Housing is all the craze and I’m loving the options. My first (and best) experience with housing in general was in DAOC. We had this nice, big, shiny Guild House! It had crafting, and portals, and trophies.. and was an awesome place where guildmates would spend downtime or whittle away at their trade skills. While there were limitations, it was something that was very cool, was ours, and it promoted spending time together in between the big battles.
I didn’t do housing in any other game – WoW was my predominant after DAOC and doesn’t have it, but I have heard good things about EQ2 housing, LOTRO, and even Vanguard (through Bhagpuss). I can’t comment on those, but I *can* comment on WildStar housing, and ask some questions about WoW’s upcoming Warlords expansion, and some general quirks and oddities about housing in general.
First off, WildStar housing is amazing. I can’t believe the level of customization available. Everything scales, and a pistol prop can quickly become a couch if turned and sized correctly. Your starter plot of land has enough for 4 FABkits (preset style plugins) and two backdrops (larger slots)Â and I have used a garden (that you can plant seeds into that find around the world) a relic garden (relic is a tradeskill collection item – so they actually grow there and you can harvest) a kiddie pool (funny) a couple party kits with bbqs and the like, and my favorite so far is the Moonshine Stein. You literally get a challenge to produce booze within a set time frame, and doing so successfully gets you a neon beer sign (that you can then scale, twist, and hang to your delight). Yes, you can even drink the stuff and get drunk. There is a fun line of functionality and coolness to items you can place around your yard and inside your house. The best part is you find housing items just by questing and killing mobs. There is also a whole tradeskill (architecture) dedicated to building housing items, of which I did not get into. I wish I would have taken more pictures of my house before beta ended, and I look forward to building a new one come launch. The more items your house has, the greater the rested XP boost you get. So its form and function.
WoW’s Garrisons look to be similar yet less customizable and more plug and play(ish). I only read the announcements and have not seen videos or followed it too closely, but both WS and WoW’s housing suffers from? Separation of community.
Listen, these housing ideas are cool but all instanced. The fun part of building them are completely awesome I agree – but it just further segments the community. I get it – there isn’t enough land in the world to make the housing – and there are some tools available (you can make your housing plot private, friends on, or public in WS) but its still segmentation. Why not make it easy? It isn’t that hard to do.
First off, have GUILD housing. Guild houses can be far more extravagant than typical homes and all guild members automatically get access.
Secondly, soon as you build your own house it automatically goes in the same instance as the Guild House. Each guild member does.
Voila. Now, instead of housing, you have community. A neighborhood even. A neighborhood tied around a commonality (which is how most communities – digital or otherwise – foster).
If you aren’t guilded you build neighborhoods around “services” – crafting halls, transportation hubs, etc. You put some conveniences in that people want to be around, and draw them to that area and give them the opportunity to build their own communities. For even more fun you could build them around landmarks, statues, wonders of the world (planet) – anything to attract people around a certain area will give them the opportunity to build communities. The boat between continents in EQ, while crappy to wait for and too long of a trip, fostered an awful lot of friendships.
I know I am greatly simplifying a cause and effect but I also don’t think this needs to be complicated. Aligning personal space within community space is just common sense, right?
Does any game that I haven’t played do this better (or worse) than the ones I mentioned? I am genuinely fascinated to hear real experiences instead of feature set sheets!
I know its old, but UO has the best housing system of all time. If you can look past the aged graphics, you’ll be amazed at what you see. Everything is customizable and houses are placed within the world (non-instanced). Now, UO housing has changed alot since when I played. Back then, houses themselves were not customizable, but there were multiple house styles and the decoration and creativity that went into houses was amazing. Players created shops, because there is no auction house, guild towns, player towns, pvp war zones, etc.
If you really want to be amazed at what a housing system can do and create for a game, look into UO’s. Check out some of Keen’s old blog posts about the UO Forever shard within the last year. That gives a modern perspective of how great the housing is, even 15 years after the game was created. Nothing has come even close since.
JJ thanks for the insight. I’ll definitely check it out! Even without checking it out, it surprises me that if a game had that 15 years ago why hasn’t anyone expanded on it or used a similar system?
Anyway – I’ll go do some digging and let everyone know what I think! Really curious now =)