World of Warcraft Players Could Be Homeless Forever

[Tom Goldman]

World of Warcraft Players Could Be Homeless Forever

Blizzard often thinks of implementing player housing in World of Warcraft, but might never get around to it.

With around 12 million players per month, World of Warcraft [http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Battle-Chest-Mac/dp/B000H96C9M] is one of the most successful MMOs in the world. However, it lacks an often requested feature found in less popular games: player housing. World of Warcraft producer J. Allen Brack recently told Eurogamer that while Blizzard has been thinking about player housing, the studio can't figure out a way to logically implement it.

"Player housing has been on the list of something we wanted to do even back before the original [game] shipped - it was a feature that didn't make that," Brack said. "It's one of those things we talk about every expansion - what would this look like in WoW?"

Player housing refers to a personal space that players can typically customize to their liking. Decorations are often found in the game world or purchased through in-game currency.

Brack said that the feature will never see the light of day in World of Warcraft until there's a reason for players to have houses, beyond just players having houses. "I don't think it's sufficient enough for us in WoW to just say: 'Hey we have player housing - great,'" he added. "There's got to be some reason to have that, there's got to be gameplay behind that, stuff that happens."

Though player housing has been nixed with the release of each World of Warcraft expansion, Brack doesn't totally rule it out for expansion #4. Blizzard will just have to figure out a way to make houses matter, perhaps by making players fight over them in PvP or through introducing a quest chain where building a house helps take down an Old God.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-07-blizzard-wow-housing-may-never-happen]

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[Zer_]

*snip*

A place to store and showcase your older tier items is a good start.

 

[Gxas]

If I want a place to call my "home" in a video game, I'll play Animal Crossing. Player housing would remove so much player interaction within the game. I'm glad they're not planning it. I've never seen it as a good idea in any online game.

 

[Scorched_Cascade]

You have to wonder what all the NPCs think of the millions of people that apparently just fall down and sleep in the middle of the street.

They go out and kill legendary monsters and have enough gold to build the theoretical phallus monument yet they just up and kip in the gutter. Why have the orphans not robbed them blind?

Makes me wonder if any of the Mayors have "reduce homelessness and vagrancy" as their campaign platform.

 

[Staskala]

If I want a place to call my "home" in a video game, I'll play Animal Crossing. Player housing would remove so much player interaction within the game. I'm glad they're not planning it. I've never seen it as a good idea in any online game.

Agreed, player housing sounds like a cool idea on paper, but what are you really going to do with it?

Create a Sims-esque minigame where you can decorate your room?
Invite people over to do something? Like what? (except CS)
Display your "trophies"? Noone's ever going to see it, so what's the point?

Although it might offend some DAoC fans, I think player housing is awfully boring and pointless.

 

[Mitsozuka]

Mayhap they could make it a separate program, or a Menu addition, that functions as a virtual Hub other people can browse and look at all your old gear, your Raid accomplishments, browse your Auction House listings, drop messages, view your alts... Heck I dunno, maybe even grab a free nap if you'll let them.

Decent idea, but I feel for blizzard, how the bollocks would you implement such a thing?!

 

[Grahwo]

THeres a bunch of roleplayers, and servers out there.
Perhaps they would enjoy these.. houses?
I can immagine they are the ones that are pushing for this.

 

[TilMorrow]

Guild housing/headquarters would seem like the logical way of implementing a type of player housing. With a vault for guild loot, a raid room (like a war room) and they could be PvP compatible (have players attack each others guild headquarters for fun).

Though it would be cool if WoW could somehow implement the first floating on water/flying player housing (Boats or Blimps).

 

[Broken Boy]

guild housing would be a better compromise.

I agree


I moved from Shadowbane to WoW I miss having a physical in game guild some place to congregate a place to defend. It made it more real for me in Shadowbane & I have been missing this a lot.

 

[Torlux]

Most players never asked for PLAYER housing but GUILD housing instead. Having each player have their own home would be neat but ultimately pointless - Guild housing, on the other hand, would let you have a communal hangout for the guild...which is a neat idea.

