Neighborhoods are a exciting feature in my opinion! Could be great for guilds!
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There’s a trembling in my bones that Blizzard will confine future racial style houses to the cash shop, probably strictly bundled with other decorations players may or may not want.
Yet there is no escaping the bundle.
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I hope not! I think that would upset the players.
It is inevitable that somebody upstairs will demand it become a cash shop item because monetization is a lot of really rich people’s kink. Everything has to be nickle-and-dime’d at every opportunity, the line must go up, and if you’re not increasing your financial value at every quarter, what are you even doing with your life?
Tangential Rant
They’re incredibly depressing to talk to because money is everything, and nothing matters but more money, regardless of where it comes from. I’ve seen people who lived like that calling out desperately at the end of their lives to their families, because they have no friends left, and the expressions that I saw when they realised what family bothered to come and rally around them were just jockeying for a bigger slice of that pie haunt me to this day.
That moment of clarity in an older man’s face when he realised his children hated him so passionately they refused to show up at his death-bed, and his grand-children and great-grand children stuck around only long enough to confirm that they were on the will, and if they weren’t, left immediately, will stay with me for the rest of my life. That dawning horror and comprehension that his entire life of being ‘a winner’ had translated into him literally dying so actual strangers he just so happened to be biologically related to could profit off of him in turn is forever etched into my mind. That despair, that loneliness, that moment when you see the light die in their eyes as there’s no more comforting lie to hide behind.
They’re going to die, nothing they’ve done will matter, and nobody will remember or mourn them. Those that once cared no longer do, and those that surround them are no less than scavengers, waiting for the last flicker of life to fade so they can feast on what remains behind.
I’d rather die poor and be surrounded with people who actually gave a damn about me as a person than be wealthy and be treated like a long-term deposit with Tamagotchi software. I’d rather leave the world brighter than when I entered it than build a gilded monument to my lack of humanity and call it a success story.
I sincerely hope Blizzard is able to hold off the shareholders enough to ensure Player Housing does not become the sole dominion of Whales and Gold Buyers because this is a twenty year old game, and nostalgia and familiarity are the names of the pillars holding this decrepit monstrosity of franken-code upright.
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Blizzard, historically, has placed GREAT priority on the well being and feedback of its players–sometimes, even BEFORE catastrophic decisions!
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Something something using RealID on the forums… 
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You know you’ve made a mistake when the nightly news, on every channel, is reporting on what a mess you’ve created.
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Blame Mobile Gaming. Seriously, those dopamine addicts are the reason Diablo Immortal made over a billion dollars in its first month alone.
The one thing not spoken of, as far as I am aware, is that a player house needs to handle the basic functions of a character. Like, where do they go pee? A kitchen for making meals at home? In most MMOs with player housing, there are no bathrooms or kitchen.
I thought Real ID got decommissioned replaced with BattleTags? Both serves the same purpose, allowing players to have more grouping options.
Personally im not a fan of the neighborhood idea. I think it is a cool option for people that want that, but should not have been baseline.
Would much prefer something like Elder Scrolls Online.
I like how they pushed neighborhoods so the game wouldnt feel “dead” and then had the nerve to blame their own terrible sharding and phasing systems… when this is one case where that should be a thing… (and they should fix it across the rest of the game instead…)
Iunno man, I hope this is just a start and not the norm forever.
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Re: This. Time for a story from ancient times.
There was a major kerfluffle on the forums over a decade back when Blizzard announced that RealIDs were going to be used in lieu of characters. This meant that to post on the forums, players had to reveal their real names. This is back when Btags weren’t what they were today, nor the forums, really.
After the announcement, a forum riot ensued and one of the initial blue posters responded with that day’s equivalent of “don’t you all have phones?” The main concerns by players were privacy, stalking, doxxing, especially by players who could be read as female, non-white, foreign, etc. by their real names. Said blue poster basically downplayed these worries then posted their full legal name on the forums as “proof” nothing would happen and all the concerns were just hyperbole.
Anyway, blue poster was predictably doxxed/harassed at his home address and Blizzard eventually walked back the announcement. They then were going to change it to Btags at some point but a similar (but much smaller reaction) happened.
And that, guys, gays, and non-binary pals is how we got the forums of today.
it could have been so much worse
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I mentioned before that player neighborhoods can end up rickrolling the RP community entirely. May RPers are locking out the rest of the server via the CRZ function combined with Discord. If RP becomes too cliquish, players will either switch playstyles or leave the game entirely. This had happened on Landroval in LOTRO. Only RP left now are music events hosted by a handful of kins. While it adds a nice touch, it only goes so far.
The RP community became insular once people started showing up to RP events and doing nothing but standing in the middle of everyone on massive mounts or placing target dummies and shooting them also in the middle of everyone…
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Oh, what, like Orgrimmar basically all the time now?
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That is why I end up not attending very many of them. Discord, I have to go through a dozen servers all with a dozen channels each to find these events. It became a bit of a chore to do so thus end up attending less.
(I was talking about you at the last Horde Guild Faire, just FYI)
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Totes making a themed neighborhood. Carnie vibes. Whose in?
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i’m so in. we’re so back.
i’m pretty hype for player housing tbh.
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Please do not insult the humble code, they did not ask to be created.
Instead blame market trends and certain governments that have limited the play time of minors to 3 hours and only during weekends.
Those players are preyed upon the most because their being IRL time gated too, so they’re more pressured to make real money purchases for the hopes of staying on the same footing as their friends.