With housing coming to WoW, and the devs being interested in hearing what players would and wouldn’t like to see concerning the feature - how would you like to see housing implemented into the game? This is a thread for people who are interested in the feature from the
roleplayers’ perspective.
Solo instance, or neighbourhoods?
A house with a plot of land around it, or interior instance only?
Your ideal level of customization?
How would the visit system work?
Feel free to use bullet points.
Deffo neighbourhoods!
Plot of land is a must aswell, especially for certain races!(Tauren, Night Elves, etc)
Customisation should be unrestricted(well without allowing people to put a couch upon a couch for example).
Most importantly, I want it tofeel right with the right surroundings. For example I want my Night Elves home to feel like they’re in either Feralas, Moonglade, Mt. Hyjal, Val’sharah, Bel’ameth, Ashenvale or Stonetalen.
I want my Death Knight to feel like he has a quarter in Acherus, my Demon Hunter to feel like he is in the Fel Hammer! My Nightborne must feel like they’re surrounded by Suramar, or perhaps a new plot of land in Aszune!
Then we could also dive abit deeper: with Druids having the ability to feel like they have their own Barrow Den? A possibility to have my Watcher character to have a place within the Vault of the Warden, my Highborne to be in Eldre’thalas(?).
Ofcourse the generic Human/Alliance town should be available for all Alliance races aswell!
Having seen FF14´s housing system, neighborhoods would be a terrible idea from RPer´s perspective, as you´d end up with places filled with stuff that doesn´t fit at all. You leave your house in Stormwind´s housing district and get a beautiful view of a Forsaken building being hit with lightning. What an immersion!
For me, ideal scenario would be to put houses in the world and then allow people to pick which plot to enter once they reach its area. There are plenty of places in WoW (especially in EK and Kalimdor) that are effectively just flat surfaces or a lake between two mountain ranges and would be perfect as an area for individual housing. You´d also have a system that lets you pick which house you see on that plot, which will include flyovers, and would be changeable at the entrance to the area.
For visiting, I´d say give players options who they alow in, including for multiple options at the same time:
Ideal customization would (going from the "houses in secluded areas in the world) include shaping of the house and land around it. For buildings and terrain Garrison system works the best, since you can customize what is where. Also, it would prevent the Epsilon problem of players placing 20000000000000 billion assets and lagging the game to 1 FPS (on NASA computer with NVIDIA GeForce 9090 from the future).
I would also allow guild housing, working in the same way but being tied to the guild rather than specific player character.
Basically just ESO’s Housing system, so
Wildstar’s housing system would be ideal in my opinion, although I doubt Wow’s old engine could handle something like that.
ESO’s is good, but they cannot go down the path of 100 euro houses.
FFXIV’s is cool creatively, but a detriment to RP so I’d very much not want neighbourhoods.
I am partial to solo instances, personally.
While I can absolutely see and appreciate the potential for a communal vibe in a neighbourhood, FFXIV’s execution of that design decision always seemed a little off to me. Not so much due to the feature on its own, but due to the cultural dissonance you might come across. Heavily asian inspired housing decor right next door to something whimsical and clearly OOC for example.
Seeing as it’s confirmed that we’re getting several variants of housing (at least internally, we’ll have to see what they do with the exterior situation), I’d rather keep something resembling a clean vibe for the home(s) I end up with. No sin’dorei abode right next door to a gnome tinkerer, please and thank you.
Very much hoping for the former!
If for a moment my imagination is the only limiting factor, I’d quite like for there to be a lot of customization options - including the layout of the buildings themselves. I don’t quite expect that to be the case, but one can always hope!
Ideally we should be able to hand out “keys” to other players, so that they can come and go as they please even when the owner isn’t in the housing instance or even online.
They could and they would and in their own eyes they should.
Individual plots, multi-racial themes and options to pick (not Garrison 2.0, please and thank you), and a surrounding exterior to choose would be nice.
I’m gonna aim one higher and say that, based on SWTORs Flagship bases, Guild House/Hall options would be such a big win. A Human Barracks, an elegant Sin’dorei hall, a Goblin mansion, etc etc. Should absolutely push the boundary haha.
The Elder Scrolls Online has an excellent and very well fleshed out housing system that I would like to see used as the inspiration for World of Warcraft’s equivalent.
For starters, it doesn’t come with the baggage that plagues the housing systems in other MMO’s. There’s no rent to pay for upkeep. You’re not stuck with creepy neighbours or neighbours who fill their yard with poorly thrown together setups.
