Player Housing

[Rudi2]

(Ante scriptum: I apologise for my poor knowledge of BBcode to make this suggestion/proposition more appealing to the eye. Here's a turtle as compensation -Rudi)

I'd like to thank Cup-san from the server's Discord (cup-san#1182) for this amazing reminder of a cut feature from the vanilla pre-alpha that could be potentially added to the game. I had just taken the initiative to write said suggestion.

Player Housing
It's a vanity feature that many drool over when it comes to a nice, immersive sandbox experience in their favourite game.

I know how it can be accomplished. I will explain how, for those who do not know how it is possible.

Phases, for those who are unaware, are a feature in the game that allows players to remain in the game world, but not in the plane of being that all other players are on. For example, players can obviously interact with other players where they are right now, but say a person who is in Deadmines or another instance decides to glitch out of the world and end up in, say Westfall, they will not appear to those who are already questing in Westfall due to having enter an instance.
TL;DR: Basically a phase is a mini-instance with no NPCs, interactive objects, or other players but said player in an instance can interact with players in the main world through messaging or mail. (Individuals who have retired from RPH and have taken refuge here know what I'm talking about.)



Objects and Spells can be added into the server to serve a plethora of purposes to achieve this suggestion. Items which have scripts (from a spell) that place ingame objects depending on what general direction the player is standing using the green circular AoE indicator. A chair, a bed, a table, a candle, desk, fireplace; the possibilities are endless!

The NPCs of course can be added into the server that pertain to this feature. Each city and region with a quest zone (Durotar, Barrens, Mulgore - Elwynn, Dun Morogh, Redridge and so on) may have a real estate agent, for lack of a better name, with prices for houses that may be already spawned within the game and serve as "objects" that are not sold, but may be spawned by GMs permanently to serve the purpose of phasing. These houses, of course, will be themed depending on the region you have purchased your house from. Say a house with cobwebs from Duskwood or a tomb or crypt from Tirisfal Glades, or a nice red two-story hamlet from Redridge; or maybe even a tent or longhouse from Mulgore.

[Torta]

Hey there. Not a problem to place some new good looking buildings in game, yet I'd not use phasing or instanciating. If we ever make player houses, we build them into open world, next to the crowded places such as Goldshire, Razor Hill etc, to make starting locations more valuable for high level players to appear there and optionally help newcomers with leveling or any other needs.

Objects / NPC / doors can be restricred for usage only for guild membes or single players, no phasing it reguired. But right now, I don't see what purpose these guild/player houses could serve: all you need you can find in the cities and small towns. So the question is not "How" the question is "Why".

[Razudesu]

This is my first post on this server.
These are just ideas, i don't know how hard it would be for implementation. Don't know the language used for WOW. Only Databases a little.


Pro's for housing:
- a new way of playing the game
- the player get's something new to aspire to
- it can maybe come with a new profession, that will use items from other professions in game too, not just one
- it can be also tied to dungeon/raids/pvp, by implementing something like garrison statues, or order hall item sets after you completed gathering a certain set, where you will get a ministatue of important bosses, maybe for some dungeons too.
- or make certain raid bosses drop some special materials, which will be needed to create furniture that maybe gives you a buff for 1h/day.
- add ability for players to team up, and create from 2 houses 1 bigger one and so on. With time maybe people will have cities like stormwind/orgrimmar built.


Cons for housing:
- if server get's really popular the world can get really crowded with houses
- wow.exe may run out of memory, when not using Large Aware Address, to extend RAM Usage.
- if made to accessible for everyone it won't have such a big impact. I would advise for them to be on different levels. And not something you can get for 5 gold. Materials should not be super easy to aquire for leveling maybe your house. To be bigger.

Few ideas:
- if i see a house i would like to feel the same way about it, as when i see a player in full AQ40 or Naxx gear. To think "OMG! That guy is BIS, the literal god".
- if building cities idea is ever implemented IMO players should not be able to create more than two more cities for each faction. And they should not be close to eachother or with other important cities. They should not be a place where people don't leave in the world anymore.

[Rudi2]

Hey there. Not a problem to place some new good looking buildings in game, yet I'd not use phasing or instanciating. If we ever make player houses, we build them into open world, next to the crowded places such as Goldshire, Razor Hill etc, to make starting locations more valuable for high level players to appear there and optionally help newcomers with leveling or any other needs.

Objects / NPC / doors can be restricred for usage only for guild membes or single players, no phasing it reguired. But right now, I don't see what purpose these guild/player houses could serve: all you need you can find in the cities and small towns. So the question is not "How" the question is "Why".

