Player owned houses are a high up on the request list for many gamers out there and rightfully so – we want a place to show off our loot! How often do you have really cool items from your leveling days that our now soulbound and otherwise obsolete that you just end up trashing? How about a nice place to display all those items that just end up sitting in your bank?
The truth is a lot of gamers want to see this happen in some fashion. Even Blizzard has mentioned on more than one occassion a desire to see this become a reality. Granted, it isn’t on the top of their wish list – but it’s on there none the less. Here’s a few more recent examples:
Nethaera: ”The word is that we like the idea of player housing and would like to implement it at some point in the future, however we don’t have any particular ETA of when we will. There is a laundry list of things we still would like to add to World of Warcraft and this is just one of them.”
Drysc: ”Heh, well skimming through it seems not everyone wants player housing at the moment. Not that we use the forums as a barometer for popular opinion, but anyway…Player housing is still something that intrigues us. If the place and time are right, and we can add player housing and make it a meaningful addition to the game, make it cool, we’ll do so.” Source
The trick with player housing and/or guild halls is doing it in a way that fits. If you were to just allow player’s to plop down houses just about anywhere it would be a detriment to the questing and the feel in the game. I know there are some areas of the game world that could sustain some player owned homes – the Barrens comes to mind – but those areas would lose the feel they have of being open, wild areas.
After thinking about it, the only solution I could come up with is another continent which means another expansion. But how can you make a whole continent dedicated to player and guild owned land and still have it interesting? Obviously you can’t fill the continent with all kinds of other content like quests and NPC areas or players would have no where to build. So that’s when I got to thinking about the dynamics of a Player Housing Expansion.
It would need to be a contested continent with the exception of one or two at most capital style NPC cities as they exist now. The rest of the land has to be open with the exception of maybe an instance or two that doesn’t take up a whole lot of room and roaming mobs. Well, maybe not completely empty. I was trying to tackle the idea of player housing and guild halls, so I came up with the answer – in my mind anyway.
Player Houses
First, player houses would be buildable just about anywhere. However, keep in mind this is a contested continent – so expect to be attacked repeatedly if you are Horde and you build your house near a popular Alliance hotspot and vice versa. This would help encourage building factional communities for the sake of protection – the bold players who want to build on that nice spot on the stream overlooking the waterfall will just have to take their chances of building away from the group.
Blizzard could allow players to buy and upgrade guards to offer at least some protection from ganking at their houses. Alternatively, placing a player owned house could serve as a spawn area of sorts for faction aligned NPC’s to roam the immediate area. The latter of which would also be a good insentive to build closer to your factional group, more houses in a smaller area means more NPC protection roaming about.
Guild Halls
These could work two ways, well probably more but two that I could think of anyway. The first is pretty similar to player houses. Place them in a friendly area and give your guild a place to meet and call home – complete with guild tabards hanging from the walls and a guild flag flying outside. Or, you could go with a path of pre-placed halls or keep (sounding like War yet?) that guilds could claim for their own. But claiming a keep isn’t enough – you’ve got to defend it as well. This style of guild hall…err keep rather would be a huge draw and the major focus of this expansion.
The entire continent would in essence be one big battleground of sorts. This would be a new attraction for players unhappy with the current end game content in World of Warcraft and are sick of constant raiding. The dynamics of how the keeps would work is still up in the air. You want enough keeps to spread out the action a bit to allow for more diverse combat at different terrains. On the other hand you don’t want to many keeps or guilds will become complacent. If every guild can own a keep at one time then there isn’t much incentive to go out and take one.
Lastly, Blizzard could implement both keeps and guild halls together. Allowing all guilds to have a place to call home and a keep for bragging rights. I would love to hear some of your ideas on what Blizzard could do to make this happen. Or if you’ve got a better idea – I’m all ears.
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8 comments so far
The only way i see player housing possible without destroying the game atmosphere is to make a Dungeon like instance entrance in each major city.
