrisons a player could also farm so much gold that its affects are still arguably very prominent in the game still to this day. Players could make millions of gold by leveling alternate characters and simply pursuing gold missions in their Garrisons, all without ever leaving their fortress or engaging in the Auction House or trade system.
- Utilities: In addition to generating materials and raw gold, the utilities provided in Garrisons, mixed with the troubles outside of them, were the final nail in the coffin for the community of the expansion. Inside the Garrison players had access to the Auction House, Bank, Guild Bank, Void Storage, Transmog, and every relevant crafting station. With this, there was truly never any reason to leave.
These three very profound points engaged with a lack of content within the expansion’s lifespan gave players, including myself, almost no reason to get out and engage with the world. This was a time when World Quests, Mythic+, and alternate progression (artifacts) did not exist and so Garrisons absorbed the chagrin of players everywhere held hostage by this feature in an empty, seemingly lifeless world.
Where Garrison’s Did Too Little:
Blizzard attempted to deliver on the fantasy that every player would have their own upgrade-able fortress to enjoy. The problem with this was, compared to competitor iterations of the player housing concept, is that the fortress really didn’t give players any real agency over its appearance or interactions, and when it did, it was very, very minor.
Where did the Garrison concept do too little? Well, everywhere. As a player you could only choose where to place what buildings and then simply upgrade them to their next static unchangeable appearance. During the holidays you could enjoy a few decoration options or throw some guild standards up, and if you were dedicated you could collect every archaeology artifact to display in your Garrison’s hall (though those displays were also static and not place-able). Outside of these minor cosmetic choices, however, every Garrison would be nearly identical except for where players chose to place what structures.
Players had almost no involvement with decorating or displaying their decade’s worth of collected appearances, achievements, or items inside this newly introduced take on player housing in World of Warcraft. And it was an opportunity so sorely misfired that many players today are still so embittered by it that the very notion of player housing in the game sends shivers down their backs. And that is such a shame.
Player Housing &
How To Do It Right:
- Customization: World of Warcraft has 15 years worth of content now. That is 15 years of history, assets, armor, weapons, mounts, locations, books, lore, and so much more. Player housing isn’t about commander fantasy. Player housing is, at its core, gigantic transmog and mount collection. But instead of choosing what race you want to play, you are choosing where you want to build your house. Instead of choosing what you want to wear, you are choosing what decorations to place where. And instead of choosing what to ride, you are choosing what interactables to place down. The possibilities are as endless now as they are for normal transmog and mount farming, which are largely evergreen gameplay.
- Achievements: Mounts, pets, transmog, titles, and more have been available through achievements for almost as long as achievements have been a thing in WoW. As such, achievements could be used for prestige displays in player housing and also retrofitted in to achievements of the past to give players a reason to go back and enjoy older content. Will you display a scale of Netharion in your home? Perhaps you’ll hang Old Ironjaw over your fireplace? Maybe that Vanilla PvP rank you (like me) unlocked ages ago now also gives you a fancy plaque to display? Or maybe you can hang up Atiesh or the Corrupted Ashbringer from days of yore to display for all who enter your cottage?
- Professions: Professions lose much of their potency and meaning every turn of the expansion wheel. Some items retain their value, such as Goblin Gliders and Hexweave bags, while most simply disappear into the ether of irrelevance. With player housing every single profession could be capable of producing furnishings exclusive to expansion content which would forever be useful in crafting as those decorations would always be in demand. Would you like books for that bookshelf? Inscription has your back. Looking for a coffee machine? Better go find an engineer. Need an armor rack to display your armor? A blacksmith or leatherworker is the way to go. The possibilities are endless and the prospects for bringing about rare recipes without actually impacting gameplay are vast. Rarity without that rarity putting players at a competitive disadvantage is a boon to player community (who has what recipes?) without being a detriment to PvE or PvP encounters.
- Utility: But wasn’t this something Garrisons got wrong? It certainly was, but utility was not the downfall of Garrisons, it was simply a contributor due to outside circumstances. With no content outside of Garrisons to engage in (dungeons were irrelevant, almost no world content, no alternate progression via artfacts, and very nearly the death of flying) having everything at your fingertips meant never having to leave. In a world with all your gathering and necessities outside of your home, utility in player housing is a blessing and not a curse. Hearthing back to your home you could perhaps access a separate bank that exists only in your house’s cache, click on an armor rack to immediately assume its transmog and log out for some rest before heading back in the next day. Perhaps resting at home could even provide an increased rate at which the rested buff accumulates on your character. As of now, players already have mobile transmog and auction house options, and these options also exist attached to a handy Garrison hearthstone in current game and we have not seen any detriment now that we have moved on to content that gives us a reason to engage with the world outside.
The next big thing for progression could simply be the grind to unlock the parcel of land you want to build your home on. As a player you can set your eyes on where you want to build and pursue the path to unlocking it. Every player can access player housing, and even players with obscene amounts of gold could find a way to sink it into housing and make it the ultimate gold sink for those who have way too much on their hands.
New Secondary Profession:
Masonry:
How would we go about filling our houses with the basics such as tables, chairs, bookshelves, stoneware, hearths, and bed? By introducing a new secondary profession dedicated to crafting these household decorations you open up endless possibilities that every player can engage in. While many specialty items can only be crafted by specific professions, all players would be able to engage in collecting materials and crafting furniture for their homes.
- Logging: A new skill that comes with Masonry is logging. Players can go and and gather different types of lumber from every expansion to craft items themed from the expansion their reagents emerged in.
- Stoneworking: In a world where mining is still a specific profession, gathering stone is somewhat problematic. However, if players could either engage with mining nodes or actual mines across expansions, they could prospect and gather stone as a second skill in this new profession to craft furniture for their homes.
- A New Use For Old Materials: By combining these aspects of crafting with old world reagents you could bring life and players back into scouring the old world for crafting nodes. Gardens could make aesthetic use of herbs from all over, or potting plants for home interiors. Leather and cloth could be used for carpets or furs. Stone and ore could be used for chairs, doors, flooring, foundation, windows and more. All of these make the hunt as fun, exciting, and diverse as mount qnd transmog farming.
TL;DR: Doing Player Housing Right
Do you want player housing? What do you think would make it a positive feature? How would you do it? What am I missing? I personally enjoy the take in which other MMO’s have executed the feature and would very much like to see how WoW would go about doing it properly as a permanent addition!