Is MMO Housing Important?
Filed under: Opinion
A lot of MMORPGs these days have begun to implement a lot of new ideas and gameplay aspects that promises to draw in millions of players and keep them happy for years and years. Sometimes these things are pvp related, sometimes they are pve related. One thing, however, that always seems to get left out is player housing.
In today’s MMORPGs player housing is a very important aspect. There is no doubt that players enjoy having their own personal space and area to “live in” with their character. So why haven’t popular MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft, implemented them yet? Certainly the inhabitants of WoW would enjoy their own space to call their own.
Recently, with their latest update, Turbine decided to add player and “guild” housing into their popular Lord of the Rings Online game with much fanfair. Each race has its own neighborhoods that contain 30 or so houses ranging from guild houses, delux houses, and standard houses. Depending on the view, size, and landscape around the house determines the size and upkeep. Each week, in order to keep your house, you will have to lay down a certian amount of cash.
Bottomline, player housing is fast becoming an important aspect of the MMORPG community. It is a way for you to customize your existence within that community. There is a reason why sites such as MySpace and Facebook are so popular, and one of those reasons is the ability to make your profile your own. A place you can call your virtual home. These things are not fads, and as more and more MMORPGs get developed the players are gonna start taking note which ones have and do not have (I’m looking at you Tabula Rasa) player housing.
November 1st, 2007 at 4:07 pm
A lot of thought has to go into a decision like this IMO. If you have small server populations like DAOC (~1000 in its heyday) and you introduce player housing, you’re going to decrease the number of people who hang out in capital cities.
Cities are supposed to be a hub of activity where people can meet each other and, at the very least, feel immersed in the massively multiplayer culture of an MMORPG. In my humble opinion, there’s little worse than walking through a ghost town that is supposed to be your capital city. Each time you create new key gathering areas, you segment your population.
These games are supposed to have areas of congregation and when you introduce a housing feature, that’s where people will start to spend a good part of their time. This definitely happened in DAOC. Visit any of the original capital cities and you’ll find that they are completely dead (even if arguably, the game is nearly dead too :P).
What caused this, aside from a drop in general subscriptions? Expansion cities and player housing. No-one is smelting raw metals or crafting fine weaponry in these places any more because they can do it in peace in their own home.
To me, that just kills the immersion factor.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:19 pm
That’s true. . .
Although I’d go as far as to say limit the amount of houses available (so not everybody can have one and they become almost a rare commodity) and also make sure there is no required utilities within the homes because, you are right, it will detract from the main cities and nobody will ever leave their homes.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:51 pm
There are definitely ways housing can be implemented that would be cool and not detract too much from the game, such as creating smaller encampments or neighbourhoods outside a main city.
The problem is when you make someone portal jump into a new zone dedicated to housing, like they did in DAOC. And yeah, keeping the required utilities within a main city is ideal imo. In DAOC you could even buy your own merchant who would hang around inside your house and sell you crafting goods. Why would you ever leave?!
June 27th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
If a MMO doesn’t have player housing I’m not going to play it , cause the player housing shows that game companys and developers took the extra time and went the extra mile instead of doing a World of Warcraft and spending 80 million to make a game that makes 80million a month