Sounds a lot like the housing in EverQuest II. Houses are instanced in the major cities, carpenters make furniture, and woodworkers make bows and staves. Some raid bosses drop their heads, which you can put in your guild halls in statue form. And of course there are mannequins (female and male, different races too) to show off all your hard-earned raid gear and mythical weapon.

It is very awesome, but do you really think it would work in WoW? I mean, the experience in EQ2 is organic; it’s been there since the beginning. How could Blizz do it in WoW without making it feel tacked on? Seems like it’d require a ton of coding, too.

To me there are lots aspects

store “all” your crafting crap, or, herbs, gems etc. everything in one place, accessible by all toons (alliance and horde, lets small side have big side prices).
professions - in your hall/house there are “:apprentices”. they know everything any of your profession toons/alts know, and use the matts in your storage!! yay, no more changing toons transferring stuff from place to place!! woot.
trophy case for old classic weapons, the possibilities are endless

J.

It would be nice, shame it is just a dream

@Angry Rider

is MMORPG almost all games have something in common,

I’ve discussed the whole player housing myself earlier, as it somehow was a pretty hot topic a few months ago. As even after reading a lot of good arguments for it, I’m not convinced. Why? Because I love the cities when they’re filled with life. Hardcore raiders showing off their fancy mounts and gear outside of the AH, looney characters running around naked in the streets. That’s a part of WoW for me. If that hardcore raider sits inside his own little place to polish his armor, and that little nude kid decides to strip down alone, a lot of the charm this game has would be lost. I do however support the idea of guild halls. It would bring people together more than separating them, and could be fun at late night with my hyperactive guild.

I love this idea and it is so doable for Blizzard’s developers. They already have enough exaples of halls / rooms / houses that new models would not have to be crafted from scratch, not even textures. Blizzard has already mentioned the possibility of expanding the banks and the number of slots available to players.

They could make it similar to mounts:

Level 20 - get an appartment in a dorm for 50 Gold
Level 40 - move up to a townhouse for 250 Gold
Level 60 - move into your own house for 1000 Gold
Level 80 - move to a bigger home in a better part of town for 5000 Gold

They could even sell it as an “expansion” to the game.

I honestly think this would keep some people online who otherwise would simply stop their subscription.

If they did that I would be afraid I’d spend even more time on the game, lol.

New vanity pets - the French Maid and the Butler!

Can I get new dance moves too?

Sure, player housing would be great until all the paladins move out of town and the housing bubble collapses.

Hmm could even use the instance window they have between trade quarter and old town in SW. Would imagine there would be a few more. Interesting thing is how do you let other people in your house? Or would you just take a pic of it and post it on the net that way?

I would like this a lot. I am sick of all the class balancing and I’m sick of raids and pvp. Sure fishing cooking etc gives you something else to do, but it gets kinda boring after a while to do the same thing over and over and over again. Whatever you do in wow it feels like you have to repeat it 100 times before it’s done. I understand this would be close to impossible for blizzard to implement but something close to this should be possible! At the moment it feels like class balancing and tuning is everything you do let it be a little unfair its not like the “underpowered” classes will disappear..

I think that its a great idea. Even way back from EQ1, they had the instanced guild houses that had a recovery pool, reagent vendors, portals to certain plages via spellstones… it was great.

I’ve been waiting for wow to do the same for a long time… tacked on? Who cares.. I’d get over it after a while.. I need a closet to stick all my tabards in. >.<

@ jorani : When you said:

“store “all” your crafting crap, or, herbs, gems etc. everything in one place, accessible by all toons (alliance and horde, lets small side have big side prices).”

did you mean have tradeskill available to ALL your toons (both horde and alliance) ? If so, I would strongly argue against this feature.

Nice article! I took a look at WoW player housing a bit earlier in the year. I made similar recommendations:

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=2016

I also examined why 5 years after the release of WoW that Blizzard still hasn’t included player housing despite initially promising it to WoW subscribers.

