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This article or section includes speculation, observations or opinions possibly supported by lore or by Blizzard officials. It should not be taken as representing official lore.
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Player housing or Guild housing are features that give players a place to store items and have a place to call home. Introducing housing into the game will have many primary and secondary effects. This is a feature that is likely to show up in World of Warcraft some day in the future.
Potential types of player housing
- Common building or room with a private (maybe expandable) storage area similar to a bank.
- Instanced building or room that allows a player to enter their "house".
- ...and party members or guild members.
- Separate building or room with a "lockable" door that only the player has a "key" to, but other players can enter when the door is open.
- Private area (instanced or not) that allows "furnishing".
- A soulbound item similar to a Hearthstone that transports you to your house.
The player-driven debate
Throughout the years, the players have discussed and debated how the features of Player Housing (PH) or Guild Housing (GH) could be implemented within WoW. Most are in agreement that the Housing feature will inevitably make it into the game. Here are the arguments:
Reason to add housing for players
- While banks are good for storing the things you don't need right now, a demand for displaying the accrued equipment or special items has not been addressed directly.
- Players have request gear racks so that a complete armor set could be displayed properly.
- A players house could help remove the clutter of one's inventory, provide a meeting space that friends can visit, and increase the in-game feel of WoW.
Reasons to not add player housing
- The development costs and added storage requirements for player housing could be detrimental to the continuous demand of developer's time and the infrastrutures resources.
- Player-based housing only creates more management and frustration. Players already forget important items and gear in the bank. Adding PH will force them to remember where they stored the items
- Adding storage space within a house duplicates city-based services (the bank)
Reasons for guild housing
- Guilds need a common meeting place. Guild Halls would be perfect
- Guilds need help fostering a sense of cohesiveness and loyalty, providing player housing within a guild-based, instanced housing community would do that.
- Housing provides the developers with an excellent opportunity to add to the professions.
- Guild vs Guild PVP has been in demand, GH provides an opportunity to implement that.
- Guild Housing can become an important recruiting tool, as one-day passes could be crafted.
Reason to not add guild housing
- Allowing guilds to congregate inside guild-only instanced areas will remove those guilded players from the major cities. The end result could turn the major cities into Ghost towns.
- If GH was implemented in a way that the city's services are duplicated inside the instanced GH area, guilded players will have another incentive not to leave their specialized area.
- The developer hours and resourced dedication aren't worth the reward/detriment that GH causes.
Housing's effect on professions
The advent of Player and/or guild housing in WoW, provides the developers an opportunity to add new professions and augment the current professions with more recipes. The mechanism for acquiring housing could be a mass resource turn in. Implementing housing in this way will promote the crafting economy as the resource gathering will have to be repeated for new and rerolled characters or if you want to change your house-style.
Every profession can be augemented. Here's a list of new items that could be added:
Alchemy
- Large potion powders to apply to communal fountains
- Special scents for decorative smoke
Blacksmithing
- Coat-of-Arm pieces (armor assembled to look like stationary guards)
- Cannon casings
- Spikes, hinges, other door pieces.
- Beer Mugs
Enchanting
- enchants for stationary objects.
- portkeys (see: harry potter) to take you from one end to another
Engineering
- Robot guards
- motion censors, behavior components, arms, legs, chest, head
- arrow shooters
- door locks
Jewelcrafters
- Crown Jewels, Thrown jewels, jeweled cups
Leatherworking
- Rugs, Canvas, and rope
- Tanned Banners
Tailoring
- Banners and Flags
- tablecloth, runners, chair decorations
- specialized guild-only garments for cloth wearers
Current status
There's some proof of Blizzard doing some test on player housing, using WoW Model Viewer a couple of house tests in World/wmo/PlayerHousing/Human can be seen.
Blizzard quotes
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posted 2004-12-14 Caydiem: "Housing is a huge feature with a lot of dedicated time needed. While we definitely want to do housing, and it is something "on the list", it's not a "soon after release" feature. It's more of an "on the horizon" feature. :)" |
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posted 2004-07-15 Katricia: "Guild Halls will most likely not be implemented before World of Warcraft is released. They are very similar to Player Housing (which also will not make the release). Both Player Housing and Guild Halls will be implemented as soon as possible after release. I have no information available regarding the functions of either Guild Halls or Player Housing.
~Kat :)
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Katricia: Player housing will not be available until after World of Warcraft has been released. Our plan is to add player housing in a future live update or expansion. Our current idea (which could change) is to extend the cities to have player housing neighborhoods. For example, in the canal area of Stormwind players can see a blue instance portal behind a large portcullis; this is the entrance to the player housing neighborhood in Stormwind. | |
| Source: http://www.blizzard.com/wow/fansitechat-040726.shtml |
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posted 2006-1-7 Tigole: " You've posted some really cool ideas on Guild Halls. Player and guild housing is something we've always been interested in pursuing. While we won't be including those features in the Burning Crusade, that doesn't mean we've abandoned our hope to include housing in the game sometime in the future." | |
| Source: http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general-en&t=760205&tmp=1#post760205 |
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posted 2006-10-02 Nethaera: "The word is that we like the idea of player housing and would like to implement it at some point in the future, however we don't have any particular ETA of when we will. There is a laundry list of things we still would like to add to World of Warcraft and this is just one of them." | |
| Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=30076397&pageNo=1&sid=1#12 |