Watched Preach video on his and other creators hands on experience with player housing to get an idea of how the experience will be and it sounds good overall, I’m not a creative person so I’ll make a mud hut or similar horde themed house with only “prestige” items and other rarities to show off and that’s about it but there is key point I want to bring up and potentially discuss.
As per my understanding, WoW devs want player housing to be part of a possible neighborhood system with potential for community features and mechanics to fuel engagement and creativity with possibility for events both made by devs and community which leads to my key point, is your player house just a house or expected to be your “home”?
My Garrison I’d consider my home as it’s my own space that is heavily Horde themed (Very important to me), with utility I can access on demand with my Garrison Hearthstone such as Auction House, Bank, Void Bank, and Transmogrifier with the occasional Pet Vendor when needed so if this new player housing is to not just be a potential additional hearthstone, I argue it should provide the same utility as my Garrison since I have spent the time and effort to unlock the utility I have access to.
Since Blizzard confirmed special decoration that will be tied to achievements such as Feats of Strength will be added to player housing, it will have the unique potential for self expression of character or person that Garrison lacked for displaying achievements which is why I don’t think it Player Housing should compete with Garrison for the spot of Home.
Kinda agree with this post, but I don’t think Blizzard is really thinking about Garrisons competing with Housing. They probably worry more, that city hubs might become empty, so they strive for balance.
Controversial opinion: Much of the utility of Garrisons should be removed/nerfed. The fact that they have everything a capital has (except the latest crafting stations and the weekly quests) and in a much more confined space with shorter distances between them, means that it’s optimal to stay there than visit any capital for those utilities.
Someone with a less powerful computer or who likes the quiet of being alone may prefer it, and that’s fine, but in an MMO we should not let asocial features be optimal or near-optimal.
any lacking of players around you in capitol is not because there is Garrison added like 10 years ago. Changing it at this point won’t make any diffrenece.
Housing in the other hand might be something that will make cities empty in a long run, since Blizzard during DF made it clear they want make system for the game not for the current expansion, like flying for example.
Other than that - you have two mounts that covers all required NPCs - that is Auction house + mail and repair + transmog.
Only thing missing is some kind of proffesion station, upgrade and daily quest NPC.
And what we truly need is Guild Hold/Castle etc for guild as big endevor in buying it, maitaing it etc. so entire guild could contribute trough i.e. achievements in guild tab.
Well I think housing should be void of any utility except a mailbox since that makes sense.
Cause empty cities are one major point anti housing people always bring. Let cities have there place for all those utilities it’s already worse enough that we have the stupid ah mount.
All I hope for with the housing is that we get better themes then we had with the garrison.
Cause let’s be real the garrison was not very horde it was very orc.
My forsaken is just as much a horde member and they also built better walls for there camps ^^
The answer to that is NO. Garrisons failed for a reason. If you want a TLDR: You need players out in the world doing things. If all they do is log in, order some NPCs to do the work for them and log out. Its not a successful game let me tell you that.
What makes wow magic is walking to Orgrimmar and seeing it full of people ans NPCs doing things.
Being alone like some golum in a garrison is not part of that. If you prefer SP experience an MMO is not for you.
Bad idea. First, there is not enough space to make that reliable. Imagine a 1000 player guild or community. It would be massive space. When the space is so big, you live more solitary life. Like big cities. Full of people all over the place, but you feel “alone”. But you dont want to live in a 2 person village either. That is really sad too.
Better to live in a small city. You feel more part of the community that way. Its the perfect “sweete spot”.
That is why Blizzard needs control over what you see in Orgrimmar via sharding. To make it the best experience possible for everyone. Otherwise most of us will simply be “alone” in a WORLD of warcraft.
Garrisons should be deleted. And that concept should never be revisited again. Player housing on the other hand… its just another vanity collection. Like pets. Or mounts.
But if you want to play the game? You better move your but out of your “comfy zone” and start adventuring. Cause that is what this game is about. Adventuring. Preferably with other people, directly or indirectly.
People keep bringing up “Empty cities”, and i have asked before, and will now ask again: So what?
There’s hardly any meaningful interaction between players in cities (Not counting using other people’s transmog/AH mounts, because that’s hardly “social”, is it?), so the other players running around might as well be NPCs for all they add (Moving scenery, basically) to the capital city “vibe”, so why is the prospect of players having their own place to be inbetween BG/Arenas/Dungeons/Raids/Delves so apparently scary to people?
It’ll be interesting to see player engagement. There has been vocal support for player housing, but does that mean most players want it? I certainly don’t, as I play WoW for open-world and my cosmetics are for showing off to general public. I have zero interest in Animal Crossing type gameplay.
This is not going to happen.
They want to avoid that. Basically they said: Utility you can already get through toys would be fine as features in your home (mail, cooking fire and such). Anything else is not.
If you have no need to visit big cities for services and commodities there is less chance that you will interact with someone else. It just works on further isolating yourself from the server’s community. It is an effect sharding already started eroding.
Empty capitals also give the impression that the server/game activity is very low overall, and replacing activity with NPC just further reinforces this. If one sees a city teeming with players their first thought is along the lines of “cool, that is a lot of players.” Even if you do not plan to interact with them it changes the atmosphere of the area.
You can see this in effect on an RP server like AD, where if you walk across Stormwind you can see people roleplay, and many, including myself, moved there because such small things make the game world feel more lively and adds a sense of community to it. This is simply seeing players around, not even interacting with them.
Though housing is mainly a concern for roleplayers, for obvious reasons.
As long as Delves hub, pvp vendor, trading post, weekly quest, item upgrade, crafting guild, etc. is exclusively in the city hub, it will have a reason to not be empty anyway
However, I would suggest to make the city hubs a little bit smaller, if the idea is make it feel less empty. For example the pvp vendor is very far away from the center of the city
If people want to test what housing is like, play GW2: janthir wilds, you’re given way more space in GW than WoW will give but the building physics are the exact same so you’ll get an idea and a bit of practice of what its like.
I’ll have a look at it, I’ll not rule it out entirely.
As always with WoW, there is a limit to resources. Dev time spent on player housing (which I don’t like the idea of) is time that won’t be spent on new Delves (which I do like). Obv. the game isn’t just for me, so if player housing is super popular I won’t complain.
If it’s not popular, I’ll be asking why I had to sacrifice traditional WoW gameplay for a non-WoW feature. I mean, I didn’t play at the time but were WoD Garrisons worth the sacrifice of the other planned content that had to be dropped?
Garrisons where expansion specific for WoD, had systems tied to them, and where discontinued.
Housing is a new feature that has a completely different scope than garrisons. They do not want players to be forced into housing and use it to farm resources/gold or anything like that.
Yes, it’s too easy to criticise I guess. Devs are not mind-readers! I genuinely hope player housing pleases all those who have asked for it. Delves nailed it for me, so I’m grateful they gambled on that idea.