I did a bit of an article on this a while back, and the big thing I want to see is the ability to showcase pets and mounts. Like an outdoor stable (similar to the harness posts outside Gadgetzan) and maybe a cage or yard for your favorite pets to roam in (like the yard of cats by the Cat Lady). This would appeal to collectors who want to showcase their best collection pieces.

I’ve also always wanted to live next door to my sister-in-law, which means I’d want a specific house spot, which would require that we can choose our own plots of land.

Another thing I think would be nifty is if you can “park” your alts in your house so that you can see them when your character goes home. They could maybe even have scripted text for when you right-click on them, like “Hi ___! Just wanted to drop off these cupcakes!” or as my Dustfire would have it: “Hello, mistress. I’m almost finished doing your bidding. Do you have more bidding for me to do?”

1st… the mysterious vault door in the King’s room is the door to old Ironforge

2nd… player housing has some issues in terms of how to handle it. If houses are instanced, how do other players get to see them? How would guild houses be visible to non-guild members? Would you invite people into groups or raids, just like for dungeons?

I think the major issue with housing - both player and guild housing - is not a technical one. Instances are cheap, and housing data would probably double the actually character data for each character owning one. Thats something Blizzard could handle, if you consider their server horse powers. IMHO the real issue is the design of the housing user interface, as thats what makes are breaks the feature.

Another issue for sure is that housing should not be a requirement but an option, thus it can not be done in a public area as characters come and go, and leaving empty houses around does not seem very attractive.

Probably we will see housing in the next expansion, at least for guilds. Guild housing might be a feature that would attract a lot of players, probably more than personal housing as the most important part of the game is socializing and not only the game world itself.

Player housing? thats like kinda…strange…not very wow style…in wow you play a hero that fight for the alliance/horde, not a guy that stays in his house in SW/OGR.
Guild housing? Yeah, but why should we be in our guild hall? no cool futures here. But i like the idea of doing something common for the guild, other then PvE. So, what about guild PvP ? The next expansion is Maelstorm/Undermine minded right? Thats in the see, so what about a kind of BG where each guild commands a ship and fight the other guilds ship! Of course, you would have to build the ship and all professions would be needed: engineering for the canons, blacksmithing for some parts in metal on the ship (and pieces for other professions), enchanters would make some parts immune to canons, tailors would do some ropes, jewelcrafters would decorate the ship into the alliance/horde colors with the leatherworkers, inscribers would make manuals and plans for the different parts….You would need to pay for some workers, cut wood like in the argent coliseum quest….
Player Housing? No, Guild Housing! Guild Housing? No, Guild PvP!

I usually don’t post twice about the same subject on blogs, but I just have to add a tiny thing more to my comment:
I understand how player housing probably would draw more players to Azeroth, as it gives them new things to do. But how much do you really want out of a game? Blizzard seems to have enough to do with developing new gear, battlegrounds and raids, and now people want houses to giggle around in aswell? Why not buy The Sims, (they just launced a new game), and play around with a house there, until you want to go into war again. It’s World of Warcraf. A world. Of war. Not World of Matching Curtains and Wallpapers.

Sounds a lot like SWG system u an old player from back in the day

I see your point there, but I guess we all have different views of which ways the game should evolve. In my opinion, the quests, even tho they involve something as disgracing as picking up poo, help you on your journey to become a better fighter. You help a few orcs with kodo turds, they help you on your way towards the war with the gold they can spare. Staying home and working on your shelf of decorations doens’t quite help you that much. (But again, that’s just my opinion. However I truly do understand how Blizzard would attract some new players with a feature like that. It’s just not a preferance of mine.)

@ Tuna and Naive

I understand what both of you are saying, but ur taking the negatives to the extremes. Leveling and questing is much more than picking up poo. And housing is not quite matching curtains and staying home and working on shelf decorations. You could say, “Slay Onixia and hang her head next to your Tier 8.5 manequin.”

Pretty much WoW is a game where you kill stuff and collect digital pixels. This applies to both questing/leveling AND housing. Collect digital loot, and show them off.

I could care less about housing in WoW, but it does make sense to add it in the game. Why don’t our characters have a place to live? Our “Heroes of Azeroth” can’t be living out of Inns. Heroes have to rest sometimes too!