We need private instance housing

[Cutie_McSnuggles]

Why would it cause a riot? No one would lose anything, it would just be shifted into the "private" instances. This whole idea that people are building their entire gaming experience around seeing a handful of strangers running around a ward is a little disturbing. People would get over it. Keeping a large percentage of the population from experiencing content just because the small percentage likes their "neighborhoods" isn't a good enough reason.

So much this!!!

[Lenne]

I have some questions for those who are requesting instanced housing. Would instanced housing include the exterior part of the house, like the yard and view? Or would it be instanced interior only? I do like having a yard, and looking out to a neighborhood of houses, even if it would be a static and fake neighborhood.

If instanced houses included the yard, I'd be all for it, especially if it would open up more space for others to enjoy housing. For those who want to keep wards, why not create one common ward? We could zone into and out of our plots from/to the ward, and no one would complain that their ward is empty. And for vanity's sake, when you walk up to your plot, you'd only see your version of your house on the plot. Other houses could be static in appearance. Just an idea.

[Teryaani]

I have some questions for those who are requesting instanced housing. Would instanced housing include the exterior part of the house, like the yard and view? Or would it be instanced interior only? I do like having a yard, and looking out to a neighborhood of houses, even if it would be a static and fake neighborhood.

If they actually did instanced housing (and I really hope they do), it would make sense to have a fake backdrop beyond the borders of your yard. And the yard is a big draw given the need for stables and gardening.

But the bigger issue, the one everyone clearly avoided discussing is the effect of this decision. It is a logical conclusion that if Personal Housing was made instanced, be it via Mega-FC Room or Instanced housing this would also imply the demolition of all current non-instanced personal housing. This would give wards back to the Free Companies. I am not really oppossed to that idea but it would cause a riot. It is so beyond the realm of posibilities, to point where fantasizing on instanced housing is almost delusional. I am not saying on paper your idea isnt good, but the ramifications of it would send shockwaves. SE already poked the housing bear with all the drama in 2.0, I imagine they would be terrified of doing it again.

The current interior of your personal house already is an instance. Take the current player housing instance and expand the borders out to include a yard (the door would work as a door rather than a trigger to change instances) and the yard would be included as part of the house. Make the instance border your garden gate and there you go.

If they were able to take existing housing and convert it, there would be very little blowback (someone would complain. Someone always complains) and it would free up those housing spots.

The issue may be that the servers couldn't handle every level 50+ having the possibility of their own instance. That's what, I think, caused SE to change to the ward option and caused the blowback. The smarter thing for them to have done if that was the case, would have been to tell us that there was a delay while they got it right. It would have caused less drama.

[Souljacker]

The issue may be that the servers couldn't handle every level 50+ having the possibility of their own instance. That's what, I think, caused SE to change to the ward option and caused the blowback. The smarter thing for them to have done if that was the case, would have been to tell us that there was a delay while they got it right. It would have caused less drama.

I really hope that isn't the case, because somehow they made it work on XI and those servers weren't anything special. Blizzard managed to give everyone their own entire personal city. So their servers can manage it with their populations.

SE needs to have some better reasons than just "but servers" because it's just unprofessional to keep blaming hardware.

[Teryaani]

I really hope that isn't the case, because somehow they made it work on XI and those servers weren't anything special. Blizzard managed to give everyone their own entire personal city. So their servers can manage it with their populations.

SE needs to have some better reasons than just "but servers" because it's just unprofessional to keep blaming hardware.

I agree and it's lame that it's the go-to excuse for so many things (okay, they haven't said that the au-ra horn thing is because of hardware, but maybe that's because we haven't given them enough time). Items in your house or yard? Server limitations. Inventory? Server limitations. I need to search the dev tracker and Q&A for more. I know I've heard more.

I was going to make the point that they must have accounted for everyone having an instance with the free company private rooms, but even there they put some pretty sizable gates up: 1) Level 50, 2) having had enough sense to be able to save 300k, and the biggest 3) have a free company lucky enough to have a house. That last one was the real limiting factor.

There must be something about some of the underlying design choices that beat the hell out of the servers. That or they are REALLY paranoid and don't let anything even remotely affect server side performance.