Player housing in MMOs has long been one of those features that works in a really unique way due to the nature of the genre -- housing in a non-massively-multiplayer game just isn't the same. There are many MMOs that feature the ability to obtain a house-equivalent area to call your own, so why hasn't the biggest game on the market, World of Warcraft, implemented this functionality?
"Player-housing has been on the list of something we want to do even back before the original realm box [first game release] shipped -- it was a feature that didn't make that," producer J Allen Brack toldEurogamer. "It's one of those things we talk about every expansion -- what would this look like in WoW?"
But just because it's been on the to-do list doesn't mean it'll actually ever happen. Blizzard isn't going to allow players to obtain their own area in the game if it won't have some real significance.
He continued, "I don't necessarily think that it'll ever actually happen for WoW because the thing that we want to do is... I don't think it's sufficient enough for us in WoW to just say, 'Hey we have player housing -- great.' There's got to be some reason to have that, there's got to be gameplay behind that, stuff that happens."
Brack didn't completely rule out the possibility. Noting that it's failed to make the final cut with the three expansion pack releases, he did say, "We'll see what happens for the next time."
Players currently congregate in the various capital cities throughout the game. Were they given a place of their own to spend time, that could actually detract from the amount of interaction that takes place as a result of being located in the same city. At the same time, it would also spare us some of those gold-selling spam messages you're subjected to when in a capital, so maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing.
We know Blizzard isn't adverse to introducing microtransactions into games where it makes sense, and asking players to pay a real-world fee for their own in-game house seems like a potentially lucrative move.
If player housing were introduced to WoW, what would you want to see take place there? Or would being able to call a place "home" be enough for you?
Original Article: http://www.1up.com/news/world-of-warcraft-players-never-go-home
7 comments:
Kinda sounds like a Mog House in FFXI, they are pretty customizable. The rooms are pretty small though.
i always wanted to see player housing in wow back when i played
housing in a mmo is just another step downwards the addiction
just kidding, would be awesome :)
I just quit WoW myself. Never looking back.
A lot of people are quitting wow now
If I played it, I'd like to have a house, sure. :)
I don't think people would hang out there, unless there was free cake.
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