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

[mallleable]

Cool! Still not a great enough reason for me to want to swap over to WOW, but CS3 needs to step up, and undo all their housing mistakes.

[dspguy]

If the WoW housing is as customizable as FFXIV's is, then good for them. And maybe SE could learn something. I don't know if we have that sort of details to make that claim yet.

I played LOTRO for a few years. The housing in that game would just spin up another ward when one was full or almost full. There was upkeep, but I recall it being very cheap. And if you left for (I think 6 weeks?) - the upkeep would freeze and you had to pay some penalty - like 10 weeks of upkeep when you came back. But you kept your property.

The big difference though was it was not really customizable. There were slots for items. A table goes in one slot, a chair in another, a lamp in another. And those slots were only for a few items that could "fit" there. Essentially, the options were so limited. Unlike how in FFXIV, we can fit hundreds of items that can be at specific coordinates, rotating on 3 axis, dyed, etc.

[Rinoa_353]

I mean, shucks, WildStar managed to create "infinite" housing and it didn't have anywhere near the number of developers working on it or budget of Final Fantasy 14.

So it's not impossible, it's just that Square-Enix doesn't want to do it for any number of reasons, some are valid, but others are bullshit.
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I'm sure socializing occurs on SOME housing wards in certain worlds, but it sure as hell doesn't happen on Maduin.

My world is so dead, I managed to get a personal and FC house literally across the street from each other with zero competition both times. (And I bought an apartment up the street for the lulz too). I am under no delusion of a "neighborhood vibe" here.

They should just break up Dynamis and merge them with the other three DC, like have Seraph, Kraken and Hali go to Primal for example and just add an extra world for the 9th slot if broken up into three worlds per DC, that would do lots of good I think and help ease congestion of those busier DC and also increase que times for content now that cross DC DF is in the works.

[Shougun]

I mean, shucks, WildStar managed to create "infinite" housing and it didn't have anywhere near the number of developers working on it or budget of Final Fantasy 14.

So it's not impossible, it's just that Square-Enix doesn't want to do it for any number of reasons, some are valid, but others are bullshit.
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I'm sure socializing occurs on SOME housing wards in certain worlds, but it sure as hell doesn't happen on Maduin.

My world is so dead, I managed to get a personal and FC house literally across the street from each other with zero competition both times. (And I bought an apartment up the street for the lulz too). I am under no delusion of a "neighborhood vibe" here.

Wildstar also had neighborhoods... In a format that actually made sense. Where you could have your own space or optionally join up with others and make a mega instance. Too bad they went way too hardcore on the gameplay side, imo housing was the only thing that slowed their death down.

I think WoW may do better than ours but outside of specific people making events, neighborhoods are really just born to die, if they are the only system they honestly just cramp customization and opportunities.

Hope WoW will do both, akin to Wildstar, or sort of a FFXIV meets ESO. That'd be insane. Id love for the people who want to make a 'loud' (open) space to gather together and those who don't to leave it alone so both groups can have maximum opportunities.

[Rinoa_353]

I've been suggesting a merge for well over a year now, though as for which worlds go where, I'd say send the 2 least populated Dynamis worlds to Aether while the remaining 6 get split between Primal & Crystal, and when the 2 new Aether additions get full enough, THEN give them a 9th world to bring them up to Primal & Cystal's amount.

The only thing I can't say for certain is how they would determine which of the 6 other Dynamis worlds get split between Primal & Crystal, but as someone who never did RP but did lots of PVP, I would be biased towards adding Maduin to Primal (provided we aren't one of the most dead worlds and got shuffled to Aether instead).

Pretty sure the three new worlds that isn't Kraken have much smaller populations than Maduin, so swap Hali with Maduin and have Seraph and Kraken being largest Dynamis worlds join Primal since it's the smallest of the big three DC.

[Tyintheron]

Hoping to be wrong, but what they've shown already has the same hallmarks of the Garrison system that made them call it a failure. If that was anything to go by, it'll go like this:

* Release housing system suitable for only the two main races.
* Races that aren't orcs or humans don't want orc or human houses, so they don't interact with the system, waiting for the promised "houses for other races will be coming later."
* Blizzard declares "not many people interact with the system, so we're shelving it" because only orcs and humans interact with the system, and they're a small percentage of all races played.
* Blizzard congratulate themselves on another "we tried housing and nobody liked it" Monkey Paw finger curled.

I mean... probably.

[Johners]

Hoping to be wrong, but what they've shown already has the same hallmarks of the Garrison system that made them call it a failure. If that was anything to go by, it'll go like this:

* Release housing system suitable for only the two main races.
* Races that aren't orcs or humans don't want orc or human houses, so they don't interact with the system, waiting for the promised "houses for other races will be coming later."
* Blizzard declares "not many people interact with the system, so we're shelving it" because only orcs and humans interact with the system, and they're a small percentage of all races played.
* Blizzard congratulate themselves on another "we tried housing and nobody liked it" Monkey Paw finger curled.

I mean... probably.

I don't think Blizzard's approach to implementing housing is wrong. Getting the underlying systems implemented first before providing a wide variety of cosmetic customisations is absolutely the better idea. Otherwise you just end up like Square Enix in which every housing system change happens at glacial pace and poorly covers cracks/flaws in the original system.

[Valence]

I'm sure socializing occurs on SOME housing wards in certain worlds, but it sure as hell doesn't happen on Maduin.

My world is so dead, I managed to get a personal and FC house literally across the street from each other with zero competition both times. (And I bought an apartment up the street for the lulz too). I am under no delusion of a "neighborhood vibe" here.

It happened in the RP servers back in the day, sometimes with groups of RPers going out of their houses and actually RPing around in the ward, but like they'd RP anywhere in the world really, but that's about it. Not saying this is a useless feature though. Just.. hard to justify imo.

[Tyintheron]

I don't think Blizzard's approach to implementing housing is wrong. Getting the underlying systems implemented first before providing a wide variety of cosmetic customisations is absolutely the better idea. Otherwise you just end up like Square Enix in which every housing system change happens at glacial pace and poorly covers cracks/flaws in the original system.

I don't think it's fundamentally wrong either. Their decision-making in the past is the issue.

For example: with Garrisons, they were initially meant to have building styles for every race introduced, with only "Human" and "Orc" styles available to begin with. So, of course, if you played another race you probably didn't interact with the Garrison as much.

They then used that lack of interaction from "more people" as an excuse to never add those other styles at all, ever.

With that in mind, their current approach feels worryingly familiar.

[Jojoya]

I don't think it's fundamentally wrong either. Their decision-making in the past is the issue.

For example: with Garrisons, they were initially meant to have building styles for every race introduced, with only "Human" and "Orc" styles available to begin with. So, of course, if you played another race you probably didn't interact with the Garrison as much.

They then used that lack of interaction from "more people" as an excuse to never add those other styles at all, ever.

With that in mind, their current approach feels worryingly familiar.

What lack of interaction? Garrisons were pretty much the only thing to do in Warlords of Draenor unless you raided so they got plenty of interaction (especially the mission table).

They never implemented the other race features because they decided Garrisons would be content specific to WoD, not evergreen, so it would be a waste of effort to add the additional building options. That became especially true when Garrisons turned out to be far more labor intensive than they had estimated so they had to pull developers from other content to help Garrisons be functional for beta testing and finished before the release date (which resulted in some of the other planned getting cut, RIP Shattrath raid). Tom Chilton had done a fairly extensive interview with a German game publication at Gamescon 2014 talking about the problems they ran into.

But I agree, I'm skeptical that they'll deliver what the article implies.