As you say, “sure it would appeal to a few people.” Maybe a few, maybe more. And how many people does mythic raiding appeal to? Less than 1-2%. How many people does pet battles appeal to, or Torghast, or azerite? Well, is the consensus not clear? I’m advocating for a different philosophy that produces something holistic, permanent, and with endless creative value- for once. Not a temporal, niche, bug-or-balance riddled system that leaves the inevitable bad taste in the mouths of many every expansion.
No idea why? It’s fair to disagree with criticism, but it’s dishonest and illiterate to not even read it first. If you have no idea- then read. Read what everyone is saying. Read about the good, the bad, the potential. It isn’t particularly helpful to post when unread, isn’t it?
You say the RPG is all about doing a dungeon. Thus, dungeons produce socialization. Yet, you admit that this is no longer true, and that Blizzard has created a system where there is no socialization. So tell me, again, what is it about housing that would bring ruin to that which you claim is already ruined? Consider the following:
- This is about much more than laying carpets and vases. Read the post. This is about design philosophy to reproach how the game is made in all modes.
- One of the central points is precisely how housing in other MMO’s has drawn people together and created entire communities of socialization. Discords, websites, events, competitions, touring, sharing, trading, guild-building, friend-friend building, group-building, and more, is all possible, present, and observable. So to say housing “has nothing to do with encouraging socializing,” seems demonstrably false.
- Additionally, you note dungeons, and yet Blizzard’s dungeon and raid philosophy for years now has been MMO based, systems based- not RPG based. Player housing might be the one new RPG element to WoW in years. Endless creative value. No systems, no powers, no currencies, no grinds, no requirements. Just unadulterated adventure. Sounds nice to me.
That’s why I argue for a shift in design philosophy preceding player housing. Change the philosophy, and you make something better.
No need to call names, if you have a convincing argument then put it forward don’t attempt to paint me in a poor light as your starting off point. That seems intellectually dishonest from someone who is supposedly defending something as silly as player housing in a video game.
I didn’t call you any nouns aka names… What? Are you even reading? Gaslighting won’t work here. I called you out on the fact that you admitted you had no idea what was going on yet proceeded to share views as if you did. I asked you to read what other people said to inform yourself… that’s it… and yet you seem so insecure and dishonest that you want to gaslight and cause a stir. I need to put forth an argument? How about my entire post across two forums and every one of the 100+ replies in between. No. Once again, have a read.
The point Im making is, the systems youre essentially saying are dull, are already in the game. My main concern with ‘housing’ is that it would eat up a lot of developer time, and it wouldnt fix any problems that the game is currently experiencing, and more than likely it would be a failed experiment that would have wasted company resources.
I saw your point and refuted it. I didn’t say anything was dull. And any “System” that is now in the game was once upon a time- not in the game. And yet, the investment was made to create them. We don’t know how much developer time it would take, and we don’t know the full impact of what a new willful design philosophy could bear. We can only observe that every other MMO on the market has made it happen, and speculate from there. You might be surprised by the difference a can-do philosophy could make in development versus a defeated-before-we’ve-begun philosophy. “It wouldn’t fix anything.” Great, unique view. Maybe bolster it with some nuance or evidence, because I don’t present a wishlist- I present what I find to be the observable net positive of housing across MMOs and its possibilities when coupled with the massive infrastructure at our disposal in WoW. And so what if it ate up developer time? The current philosophy and trajectory has produced overwhelming discontent from the consensus-laden fallout from the recent Ion interview, the systems failures of BFA, and now of Shadowlands. Bellular has claimed that WoW is now a “paid beta test,” in surprising concord with his audience and other content creators. If this is the state of the game, then WoW is already in the middle of a failed experiment. If what they’re focusing “development time” on now isn’t working, no one should be afraid of using that time for some radical reexamination.
For the most part I’m actually enjoying Shadowlands.
