Player Housing with Taliesin & Evitel: Who Should WoW Copy To Make It Happen?

Live Posted 2024/03/05 at 9:48 AM by Wowhead

WoW's Failed Attempts at Player HousingSunsong RanchMists PandariaPros:

Since Sunsong Ranch was phased, individual players were alone on their farm, but there was always activity around the farmer’s market nearby.

Upgrades to the farm included items that made farming easier, a variety of aesthetic upgrades like various animals and some furniture, a mailbox, and a stove.

Ultimately, no one had to bother with the farm if they didn’t want to. Sunsong Ranch was not related to any player power. Though the farm did provide some reputation quests, none of its upgrades made it feel essential to the game.

This might have honestly been the farm’s strongest trait. Rule: Player housing should always feel voluntary.

Cons:

Planting and harvesting crops couldn’t help but feel like a mobile-game style chore.

The aesthetic upgrades to the farm were minor, and customization was nonexistant.

Sunsong Ranch was very much tied to the expansion it featured in. The moment the rewards became obsolete, players lost any reason to return.

GarrisonsWarlords of DraenorPros:

A lot more customization. The stables and pet areas could display mounts and pets from players’ own collections. Pedestals around the Garrison could be used to display special monuments, unlockable through a variety of achievements

Garrisons had their own special holiday events, and they introduced Pepe - who has managed to remain evergreen for many players.

Garrisons were genuinely useful - to this day, the Garrison Hearthstone is one of the quickest and easiest ways to visit Warlords of Draenor zones.

Cons:

For player housing to succeed, it cannot be an expansion-defining feature. It has to be evergreen, and it has to be optional. Both Sunsong Ranch and Garrisons failed at both.

Spend enough time building up your Garrison and there was never any need to visit Stormwind or Orgrimmar. Warlords never even had a major city - there was no need for one. Garrisons ended up replacing cities in the worst posible way, isolating players and bringing a sense of inherent loneliness to the expansion.

Trade was badly affected - in their Garrison, every player could grow their own herbs and mine their own ore whether they had those professions or not, why bother to trade for them?

The work that went into them is said to have cost an entire raid tier, and that was just with the generic Human and Orc designs.

Even though Garrisons were a lot more customizable than Sunsong Ranch, upgrades and furniture were still largely predetermined.

Other MMOsFinal Fantasy XIVPros:

It's possible to get to know your neighbours and your neighbourhood.

Cons:

A fantasy game that exists for escapism should not have a housing shortage.

World of Warcraft players probably don't want a new pocket area outside of Stormwind or Orgimmar, they want their little apartment in Stormwind or Orgrimmar.

Elder Scrolls OnlinePros:

In Elder Scrolls Online, player housing ranges from simple single rooms within inns to sprawling mansions that are far more suited to guild housing.

The easiest homes to obtain are handed to you with a simple quest.

The housing system is entirely optional.

Houses are account-wide, the system is similar to mount collecting, but with a roof.

Most houses you can buy empty and decorate yourselves - or, if you’re willing to spend a little more, you can buy them fully furnished.

Furnishings can be crafted with professions, and encourages trade. It gives crafters a reason beyond player power to become skilled in their professions. (Imagine a Blood Elf tailor being able to create special Blood Elf tapestries)

Players can also place mounts and pets as decorations. (Imagine being able to also display World of Warcraft armor sets and toys.)

Houses work as portals - similar to the Garrison hearthstone.

Houses act as aspirational content - impressive houses can be locked behind achievements and other challenges.

Houses can be shared in guilds - with the largest houses acting as guild housing.

Fun, limited houses, like a house inside a snowglobe available during ESO's equivalent of Winter Veil.

Cons:

The ESO housing system is tied to the game's extremely predatory cash shop. This sort of monetization is not what we want to see in World of Warcraft.

12 39

Comment by NarniisEven if it is dead Wildstar probably should have been mentioned with its housing.Comment by CatMon92"Let's copy ideas from objectively inferior games, what can go wrong?" Grow up. Wow doesnt need housing (maybe just some sort of guild hall). Wow does NOT need unreal engine 5 graphics. Wow is perfect for what it is and how it is. Calm down and go play games that have those systems and graphics and leave WoW alone. It just means WoW is not for you. Simple.Comment by valinristaSwtor, they should copy Swtor.Comment by aaron000will all the examples listed where they did things right, WoW could easily make a fantastic player housing system.Comment by MaximusPMI wish they would make player housing just so people stop asking for itComment by erro3Lord of the Rings Online also has housing with neighborhoods and guild houses.Comment by HemamoonEven if it is dead Wildstar probably should have been mentioned with its housing.Comment by LordGabrielThey could copy some of what RIFT did. I'd absolutely love to have the ability to move things around in 3D space, scale them, nudge them into place, etc.

As for where the places are located, there they could copy BDO where there's specific buildings in the various cities with housing available for players to obtain, but it's instanced, no loading screen though, so by default you'll just enter yours, but you can be invited into friends or guildmates housing.Comment by Dakhath79"Let's copy ideas from objectively inferior games, what can go wrong?" Grow up. Wow doesnt need housing (maybe just some sort of guild hall). Wow does NOT need unreal engine 5 graphics. Wow is perfect for what it is and how it is. Calm down and go play games that have those systems and graphics and leave WoW alone. It just means WoW is not for you. Simple.Comment by YodasEvilTwinThere's never been a player housing system in any MMORPG that has been worthwhile. I get that some people want to play The Sims inside their MMO, for sure, but for most it's either tedious and useless or turns the MMO into a single-player experience, like you mentioned with Garrisons. There's no way to resolve this because "doing what you want with your own space" is fundamentally at odds with "doing things with other players where they have input". Any compromise ends up like living in a rundown apartment complex.

