I think it’s bad but I also think it’s already happened, anyways.
Most people that RP in their MMO of choice have done so for years, usually without breaks and usually with the same (rough) group of people, and aren’t really much interested in doing much outside of what they already know they enjoy, there, which is fine - it’s a hobby, after all. I think it’s unhealthy for the continued state of RP as a whole in these sort of games/communities but it’s also a case of it is what it is.
You don’t want player housing because it will encourage insular roleplay.
I don’t want player housing because it will be as aesthetically varied as the Garrisons were.
We are not the same.
I see the sheer creativity of the average FFXIV house/apartment and it makes me sad how WoW would give us generic slop 
Of course I would still take it, but I’d be grumbling about it.
My greatest fear is simply that I’ve seen the optimistic “hey maybe all the bad ppl will go away” rhetoric before 4 times and every single time the bad ppl stay in the open world hubs and everyone else creates their own sandboxes where they are judge, jury and executioner. I might still believe it if all statistical probability didn’t disprove it but here we are .
Although Adelais is right about WoW RP already being very insular and bubbled these days but I donno, I worry that will inevitably just lead to a “its already bad so lets just kill it” mindset instead of a “hm, this is bad, lets try to fix it” mindset.
It’s such a huge amount of required work for something that will only really matter to a small group of players, most of whom wont have anyone else even able to look at them
I’d much rather that work went into creating hub zones with buildings, let every city be a Boralus instead of having siloed off people in either instanced or strange FF14-style districts
you are all WRONG and i am RIGHT
Awfully authoritarian of you Loras, I expected better 
.
I’m just extremely clever that’s all
Opening my portal in the Stormwind harbour
hey girl, let’s get over to my Silvermoon apartment…
I’m about 250 chapters into Inuyasha and the fan translation I’m reading is very much
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvNxgHTWIlo
honestly in every game that has housing a lot of it takes so much jank and glitching to get it looking good. a lot of the most creative houses done in XIV were not done without breaking the system.
swtors is completely locked to hard to configure hooks so it doesnt leave room for variety.
i very very patiently wait to see how it will go for GW2 because it LOOKS promising in the previews. very cozy.
Eso atm is just the reigning champ. Ive seen houses that completely shocked me. Ive put together a few myself that I just sadly know wow will never give me in such detail
…xiv’s 
housing lottery system is something I will not get into
Really hoping reworked Silvermoon to have a bunch of empty buildings
Given the housing discussion I have a simple question:
Is there a social contract on RP servers/communities? If so, does the implementation of instanced housing break it?
For all the new void elf occupants
I’m very concerned
Your elf will squat in an orcish mud hut and like it. The sin’dorei made their choice.
Took a pause to think through (and now articulate) my view on the topic when setting aside my meme tone that comes as a default to most discussions.
Broadly speaking, saying that Argent Dawn has a community is and always has been something of a misnomer. It had always been an umbrella for dozens of communities to all chill beneath. The Community simply doesn’t exist and it’s a term that, in my experience, mostly just gets used on the forums rather than people RPing in-game with their own circles and groups.
My personal view is that I strongly prefer the ability to curate my roleplay, rather than invest my time in searching out random roleplayer in real time. They both have the potential of ending up disappointing, but at least with the former I can lessen that chance by finding people with overlapping preferences/interests.
This leads back onto the actual point of discussion, player housing. I don’t know if it be of benefit or detriment to open world RP but honestly, that isn’t really a massive concern to me. It’s a tool I could and would use to improve the experience of my own roleplay (and the roleplay of the people I choose to spend my hobby time with).
Player housing wouldn’t reduce the amount of public ERPers (Stormwind Harbour + Goldshire locals for example) and the proof there is in the statement ‘go on FFXIV Balmung NA and check out the Quicksands’.
If housing means that more normal roleplayers retreat into those private spaces, then that means they’ve wanted to do that anyway. If they choose that option, then Blizzard has successfully catered to what the roleplaying demographic wants.
TLDR: Gimme player housing.
People like to think there is, I think, but in reality it’s at most a few loose, unwritten rules (no out of character chat in the middle of an in-character conversation or emote, for example) that I don’t think one could meaningfully consider it to be a ‘social contract’
There are definitely unspoken rules on roleplay etiquette, but beyond the bare essentials (stuff like ‘keep OOC out of IC’ and vice versa) there’s not really much consensus as to what they should all be. I also feel like the forums have, for a long time, had a habit of being out of step with in-game preferences/trends.
Also I’m still super peeved about all 3 Hunter Hero Talent trees now that we’ve gotten to see them and they’re solidified in Beta. Sentinel is…AoE-Magic-Owl themed? Pack Leader is boring Kill Command/Raptor Strike buffs and some cooldown tie-ins with bestial wrath, and Dark Ranger is shadow-damage based entirely around the one new addition it adds: Black Arrow, in a class that has absolutely no magical/shadow damage affixes. What the hell were they thinking.
Oh sure, when white people do it it’s a ‘hobbit house’ but when greenskins do it it’s a ‘mudhut’. I see how it is.
isn’t there a new mythic+ affix that buffs shadow damage