player-housing
Latest
How soon is now?
Restless for the 2.2 patch to go live, players have been flooding the official forums for updates on long requested features: surnames, player housing, engineering revamp, to name a few. The response to all these requests was the same: we'd like to implement these ideas, but don't know when.The only glimmer of hope the Community Managers could give was about class reviews. Word is Ret Paladins and Enhancement Shamans are receiving "changes" sooner rather than later and for Priests, the Holy tree and Discipline tree will receive some dev lovin'. For those classes not listed and feeling the need for review, there's always the next expansion. TBC did wonders for the druid Balance and Feral trees. Now we must wait for the Voice Chat patch to go live and then Blizzard can be more specific about what game changes are coming next and which stay on the back burner.
The downfalls of player-created housing
We unfortunately don't know much about what's coming next, but we do know one thing that's scheduled to show up, at least before the next expansion: some sort of housing. All the Blue hints point to guild housing, but player housing is an idea that's been tossed around as well. There's just one problem to MMO housing, however. As Hardcore Casual points out, it often becomes a ghost town.Back when I played Dark Age of Camelot, I remember visiting the guild housing area only once (the guild I joined was mostly lowbies, and we never had enough cash to buy property of our own), and it was a strange experience-- acres upon acres of customized buildings, all completely and totally empty as far as I could see. There were a few NPCs around (DAoC had a feature where you could have NPCs stand outside your house to sell your crafts while you were gone), but otherwise it was more like an abandoned trailer park than anything else. As HC says, the "IDEA" of housing is great-- you can have your own place to hang out, show off, and build to your heart's content. But in practice, most players would rather be exploring the world Blizzard designed then stuck in a small room that they made themselves.Now, the obvious solution for this is instancing, and in fact, Blizzard has already foreseen this-- there are currently instance portals in a few cities that have been rumored to serve as either player or guild housing. If instances were used as housing, we'd just all own the same apartment in Stormwind. But you have to balance that against the other feature of housing-- actually showing it off. Wandering around the houses in DAoC was a kind of (lonely) fun, if only to see what other people had created, and with just an instance, all you'd get to see is the inside. It'll be interesting to see how Blizzard balances player-created content (which can sometimes be boring or ugly), with their own interesting design.
What's so interesting about player-controlled housing to you?
Much like many of you, I've been playing WoW since the start. In the two-plus years that have passed, my bank has become a bit cluttered with mementos; tabards, pets, and in the case of my rogue, the entire set of Dungeon Set 2 (or Tier .5) armor. At the time the set was completed it was a real achievement to me and to my small guild. Despite the fact that my rogue also happens to be an enchanter, and I could seriously use the Large Brilliant Shards and Nexus Crystals, I just can't bring myself to shard the set. Never mind that I know I'll only ever wear it again for looks, if that. (Did I mention the collection of festival dresses I have?) Why? Call me sentimental, but a lot of those items represent gaming milestones to me. Keeping them has meant that I've had to spend free time farming the mats for the 18-slot-bags. It also has made me stay on top of my inventory at all times, which is a good thing in a lot of respects. But there's a reason for the madness. It's something I dream of, and I hope that the Blizzard Devs will consider if (or when) they implement housing...
