WoW's player housing will have no FOMO and private housing wards

[YumieYumiki]

Their approach is better (or rather more generous) on paper (obviously it's meant to be a competitor to ffxiv housing so obviously it needs to look better) but they have conflicting goals.

"We dont want too many zones to ecourage socialization" but "we want everyone to have a house", so there will be, in fact, many instances of these zones.

"We want everyone to be able to have a house and will never destroy them" means that these neighborhoods will eventually be littered with the abandoned houses of people who have stopped playing, also conflicting with socialization.

Also making it cheap and accessible means you'll have a lot of abandoned houses even from people who are playing. A lot of people will get a house just because they can but never use it.

[Valence]

Because people socialize in XIV housing wards? Are we playing the same game? They're all empty all day long.

[YumieYumiki]

Because people socialize in XIV housing wards? Are we playing the same game? They're all empty all day long.

I was just pointing out the contradiction in blizzards post. They are overselling their approach a bit.

[Arrius]

Because people socialize in XIV housing wards? Are we playing the same game? They're all empty all day long.

I believe there is a community going in the housing wards.
But most western players just don the latest attire/haircut from the shop and do the bees knees at Limsa as their cute female Miqote/Au ra/Lalafell/Viera#23543 to feel special with it since they can flex with their wallet.

[NaoSen]

Their approach is better (or rather more generous) on paper (obviously it's meant to be a competitor to ffxiv housing so obviously it needs to look better) but they have conflicting goals.

"We dont want too many zones to ecourage socialization" but "we want everyone to have a house", so there will be, in fact, many instances of these zones.

"We want everyone to be able to have a house and will never destroy them" means that these neighborhoods will eventually be littered with the abandoned houses of people who have stopped playing, also conflicting with socialization.

Also making it cheap and accessible means you'll have a lot of abandoned houses even from people who are playing. A lot of people will get a house just because they can but never use it.

From what I took away from their post is as such.

Public Neighborhoods, which the game servers are responsible for creating as needed and maintaining.
- Made by blizzard, probably nice and pretty and serving whatever function blizzard wants (Think RL Golf Estate Housing minus the resident exclusivity, pretty, has features etc... but you cant change it), probably end up as social hubs.

Private Neighborhoods created by groups of friends or guilds to inhabit, progress, and customize together
- Whatever Chaos players want to create

It looks like they've basically looked at all FF players complaints about housing, since they directly reference the big ones.

--------
Blizzard, considering you are most likely reading this thread.
Please let housing zones feel alive and not be ghost towns that this game has, give a reason to actually use them and your game needs a social hub.
See you at end of year or sooner.

Thanks


--------

[BokoToloko]

Good for WoW to, again, disprove the myth about system limitations once again (it was the transmogrification system before, now it's housing plots) by using the same format as FFXIV but actually offering virtually limitless wards. Bit weird they don't go for more zone options since each 'hood is limited to 50 plots anyways. They should expand the variety in the future even if I'll never get the zone I actually want, which is Winterspring.

[YumieYumiki]

Blizzard, considering you are most likely reading this thread.
Please let housing zones feel alive and not be ghost towns that this game has, give a reason to actually use them and your game needs a social hub.

You're expecting way too much from blizzard. The only way they know to incentivize players to participate in something is to give rewards for it. And players in turn optimize for getting these rewards while interacting as little as possible with the feature that gives them.

So what will likely happen is that players will get houses and participate in housing just enough for the rewards. The result will be that those mostly inactive players house will litter the housing neighborhoods to the detriment of people who want to participate in the housing system in earnest.

I know it's going to play out like this because thats exactly what happened with world pvp. They gave rewards to incentivize players, and players optimized the world pvp out of the world pvp by massively switching to the same faction so they can get the world pvp rewards without doing any pvp.

I know that people like to think that the grass is greener elsewhere but blizzard is as incompetent overall as cbu3, just not in the same way.