All you have to do is look at past expansions to see what has and hasn’t worked. The housing system would be an extension of the garrison system, again emptying main cities of players because everyone will sit and queue in their houses, exactly like what happened with garrisons, cutting you off from player interaction. What sort of MMO experience is that? I’m sat in my house at home playing a game, to sit in a house and queue for dungeons etc. You might get the odd person you show your house off to, but why? For what purpose? Just mount your mount infront of them, or link your achievement. Don your well earned title, and transmog your gear to show it off. What is the point of a housing system? Really? I cant see one. It would more than likely be negative for the game as a whole. And that’s based off a similar system already implemented in the game in Warlords of Draenor, which then didn’t continue, because of reasons I’ve already mentioned, and countless player complaints. Trying to do that again on a wider scale would be a mistake in my opinion. But fight for it all you want, if that’s what you want. I’m just having my say.
You’re repeating points that have been made and challenged over and over already, so I’m just going to point you towards the threads, hope that you read them fully, and agree to disagree for now.
I probably won’t read them fully, if at all. I read the initial post, commented my thoughts and then replied to you with what I think. So we can agree to disagree, Im fine with that 
Your tone for this conversation is way out of line.
We’re discussing player housing in a video game, why are you being so defensive? You’ve called me illiterate, and accused me of either ignoring or being incapable of comprehending the subject matter simply because I used a common expression that is used convey dismay. Based on your grasp of the English language it’s a safe bet you’re familiar with the expression and it’s multiple uses yet decided to use it as an avenue of personal attack.
Player housing doesn’t appeal to me, none of your points in this thread have swayed me and your attitude has soured the entire interaction. Perhaps in the future when trying to persuade with your writing you’ll chose to employ a bit more tact. For now it’s a hard pass from me, thank you.
Dev time - no. Not really. But it will take a lot out of the visuals department.
Of course, blizzard could always hire additional developers and artists for that specific endeavour.
I played an old MMO called Dark Age of Camelot that had player housing… in mid-2003.
You could earn trophies from mobs around the world, craft, upgrade the size of the houses, work on the garden, craft (albeit bonuses in capital city to maintain pop), with a player houses acting as the games market.
Hundreds and hundreds of houses held in giant zones, all where players could flex, show of their trophies and remains.
This was done 18 years ago.
How the hell hasn’t WoW done this I do not know.
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The “it will eat up time” is a red herring argument anyway.
Everything you suggest for wow eats up time. That that, in itself, makes it a bad thing to suggest makes no sense. The whole idea of giving feedback is suggesting how Devs use their time is it not?
Initially I can see some concerted investment of resource, but once established, the load would be very low, because as has been said it would simply be a case of allowing players access to art assets that are already in the game or would have been designed in the expo anyway.
High initial system cost, low maintenance, long potential life. That’s what most people would see as a wise investment of time.
Yet people will baulk at time invested etc whilst advocating the time is spent on raids, which have similar setups costs, need patch maintenance to maintain difficulty and balance and have short, patch centered lives and in the case of one difficulty (M) less than 2% of players do it
So if you feel yourself saying “but it would take dev time” just don’t.
Don’t buy into the idea that asking for time is bad. We do it all the time don’t we? No different here.
There is no mutual exclusivity here. Attempts to present it as a “it’s housing or a raid tier” is a false dilemma argument.
BFA introduced new races, island expos, warfronts, systems galore AND new zones, dungeons and raids. There is plenty enough time and resource to go around to design stuff other than raids.
Demand more from blizzard. Stop telling yourselves that because we have raids and dungeons, that stuff like the current world quest philosophy or anima grind or maw is “the best we deserve”. It’s not true
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How many cities, each their own instance I’m assuming, would we need to run concurrently for every current and potential WoW player?
So FFXIV’s limited housing wards are dead - I never see anyone in the district. At least on the server my house is on. So my house could be just another private instance.
And most people don’t have houses because they can’t get them. And people complain about only being able to get the instanced apartments.
It’s literally the number one complaint that runs constantly in that game.
No, just for whenever someone wants to enter their home would the server spin up an instance of it.
I don’t know much of anything about the FF MMO or its community. But it’s their loss if they don’t care about having such a cool feature at their finger tips. The one thing I do know about the FF MMO is… it apparently has a massive cash grab store that makes WoW’s store look like a molecule in comparison to it. So it’s not surprising they’re sticking price gates on player homes there.
Housing needs to happen! No more wasting time of bad systems that nobody wants. Invest it into housing.
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Only a minority wants housing too…
So for a lot of people housing is a bad system that will cost a raid tier.
Prove it. Read the first paragraph.