Just give us instanced neighborhoods. I’m so down to have neighbors.
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That is how Dark Age of Camelot did it back in the early 2000s.
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Psh… neighbors suck. Give me the cold quiet solitude of pure isolation.
Also, Wildstar housing was best housing.
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A lot of people have already weighed in with similar comments, but I thought I’d bring some more oldhead MMO experience into the mix.
Wildstar Online, EVE Online, and Star Wars Galaxies crushed the Player Housing experience. Wildstar gave their players unlimited freedom to use assets to create their own homes instead of just customizing plots with available tilesets; EVE figured out how to make player crafting and economics directly tied in with base-building and defenses; and Star Wars Galaxies figured out how to handle player-owned zones and towns. If we take the lessons learned from these massive successes, Activision-Blizzard could easily implement a Player Housing system that would be an essential Warcraft experience (adding engaging content that would last beyond one or two expansions) by doing the following:
Allow players to unlock in-game assets and manipulate said assets to create their own homes within player/guild-owned instances, allow for guilds/alliances to rally their resources (more than just plain gold) to control player-operated zones and cities that have toggleable and unlockable designs and benefits for people who reside or participate in the city (which would generate revenue for the group in control), and require good management of these player-operated instances and cities to produce or unlock high-end PvE dungeons, raids, and crafting equipment.
This would only require upkeep from ActiBlizz via expansion updates - as new expansions come out, update the requirements on player housing and management to reflect the new resources that players gather throughout the expansion. From there, you’d be able to gather data on what interests players the most, what can be turned into a fair microtransaction to generate additional revenue that would in turn increase the level of development into that aspect of the game, and tie in housing updates with whatever the latest patch is focusing on.
ActiBlizz already has all of the tools and parts they need, they just need to put this together. To go even further beyond, they can combine city management with Wildstar’s Warplots, allowing for similarly-tiered player-ran cities to brawl against each other for an incredibly unique PvP experience that no MMO could possibly match.
All in all, if Blizzard were to go ahead with these ideas, I think you’d see a massive influx of both new and returning WoW players, since WoW would have the MMO housing experience completely cornered - and would be offering an immersive level of discovery that many oldheads miss feeling. Best part is, because it’s all player-managed, the experience will keep evolving even without direct intervention from ActiBlizz, just like how fleet builds in EVE are constantly evolving even when the devs aren’t making sweeping changes to the game.
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I like the neighbourhood / ward style housing they do in some other popular MMOs.
Last time I was in Gilneas there was tonnes of free houses just sitting there empty. Little stinky though with those plague engines sitting at the gates.
I want my cottage in Desolace overlooking the chemical pits.
I’d love a Gilneas house.