Breakfast Topic: I still want player housing

I had such high hopes for garrisons when they were first introduced. Most of that was, I will fully admit, because someone stated offhand that they’d be like World of Warcraft‘s version of player housing. The thought of being able to build and create my own home for my characters on Draenor was pretty amazing, and I was thrilled that they were taking, if not a giant leap, a small step towards making it happen. And then the options were scaled back over the course of beta, the function of the garrison shifted from “quasi player housing” to “the one and only max-level quest hub until Tanaan,” and that wistful dream of a little house for my characters slowly vanished, too.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it anymore.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Wildstar did player housing right. The houses themselves are removed and instanced away from the public, but you can invite people to hang out if you’d like to. The player housing areas have their own chat channel, so that players who are merrily building away can talk to each other. Items for your house can be found out and about in the world while you’re questing and taking care of the normal run of the mill MMO things, and they can also be built by a profession — with material gathered, again, by questing out in the world. Do people hole up in their little houses? Yes. Does it take them out of the game? No more than oh, I don’t know, camping out in your garrison does.

In fact, I’d argue that the garrison does more to take a player out of the social part of the game than player housing does. You can accomplish everything in your garrison, there’s no real need or urgency to leave, with the right buildings. Tanaan has remedied this, at least a little, but Tanaan was also introduced in the last content patch of the expansion. Meanwhile over in Wildstar, you don’t get quests, missions, or anything else that effects outside gameplay from your player housing. You can get a few fun things that will give you more furniture for your house, but nothing game-changing. And if you want to really improve your house, you pretty much need to go out in the world and engage in gameplay to do so.

There hasn’t been a peep made about player housing in Legion, unfortunately. It’s a pity, because I’d thought maybe they were on track to introduce something like this when they announced the garrison feature. I don’t play Wildstar anymore, I simply don’t have the time, but man I miss their player housing system. Sometimes you want to save the world — and sometimes you just want to kick back and build yourself an armchair. What do you guys think? Do you still want to see player housing? Do you think it’d be a fun activity for solo players? Or do you think it might be something that pulls people too far out of the game world?