Perhaps I’m biased, given my MMORPG journey began with Ultima Online, where player housing was a positive addition to the roleplaying community rather than a drawback. This shaped my view that the implementation of player housing, and not the concept itself, is what matters.
In UO, player housing didn’t create private bubbles because the houses were located in the open world. You found a big enough flat area in the wilderness, you could build a house, if you could afford it. The roleplay community I was part of had a very active hub for the Militia controlling the Crossroads, a thieves’ guild having their small hub of few houses deep in the woods, and other communities or guilds having their hub somewhere else. It was rare that I roleplayed in the cities that were busy with non-roleplayers, and the roleplay communities often revolved around player housing areas, which isn’t too far from the idea of neighbourhoods in WoW.
Cons in UO player housing: because the houses were in the open world, the plots were limited and not everyone could get one. In the game’s peak years, if you were lucky, you found a plot for a small house somewhere on the remote edges of the world. If you didn’t log in for around three months, your house was demolished - a fair trade-off because of limited plots, but also annoying if you struggled to pay the sub for a while, or wanted to have a break, but also wanted to keep the house you had invested a lot of time and coin to build and furnish. I know FF14’s creators were inspired by UO in many aspects, perhaps this is why it’s much similar over there along with server costs.
I don’t think it’s a trade-off most people would accept today.
Now, while housing in WoW won’t be in the open world per se, I don’t think it’ll be that hard to discover roleplay happening in the Neighborhoods that adopt a free-for-all approach. As previously stated by Aadormi, much of the server’s roleplay is planned or announced; finding events and hubs is simple with a little effort. And those who’d rather roleplay in a more private setting, will do just that.