I’d like it to be a personal, private thing that friends can be invited to visit. With many different furnishings acquired from various sources - crafting, gathering, raids, dungeons, PvP and so on.
I’d also like a lot of focus on allowing for particular playable and non-playable racial aesthetics to shine. Not just in terms of furniture but the exterior of the building as well.
Another benefit of TESO’s housing system is the ability to own multiple houses of various shapes and sizes which are all account bound. I must admit I’m a little concerned that we’re only getting one house that is shared across all of our characters which will be a pain for those of us who have multiple characters with widely different aesthetic preferences. Sure, all my Blood Elves can potentially share a Blood Elf themed house but I’d like something different for my Night Elves.
All in all, I just want it to be a fairly fleshed out cosmetic feature that allows me to have fun decorating. I don’t want to be held hostage by other players in order to partake of it.
I wouldn’t say no to guild housing being added at some point, just not at the expense of individual player housing.
Basically ESO, as that is just the easiest way to go about it.
… Oh god I hope not. One Fear ._.
Distinct houses per character, please and thank you!!
For starters, I think the best way to go about it is to have a delve-like location in a major faction hub or location, where everyone’s personal home is at. You can then get people into your home by inviting them into a party or a raid group.
Ideally I’d like some plot of land around it, but I’m not totally against an interior instance either.
I’ll say a realistic idea here instead of ideal: I think the realistic is that they give us a few archetypes of homes to choose from (e.g a warm cottage-like home, gloomy bat-cave, a wizard’s tower). Inside the said homes there would be nodes that you can swap out and edit to your heart’s content, but for example chairs will always be around the table node you select in a pre-set way, or a fireplace or w/e.
Party invite or raid invite to begin with. Though, if they want to go big with it from the get-go, they could make it so that all player houses are saved in cloud, and then you can create essentially private instances (think of neverwinter nights) behind either a password or invite-only basis.
This could help to create taverns and hub-player houses for all to RP in. Hell, Blizzard could even make a few houses of their own, where people could meet and greet.
The way how you’d get into these instances could be through a separate queue system, or an NPC before your estate from where you can select an instance you want to go into, including favourites or official houses etc.
Some may think that I am very limited in the way how I wish the system to start with, but I see it as a positive: This is a completely new system, with implications that go well beyond just what players want- We also need to consider what they need, and the two are not always the same.
By starting slow and experimental, Blizzard and we will be able to probe what things work, what do not, how to build the system going into the future and keep adding into it. Think of glyphs back when they were first introduced all the way to WoD, or indeed flying.
Edit: However, the MOST IMPORTANT THING HERE IS THIS:
DO. NOT. TIE. PLAYER. POWER. TO. PLAYER. HOUSING.
Blizzard, you can ignore all the rest of my post, but please do not ignore the above.
It should be nothing else but a cosmetic time sink that you want to be in just because you want to be there, not because of x gameplay mechanic.
Might’ve been said already but
Please please PLEASE lets not have stuff locked behind tedious grinding or top 1% stuff, it should be a FUN thing, not another soul crusher of a task.
MAKE PROFFESSIONS VIABLE TO GET DECORATIONS!
Neighborhoods could work if the exterior isn’t customizable. In LOTRO, neighborhoods are racially themed, so if you enter, say, an Ered Luin neighborhood, you see only elven houses.
I do you one better. A new Secondary profession like Cooking and Fishing, Carpentry.
You would be able to learn Classic/tbc/wrath/etc Carpentry and with each version you unlock different styles of furniture/decorations you can build. but the kicker is. you will need Era appropriate materials to make them.
So if you want to decorate your home with a Simple wooden stool. you will need Copper nails and some wood that would have to be gathered in the world.
Want a cool vrykul styled wall piece. Titanium nails and Wrath leather. but those nails can be made by Blacksmiths. and special leathers can be made by leather workers.
Scribes can make bundles of books to make book cases to be put in your house.
all of this can be sold on the Auction house. bespoke items can be commissioned by work orders. Yes player housing can and should revitalise the old world and professions.
(can you see I have been thinking about this for a while?)
You.
Keep talking.
Well I would also add that Herbs can be gathered and carpenters can make them into bushels for planters. so picking Peacebloom can make you a nice little pot of flowers.
Tailors should be able to make bundles of cloth.
If you want magical furniture, you need Enchanters.
i can go on and on. but the possibilities could be endless.
Well yeah, I’m not talking about the monetization!