Wen you step into the swirling vortex like dungeon entrance, you will see a loading screen and after loading is over you character will appear on a district like place themed after different city. Stormwind fx will have classic old brick road look with old fashioned castle like houses, and Undercity will be more of a sewage tunnel like with high sealing lots of stairways (i’m thinking something like Lower Blackrock spire, but with UC style).
I think making a new continent JUST for housing were both factions can make settlements is unrealistic, and sound more like the unambitious Palm Islands in Dubai rather then Fantasy world of endless war.
The Dungeon like concept will also illuminate need for space. The other thought is to make it exactly like a dungeon, you can group up with your friends and depending on whoever is the leader, will determine which apartment you will appear in upon the ending of the loading screen.
Tnx for reading, more comments, keep it coming.
October 30th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I agree that an instance isn’t a bad plan either. I was trying to come up with an idea to put the houses in the regular game world though without breaking immersion.
The only problem with instances like what you described is players want to be able to show off their stuff to more than just their group. If it worked where you went into an instance and were able to go through other people’s homes (if they are unlocked) that would work better.
The continent idea was not just for player housing – but to give more PvP end game content as well to WoW. Much like the Keep Seiges of WAR, players would battle for terrain.
October 30th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Nahh the continent thingy still sounds kinda silly to me
. I red a review on GameSpy about War vs WoW, and as we all know War is for pvp and WoW is for pve.
In above post, i was trying to give 2 versions of dungeon style housing. The simple group one and then there’s the one were we have a HUGE instance with all player houses in it, that way the idea about showing off your house to everyone who passes by can become a reality
October 30th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
I do like the instance idea – don’t get me wrong.
There are pro’s and con’s with it. The con first would be that the houses would be most likely pre-built, so players would have to purchase homes they liked. That’s not so bad – but it would be a mad rush for players to get in and get the best ones. That’s assuming Blizzard made varying designs and locales in the instance.
The pro is the atmosphere would be really well done and immersive. All the houses would look natural and like they belong because Blizzard would design them all head to toe.
And on the end game content, Blizzard appears to be trying to move toward more PvP play to retain customers they may otherwise lose to WAR. Hence the potential problems for twinks if players can now gain XP in battlefields.
I don’t see a problem with the PvP style end game content for WoW to compliment the PvE style game play that is already in place. Players like to have options. If raiding is my only option for end game, I’d rather do something else – which is why I play twinks so much. I like the PvP.
October 30th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Yeh your right about the mad rush thing.
On the WoW vs WAR > Well i think pvp content of wow compared to WAR is like a small flash game you get for your cellphone as a bonus wen buying a MMOPvE game for pc
or something like that.
I actually considered to try playing WAR wen i get my pay check tomorrow, because after patch 3.0.2 i HATE Destro lock pvping which became even more PvE oriented (I wonder Y blizze’s even bothered with keeping Nether protection, Aftemath and adding Chaos Bolt and improved Soul Lich, wen its no use wen faced by any other class)
October 30th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Just found this from Jeff “Tigole” Kaplan (Lead World Designer for WoW):
Another small but potentially profound concept for “WoW” is player-generated housing. Gamers don’t have a room of their own for their characters to live and decorate right now. This matters to Kaplan, who is a big fan of “Animal Crossing,” the Nintendo franchise centered around cultivating a home and sense of unique, personal space. “I think housing can take ‘World of Warcraft’ to the next level,” Kaplan said. “I want to make sure that when we introduce player housing to ‘World of Warcraft’ we do it right and give the feature the credit that it deserves, which is a massive amount of production time on the programming, design and art time. It’s something we actually wanted to do for the original shipping game.” But it’s not coming, he said, until it’s a “Blizzard-quality feature.”
October 30th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Well not comming YET, but for now i’m pretty happy with my Thunder Bluff hut (wich i claimed as my own, and it also contains a huge weed pipe lol)
October 31st, 2008 at 6:42 am
Do it, do it, do it! I want to soo do this, I find it WOOTWOOT. id love to buy items, make a cool house, furnish it with furniture and add places and junk, take all the time u need, it will be a MAJOR thing, ive always wanted to do this.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:46 am
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