A place to chill, to show off more than just mogs n mounts. It was really cool in EQ2, hopefully its just as cool here.
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It gives something people to customize, somewhere for people to hang out and chill/socialize and RP(if you’re into that)
It also has more longevity in engaging the player than other cosmetics. Like once you’re done with a transmog, its just kind of…done until you move on to the next is one, same with mount farming. Player housing is more of a project for players.
It also kills two birds with one stone for blizzard because presumably some housing cosmetics will be achievement based which improves retention/time played statistics and also provides another revenue stream in the form of paid items.
Historically, in other MMOs, provided the system is sound, people spend ALOT of time in their own housing and also alot of time designing it/earning things for it. It tends to be very engaging.
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This is helpful.
In your opinion what are 1 or 2 key features they need to nail for this to be good?
its basically for people who like animal crossing. or dolly dress up. otherwise for everyone else its gonna be like, oh ok cool, forgotten about.
i would have far preferred better transmog optons and sexier outfits. but i guess they really want players to just never leave their instanced houses. idk
I guess people love it. I never tried it in other games because usually they are used as gold sink, or store sale.
WoW will do the same i guess. Houses will cost from 200K and up. Nice gold sink, it competes with other MMOs. In other words a big win overall.
It was an answer to the initial question.
Whether or not Blizz delivers on that is a different question.
As such, I wouldn’t call garrisons “player housing”. They’re more of a bastardized abomination of trying to cram in a gameplay loop into an extremely trimmed down variant… it arguably had more in common with the old RTS games than anything you could call player housing.
Other MMOs have the customization angle (FFXIV being my main reference, got a medium plot there and an apartment on an alt), and it’s typically just a space to do whatever you feel like with ZERO bearing on any sort of progression system – which is likely why it’s taken them forever to implement it, AND why garrisons were so bad.
Proper player housing is an affront to the type of game they try to make WoW to be, something they’d have to actually maintain and keep adding to long term as an evergreen feature. It could even undermine the gameplay loop WoW is built around.
… which, in retrospect, is kind of confusing.
Why would they implement it, especially at this point of the game?
There’s still ample room for Blizz to screw this up.
But anything less than their competitors would be considered a failure of the system… hell, I’d strongly recommend ensuring that’s personal housing for EVERYONE by default, and avoid what is more or less the only remaining failing of FFXIV’s housing system (limited availability).
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who is this “everyone” you speak of?
Personally if i was in my Garrison, I was busy working on something. Mining, crafting orders, fishing, or doing something in my Garrison. Never AFK.
Also itʻs not like I spent a lot if time in there.
I spent most of my time out in the world playing the game.
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Garrisons were only bad because they put everything a major city had inside the garrison. Its Blizzard who created an issue, people just took advantage. Besides, the main hub for WoD was trash because they scrapped to possible cool locations for dirt outposts outside Trashcan in order to get people to PvP.
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Garrisons were not playerhousing because there was practically no actual customization or personalization. You cant even choose where holiday decorations go for goodness sake.
It needs to be decently customizable, if its around garrison level its DOA, preferably some kind of grid system with multiple grid based template for the shape/architecture of the space. It should tie highly sought after items to reasonably achievable achievements and grinds that are still some level of difficult.
It also needs to be completely absent of hub stuff, no profession tables/vendors/nodes, no auctioneers, no upgrade vendors, and nothing tied to player power. Otherwise people won’t ever leave them and people will complain cities are ghost towns.
Some not required but nice to haves would be custom architecture aesthetic (culture/race based for ex) and custom biomes with accompanying music.
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I"m old, My first mmorpg was Ultima Online. UO had player housing, and it was great. The profession system was well done so carpenters and tinkers could create items for houses. There were many things you could make and you could even build different types of housing from small houses to castles. You could have a place that was yours to decorate and have others over to visit. This was nothing like garrisons, for one it was open world, so everyone saw each others houses. This of course made it challenging to find plots to build on over time (houses would deteriorate if left unoccupied so that it opened up the land again), but I had a prime location close to a hub. It was very much a big part of the game. The developers even took a player made community of houses and officially made their homes permanent fixtures because of how well it was laid out. Because role playing was fairly popular, it was a hit.
Rift was another that I liked, it wasn’t open world housing like UO though. It was instanced dimensions. So you could pick an instanced map, and just build random stuff in it. The customizations were amazing, and I had several dimensions. a few were open to anyone who wanted crafting stations and some were private. I had one that was a guild hall for our guildies to meet in. I even had a ceremonial dimension for people to get married in. Because you could get married in Rift. Housing was pretty creative.
I’m hoping Blizzard can take the Rift approach. Instanced housing that you can invite anyone to. like anyone you grant access to can enter at any time. I found that great in Rift, our guild dimension always had guildies in it chatting. So it created a great social atmosphere. Garrisons had potential but it was essentially just not open enough
My experience with both these games were very good, housing was well done. In Rift, I spent hours designing my dimensions and it was fun. In UO, I had a castle, and it housed much of my belongings and gold (You actually carried gold as an item in your backpack, so too much and it would be too heavy to walk around). My castle was my bank.
So i’m looking forward to this feature as I do miss it. I just hope it isn’t as closed off as garrisons were.
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Just remember ESO has cash store houses that go for over $100 dollars, people willing to pay $90 for a mount. Microsoft kaching.
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You know whats great about collecting, you can showcase those mounts at your house.
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People feel Sims is too girly so they want to bring Sims to WoW.
Just like they find Barbie Makeover too girly but obsess over transmog.
At least that’s my hot take.
With the way the world is going, people’s second life is probably going to be the only way they get a house of their own. 
Blizzard will find a way to monetize it and ruin the fun.
This.
Not only that I hope it has a neighborhood instance where you run into other players, mannequins to display our favorite armor sets, a place to hang my staff, a stable outside for my mount, etc.
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I really would love neighborhoods, I do not know if WoWs engine could handle such and how sharing locations would work if 2 players choose the same spot but I would love these feature(s).
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I can ride them out in the world while I’m playing my game or open up the mount tab to see the mounts I have.
This feature would just be mounts sitting in my house that I have to actively not play the game to enjoy?
Not everything is for everyone.
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It’s so microshaft can sell you exclusive furniture in the cash shop and it will be okay cause it’s not tied to player power. It’s going to print money.
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