 

[tkioz]

The problem with player housing is if it's poorly implemented it can ruin a game, just look at how AO did it. It was suppose to be based on a frontier world with only a few real cities, with a handful of run damn ramsackled towns, but all of a sudden there were these modern guild cities popping up everywhere... even right next to NPC cities that had flavour and style... and it totally ruined the atmosphere, not to mention the frame rate.

And they were ghost towns, guilds used them once or twice a week, if that, the rest of the time they were empty.

 

[lacktheknack]

If I want a place to call my "home" in a video game, I'll play Animal Crossing. Player housing would remove so much player interaction within the game. I'm glad they're not planning it. I've never seen it as a good idea in any online game.

It worked in Myst Online. It helped stop people from linking in and griefing the crap out of you as you solved puzzles, as well as holding your entire library of books.

Then again, the whole "home" thing was central to the game in Myst Online, and player interaction wasn't the highest thing on the list.

 

[Mordwyl]

Player housing by itself wouldn't work in World of Warcraft. GUILD housing on the other hand can provide limitless possibilities to what you can do with it... Perhaps go back to the RTS roots of conquest?

 

[Alon Shechter]

Guild Housing is great for those guilds who are actually social, but I don't see how player housing would do any good..
Hey! Let's go over to John's for a strong Mana potion party!
...Eh...

 

[Irridium]

guild housing would be a better compromise.
And im more bothered about the dance studios

guild housing sounds like the way to go.

In city of heroes, you could build your own "hideout" for your guild. And you can fight other guilds for their hideouts or defend your own from attack. Neat idea.

 

[antidonkey]

Player housing sounds a bit dumb to me. I'm sure there's pleny of people that would use it but I highly doubt I ever would. Seems like a pointless waste of time and is that really what a MMORPG really needs? Besides....we have a bejeweled and peggle addon for that.

 

[Exterminas]

*snip*

A place to store and showcase your older tier items is a good start.

The problem with that concept and guild housing is the following:

When it comes to player housing there are two possible approches:

a) place the houses in the real game world. This would not work in Wow because there are waaaaay too much players. If only 1% of your server population got to place a house in the game world, it would be enough to fill half of Kalimdor with houses. And you can't really implent a feature that only affects a small percentage of players.

b) You can instance the houses. But that defeats any possible purpose, because you would have to team up with any player whose house you wanted to visit in a group. For the purpose of showing off old armor, you could just to that right now infront of the bank. You don't need a house for that.

Then there is the problem with wows currency. Should houses cost money? If not, they would not be anything special, because anyone could get them. If they'd cost money, how much? Wows Gold has had a huge, huge inflation since BC, intented by Blizzard, probably to combat Gold Sellers. I know a lot of people who have several gold capped characters. But you can't make the price because the vast average of ->guilds<- never gets near that.

So in general Wow's Userbase is just too diverse today to implement such a feature in a meaningfull way.

 

[RandallJohn]

Housing would need to be instanced, which is doable, but outside of decoration, I'd have to agree with Brack. I can't see a use. I mean, they could implement spells that you can only use at home, but that seems kind of forced.

I always log out in a hotel anyway.

 

[Gxas]

If I want a place to call my "home" in a video game, I'll play Animal Crossing. Player housing would remove so much player interaction within the game. I'm glad they're not planning it. I've never seen it as a good idea in any online game.

It worked in Myst Online. It helped stop people from linking in and griefing the crap out of you as you solved puzzles, as well as holding your entire library of books.

Then again, the whole "home" thing was central to the game in Myst Online, and player interaction wasn't the highest thing on the list.

See thats the thing, if everyone in WoW is hanging around in their houses all the time, there would really be no community anymore. Even guild housing is a bad idea because of this. Thats what guild chat is for.

Besides, if you're logging into WoW just to talk to people and are just going to sit in your player housing the whole time, you really need to rethink your subscription and download an IM service.