There might be some potential in guild halls, like having zeppelins/airships or something, but it's still hard to find the balance between usefulness and not being where players just plant themselves the whole time. It's also hard to tack it onto an existing game where there are already so many standalone items for traveling and amenities.Comment by DietMageIt's older but you could also mention EverQuest 1's housing system. It used 'neighborhoods' which were instances of the same area with plots that you could rent. You could wander around the various neighborhoods at will and see what people did to the exterior of their houses, but as far as I know you couldn't go inside houses unless invited, or the owner put you on a list that allowed you to enter or even modify stuff on the plot. Both interior and exterior were customizable.

Multiple ways to get housing features, through gameplay, in game store, etc.

There was some utility as well by allowing you to place anchors which would allow you to teleport to your house or plot, and later they added trophies that would give you stat boosts.

As mentioned you had to rent it, using the massive number of in game currencies that had accumulated over the years, or just straight platinum (equivalent to gold). Rent was usually extremely cheap, but it was something you had to think about now and again. Trophies also had a cost to activate so you couldn't just leave them on at all times, but if you turned them on while doing content, they could last awhile.Comment by FrozenLord117Been saying this for ages. WoW could benefit SO much from player housing.

Baking housing achievements into every facet of the game would allow players so much agency and ways to acquire decorations - Dungeons, Raids, PvP, questing, Old-World questing, events, secret-finding, you name it!

It would be a great way to give players even more reason to engage with the world in innumerable ways.

As for how/where it could be implemented, I feel like each major capital city could have a housing district - Stormwind, Ironforge, Gilneas, Orgrimmar, Silvermoon, Thunder Bluff, etc. Give players the opportunity to have three different levels - Small, Medium and Large houses much life FF14, but without the awful lottery system - just pure gold cost.

Decorations could be both interior home decorations, and exterior - you can change your house's physical layout to look like architecture of other areas (Gilneas house in Stormwind, for example).

Possibilities are literally endless, and many people believe it's high time for the "greatest MMORPG" to have one of the penultimate MMORPG elements added.Comment by lovelywazI loved Garrisons. Pretty sure they can expand onto it's base system and add a LOT more functionality plus get rid of some "cons" as mentioned above. After all, that was 10 years ago and tech has evolved so much since then.

The major obvious change in Garrisons would be to have them independent and NOT tied and mandatory expansion feature with somewhat "required grind" system as they tend to do even with cosmetic stuff. The ONLY "grind" should be to go and defeat XYZ open world/instanced content and have the items 100% drop. Not some usual BS of either 1-5% drop chance from bags/mobs/bosses or "fill up a bar every day/week for X number of days/weeks".Comment by EasyrokAlmost every pro listed for ESO is also true of FF14 housing. Entirely optional, extremely customizable, furnishings are mostly player crafted which makes materials and trade items from every expansion useful. The only thing that sucks about FF14 is the lottery system. I feel like there's some bias here.Comment by aaron000There's never been a player housing system in any MMORPG that has been worthwhile. I get that some people want to play The Sims inside their MMO, for sure, but for most it's either tedious and useless or turns the MMO into a single-player experience, like you mentioned with Garrisons. There's no way to resolve this because "doing what you want with your own space" is fundamentally at odds with "doing things with other players where they have input". Any compromise ends up like living in a rundown apartment complex.

There might be some potential in guild halls, like having zeppelins/airships or something, but it's still hard to find the balance between usefulness and not being where players just plant themselves the whole time. It's also hard to tack it onto an existing game where there are already so many standalone items for traveling and amenities.Comment by Redemption86" World of Warcraft players probably don't want a new pocket area outside of Stormwind or Orgimmar, they want their little apartment in Stormwind or Orgrimmar "

Wrong. I do want housing outside of Stormwind or Orgrimmar. FFXIV does this as each city has it's own housing districts and some of us haven't forgotten the old " put your garrisons anywhere! " line we were fed at Blizzcon only to get dumped in Frostfire and Shadowmoon. I'd rather not be dumped in Orgrimmar/Stormwind if I can help it.Comment by WeperESO has the best housing system atm. So Blizz should definitely copy that one.Comment by TyneicPlayer housing is not an MMORPG aspect that's worth investing time or resources into.
Nobody is gonna visit your house.
How many people wanna spectate you showcasing your SIMS 4 mansion? That's how many people would enjoy looking at your house.

I get the appeal, but is WoW really the platform to scratch that itch? Or is there much more better suited video games designed to scratch that very same itch?

Now Guild Halls? That is entirely different, it's an aspect that improves upon the already existing community and something that's more worth investing time and resources into. I always emote at players I know whenever I meet them in the open world. Guild Halls that are centrally located Inns, with a few commodities depending on Guild Achievements, such as a transmogrifier, an auction house, a barber, etc. would go a much longer way than individual player housing.

We don't need WoW to be an MMORPG, a mobile game, a Pokemon clone, a TV Show, a movie as well as a SIMS clone all at once.Comment by aaron000Almost every pro listed for ESO is also true of FF14 housing. Entirely optional, extremely customizable, furnishings are mostly player crafted which makes materials and trade items from every expansion useful. The only thing that sucks about FF14 is the lottery system. I feel like there's some bias here.Comment by PaeroI loved the Garrison, it was one of the best features ever in WoW!

12 39