WoW answered my question on Stratics

[Aeife/Niamb]

Stratics has a program to ask questions to WoW developers. This month, they answered my question. Yep, that's me asking about housing.....no surprise there.

wow.stratics.com/content/Developers/questions/may06.php

[wexx]

I guess that qualifies as an answer. Second expansion maybe?

[Jaxs]

You are persistent. Ill give you that. Good for you! They did tell us that Housing was going to be in the game and it looks like it has been shelved. It does not even sound like they are working on it.

A few of us have signed up for Vanguard beta. They say they have housing. They also say a lot! LOL Will it stack up against WoW. Who knows.

I have not seen any indication that WoW will fix or add to guild stuff.

I did like this answer - Yes, you will be able to do instances with fewer players just as one or two level 60s can take on dungeons they’ve outgrown, such as the Scarlet Monastery.

As I indicated for some time. All the purple stuff from MC will become run of the mill gear and there will be a new level set for high end gear.

I will be hitting AQ with 10-12 men I hope soon after the expansion release. There is a lot of gear that in “Nature Resistance” and that gear will be king with all the outdoor stuff in the expansion.

I am excited for once.

[Kragen]

ONe thing I would say is that I am not sure how valauble housing is in a lvl based game. DAoC had housing and the towns were relative ghost towns becase most people spent most of their time in the zones in which they were leveling or pvping. They only used housing for excess storage and to set up vendors. The towns were never like what we had in UO or SWG. IMO SWG was one of the few games tyo get housiong right

[Jaxs]

I will agree. Housing in SWG was good and it did bring people together. Lots of games have some nice features. Guess we can not have it all. Oh well.

[Aeife/Niamb]

Well if they do introduce housing eventually, I hope it will have a community focus and not be just an instanced area that only approved friends can enter. Will a personal space is fun to decorate, you only get the community sense when you have a city or village that people can enter freely.

While there may have been a lot wrong with SWG, I do think they got housing right. You had clustered communities, avoiding the housing sprawl of UO. It was group oriented so it wasn't just random people dropping housing wherever there was an open space, but only people approved by the group that formed the town. You had easy access through the space shuttle. You had a reason to be there through the placement of quest terminals and vendors with the high end items which were too pricey to put on the AH. There were city bonuses that gave people a reason to craft for do other activities in the city.

I also really liked the housing tool in UO where you could design a custom structure to place on your plot of land. That was a whole game in itself. I also think having a community to focus around was part of what made role-playing viable in UO.

I hope WoW looks at those two games when and if they finally decide to implement housing. Still, while their game is growing and there is no significant competition on the horizon, what is there incentive to push this?

[Allura Prime]

If they have housing I hope they follow the DAoC/SWG model. IMHOP the housing was ruined in UO because there really wasn't enough spacing between houses. One thing that drove me bonkers, (true it is a short drive), was trying to get into my house, being chased by those crystal creatures, and ending up dying because I got caught between houses.

DAoC has little villages if you will. I believe there are ten houses to a village, 10 villages to a housing area. In Ryslestone we have I think 6 DoJ houses. You are able to go to any area in housing and can visit people's houses if they have permissions set similiar to SWG.

While the houses are all the same design, there is plenty of different decorating items so that you don't get that "cookie cutter" feel to it.