The Queue: I’m talking about housing again

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A feature for all of Blizzard’s games! Have a question for the Blizzard Watch staff? Leave it in the comments!

For one, we’re going to be present at Con Before the Storm, which we announced previously. I’m going to be on a panel (at that party, not BlizzCon proper), Noxychu and Anne Stickney will have a signing session, and Matticus and I might have a signing session, too. Why someone would want my signature, I have no idea. Identity theft, maybe? No doubt we’ll hang out throughout the party and meet as many people as possible when we aren’t doing other things.

During BlizzCon itself, we’re going to put our noses to the grindstone (is that the right phrase?) and work, work, work. Expect plenty of coverage.

Whichever class you hate most! More seriously, I don’t think you’ve ever talked about playing a tank. Therefore, I compel you to take up tanking!

Before I even saw the second half of your tweet, Westmarch Commons came to mind. I really love smashing my way through the city streets and it feels like Reaper of Souls went all-out adding secondary objectives to that area. It seemed like around every corner there was a new house/building to enter with little self-contained stories. I loved it.

100% until Blizzard decides otherwise! That’s a bit snarky, I apologize, but I do think it’s the case. We know Kul Tiras is supposed to exist out there somewhere, but given it sn’t in the game yet… does it count? We know it’s there, but we can’t go there. Beyond that, Azeroth can expand infinitely depending on what Blizzard decides to add to the game. With the introduction of Legion‘s zones, it could be the case that we’ve seen (or know about) 100% of Azeroth’s total landmass. Alternatively, if World of Warcraft is still running in the year 2525, the necessity of continually providing new content could result in us having only seen 1% of Azeroth’s total landmass thus far. That’s the thing with fantasy worlds: until you say this is the end, it isn’t the end.

I know it’s both contentious and cliche at this point, but I’m still pulling for real player housing at some point in WoW‘s lifetime. Garrisons likely put a foul taste RE: housing in players’ mouths, but housing doesn’t need to be that. The idea of housing would be to send players out into the world to collect things for/complete challenges related to your house. Housing wouldn’t be where you sat AFK all day because it supplied everything you needed. It would be a place you could customize and make your own.

Speaking of customization, some of the biggest successes in gaming — Minecraft, the entire MOBA genre — came as a result of giving players a sandbox and letting them make something cool. Obviously, this isn’t going to happen in Legion, but I would truly and honestly love tools for player-generated content. Dungeons, scenarios, whatever. Include a rating/ranking system and let the community sort out the rest. Even if these player-created dungeons offered no rewards whatsoever, I really do believe players would enjoy exploring others’ creations regardless.

Consider Mario Maker. Entirely based on its coverage, its exposure on social media, the enormous number of YouTube videos and so forth — it’s incredibly popular. It has no base content other than creating levels. Creating levels, and having people play your levels, is itself the reward. And Mario Maker is, no doubt, a direct result of the huge community that has been ROM hacking Super Mario World for over a decade, creating their own Mario levels (and entire games) with the Super Mario World engine.