[CidHeiral]

It sounds like a very nice housing system. I see this as a positive because competition is always good. FFXIV lit a fire under WoW's ass and it has become a much better game for it. If that in turn does the same thing for FFXIV then everyone's a winner.

Good for WoW to, again, disprove the myth about system limitations once again (it was the transmogrification system before, now it's housing plots) by using the same format as FFXIV but actually offering virtually limitless wards.

I don't disagree that FFXIV should keep working to improve its systems but your comparison doesn't make much sense. Other than both being MMOs they're two entirely different beasts under the hood which makes their system limitations completely irrelevant to one another. It's like saying a Prius should be able to go as fast as a top of the line Lambo because they're both cars.

[NaoSen]

You're expecting way too much from blizzard. The only way they know to incentivize players to participate in something is to give rewards for it. And players in turn optimize for getting these rewards while interacting as little as possible with the feature that gives them.

So what will likely happen is that players will get houses and participate in housing just enough for the rewards. The result will be that those mostly inactive players house will litter the housing neighborhoods to the detriment of people who want to participate in the housing system in earnest.

I know it's going to play out like this because thats exactly what happened with world pvp. They gave rewards to incentivize players, and players optimized the world pvp out of the world pvp by massively switching to the same faction so they can get the world pvp rewards without doing any pvp.

I know that people like to think that the grass is greener elsewhere but blizzard is as incompetent overall as cbu3, just not in the same way.

Right now, it's not hard for me to think the grass is greener. I started playing at end of SHB, I don't do Savage or Ultimate, come Endwalker I got to see SE continuously waste potential and do the absolute bare minimum of QOL, Criterion was a mess, Island Sanctuary was just a chore, Relics? What relics it's just tome weapons, Blue Mage's Exquisite version of their umbrella require Criterion Savage completion (Great SE, lock a jobs weapon behind content they can't even enter), got to see jobs become more and more homogenised, to see them removing the MMO from MMORPG with Trusts (I understand social anxiety people this helps but it showed a single player mindset in a MMO), housing item limits still ridiculous, solution to shortage just throwing more wards at housing.

When Dawntrail came along I was highly optimistic "Highest content expansion", "A New Beginning" etc... all looking great and thinking "They must have learned from endwalker", yet here we are 7 months later, we have a dual dye system, the tribe added is potentially the lowest effort to date, story was poor at best (I still think it will improve though). Not once have they gone and taken players concerns and went "Hey its a lot of work but they will really be happy having it".

Meanwhile I see GW2 added homesteads with great housing, tried PSO2 NGS (I know its housings been like that for a long time, nothing new) and saw how its instanced housing is amazing, companies mentioning player feedback etc...

How am I to have any faith in square enix at this point at them caring about what their playerbase thinks ? If a features bad I expect it to stay bad.

[Buttobi]

You're expecting way too much from blizzard. The only way they know to incentivize players to participate in something is to give rewards for it. And players in turn optimize for getting these rewards while interacting as little as possible with the feature that gives them.

So what will likely happen is that players will get houses and participate in housing just enough for the rewards. The result will be that those mostly inactive players house will litter the housing neighborhoods to the detriment of people who want to participate in the housing system in earnest.

I know it's going to play out like this because thats exactly what happened with world pvp. They gave rewards to incentivize players, and players optimized the world pvp out of the world pvp by massively switching to the same faction so they can get the world pvp rewards without doing any pvp.

I know that people like to think that the grass is greener elsewhere but blizzard is as incompetent overall as cbu3, just not in the same way.

There is definitely a bit of "grass is greener on the other side" going on, but that is not entirely it. I do not want to go too off topic, but there are many systems that current WoW just does better than ffxiv like world and dungeon content. It would not be surprising if their implementation of the housing system would be better too. Not saying WoW is without its faults, but I think a lot of people that play both games would at least be able to recognize that the tables have turned a bit in terms of game design quality.