I would like to argue, as I've said, "why" these houses would exist is to strictly be vanity items. Ones that can be improved on with disposable income that higher leveled players wouldn't mind spending on. Maybe even add private commodities such as anvils, a forge, or certain auras that could emit effects that would improve skills such as -5 or -10 to professions so recipes are still difficult to craft for extra XP in those professions, or buffs that last up to 30 minutes to an hour. Maybe static objects that act as NPCs like training dummies which were added in WoTLK to improve on weapon skills. These are just ideas that could make houses seem more appealing. I will have to disagree with the choice to refrain from phasing or instances as, if this suggestion was implemented and the server grew and grew to be more popular, the supply of houses which people would like to have would decrease depending on the population. And who's to say if a player purchases a house and doesn't come back? It would leave the house locked out for other players to pick up. A fair compromise to, when you say higher leveled players could help a newbie with leveling or other needs, a high-level could give the person he wishes to help a "key" which acts just like the portable meeting stone, that will teleport the player inside of the high-level's house. And to exit, he would just have to interact with the door that will give you a prompt that will say if you're sure to exit. If you do, you will be returned to where you previously were, or the specific zone that you had left for to enter the house.
I do agree, however, with the option for houses to be guild-specific, but I would love for the choice of a personal domicile or a guild one. That's something I had thought of as well, but with roommates that would be welcome to stay, for an optional fee that both players would be able to agree on. Sort of like a contract.

[Frosty]

I love the Idea, Rudi. But I also don't like an idea of isolating sertain players from the open world when it isn't nessesarily really. Making world more living and breathing is good, teleporting plyers out of the world -- isn't. By reading this, another idea crossed my mind:

Craftsman's Houses. As an example, if you have Tailoring: you get a house decorated with tailoring stuff, threads, clothes, etc, moonwell or anything like it. Place a House and wait for other players come to buy somethign from you! Same goes for any other Primary profession.

You also can live there too, if it has a second floor, for example.

"Baby, do you want to see my huge Anvil" ...cough.

What do you think about it?

[Torta]

I'll play around this idea Rudi, eventually. Thank you for your suggestions. For now tho we have different priorities: Caverns of Time and more Sands of Time features planned ahead for summer. We take our time ;)

[Kazgrim]

Guild halls were a planned feature in vanilla I think. I think these might be more obtainable.

[Kalocsa]

Guild halls were a planned feature in vanilla I think. I think these might be more obtainable.

It would be an interesting thing, but it needs a real guild or a real community to make sustain these types of buildings, if not, it's not interesting.

How about survival skills? We can make a camp at the moment, it's even worth for a guild? Set up a camp!

I'm really Curious about possiblity of others spawns like tables, chairs and maybe some buildings!

[H4rdc0r3]

This would be amazing and im sure the population would sky rocket with the only server with player housing.

Keep messing around with it ! Hope to see good news about this becoming a feature.

[Tohkun]

Guild halls were a planned feature in vanilla I think. I think these might be more obtainable.

I've always thought Guilds should come with a meeting point (at least). Maybe it's not necessary to create a tons of building per guild (Azeroth could possibly be not livable at all) - but allowing each Guild master to set a zone as meeting point (according to some criterias like the guild activity and the amount of members) could be great !
Each member could buy, let's say a guild stone or something similar, and use it for being teleported.

Some places are never visited/populated - in term of RP - that thing could be gold

What do you think ?

[Punchbuggy]

I've got to say first off, the way we use the client imposes many limitations. That said, I've said for a very long time that housing was a failure of WoW. Did it well in EQ2. Tied it in with several crafting skills, many quests with pretty much exclusively housing related rewards, a place to show off your achievement items and PVP trophies. Many games after had housing based off of EQ2s lead. WoW garrisons was a dismal, half-hearted crapfest.

I also like to say i do NOT enjoy open world housing, ala ArcheAge. Really annoying to have randos come raid your garden and trash your house while you are away. (Open world houses are PVP in ArcheAge)

BUT, I do like housing. And having housing open so other people can walk in is a good idea, as it has been shown repeatedly that closed houses and guildhalls lead to people gathering in those areas and not interacting with the general population. A bad thing for RP servers.

I have played on a Retail WoW RP server where the guild based itself in Ironforge to use those many many empty buildings. My house was near the military ward, btw. West wall, in the corner. My point is, there are many many empty houses already in the game. Most of them have a door with a board across it, to prevent entry and to let players know yo can't go in there.

Is the door part of the entire wall, or can the door be removed? Is it a separate object from the wall, i mean. If it can, that would open up tons of housing inside cities. I'd rather my dwarf live in IF, my orc in Ogrimmar, etc. I understand that the interior would need to be added by the GMs as the door probably currently just leads to an empty space between walls. I do not think that dotting the landscape with houses is really required. Heck, there are already empty buildings throughout the world.

[Sinrek]

Imagine we have 2k players though? Might end up living with some stinky Human right beside ya.

Otherwise, I'd eagerly agree on the matter. There's no real need for player housing in WoW tbh, players can just live anywhere. I like Darnassus over any other city (unless it's a high mountainous mesa, y'know) and I'd be happy to see players hang around it more often.

[Chlothar]

I don`t think playerhouseing will affect the servers player population much. I have seen servers with playerhousing.....not vanilla servers, but still they had very little population. If someone decides to play vanilla thats pretty much not for player housing if you ask me. They could have stayed to their garrison and have that.

I personally don`t like the world i enjoy that much changed....not even by houses.

It will also work against having people meet in the Stormwind/Crossroad Inn. When people have houses they will meet somewhere else.