WotLK Gear reset, housing, lag fix, Players AFK in AV banned, blue posts

I certainly agree with the Blizzard poster about the WotLK loot: it helps level the playing field again. It gives new people interested in raiding an opportunity to join in without having to meet gear requirements that can only be satisfied by raiding for months. Those of us inclined toward raiding will merrily get back into it anyway.

It also makes you stop an think about why you raid, why you play the game. Is it just for loot? Or is it to spend time with real friends, regardless of the circumstances?
 
Woot, looking forward to the gear reset. :) This also helps clarify the goals for my characters, get them up to 70 before the x-pack and pick 1 or 2 chars to really develop once WotLK hits.

As for why raiding? I'm in it for spending time with my guildies and for the challenge of the instance. I do enjoy a challenge, which is part of the reason I don't mind running things with non-traditional group make-up. If we beat it and get loot, GREAT! If not, at least we still had a good time, and that's what matters! If you start getting too caught up in gear and progression, and what people have and what they don't, that's when you create an atmosphere of "haves" and "have-nots", and that is no fun at all.

Conversely, I know some folks will be disheartened by the gear reset as they feel it will negate all the "work" that they've done over the past year or so. However, I would question their reasoning and why they are putting so much time and effort into something they don't enjoy. Is it to keep up with the Joneses? To be the uberest pally/priest/hunter/mage/etc. in the guild? Life is too short to spend so much time doing something you don't enjoy, because in the end, gear is just pixels on a screen.

At one point I knew a GM who used to say that his guild was "held together by purple pixels"... while his group was a top-guild-on-the-server for a short while, they imploded (very publicly and very badly) within 4 months. Obivously the purple pixels weren't strong enough to compensate for the big egos and every-man-for-himself mentality.

And may I just say how much I enjoy this guild? So far it has been one of the most drama-free and enjoyable groups of people I've played with in WoW. You guys are amazing! :)
 
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If you start getting too caught up in gear and progression, and what people have and what they don't, that's when you create an atmosphere of "haves" and "have-nots", and that is no fun at all.
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This is the key right here. You have hit the nail right on, Stacy. Once you start looking at it as haves and have nots, your guild is heading down a dark road and morale goes down the tubes.
 
The problem with the player housing thing: (I LOVE IT), however, it was promised with the FIRST PATCH!!! ...and where is it? No where... and they have already confirmed that they are not going to release it with WotLK... I hate it when a company says one thing and does another, which Blizz is known for... So, player housing is a promise LONG OVERDUE...IMO they will never bring it out in fear it might push people away...
 
XionTawa said:
The problem with the player housing thing: (I LOVE IT), however, it was promised with the FIRST PATCH!!! ...and where is it? No where... and they have already confirmed that they are not going to release it with WotLK... I hate it when a company says one thing and does another, which Blizz is known for... So, player housing is a promise LONG OVERDUE...IMO they will never bring it out in fear it might push people away...
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Blizzard usually never promises anything, and I myself remember no such promise. I do remember them talking about it, but there is only so much dev time and they worked on other areas of the game instead.
 
That's hilarious.

XionTawa: I think that we need to remember that going from an idea to released content is not a simple process. There are probably a myriad of reasons why Blizzard hasn't implemented player housing yet, even tho it's been suggested since the game came out.
- Priorities: Looking at the big picture, it may not be as important as working on getting WotLK out of the door, or coming up with a viable solution for AFKers in AV, for example. Like any other company, Blizzard will have limited time and resources ($$$ and people) to work on projects, and so they have to pick those that are going to benefit the community as a whole the most, and those that make the most business sense.
- Technical limitations: It's easy enough to say "We should have player housing", but how do you go about putting that in the game? The WoW engine may not support an instanced room that you can place objects in (I imagine that people would want to do this). This would have to be coded into the engine, tested, etc. Also, this would cause increased stress on the hardware, as a server would need to handle all of these simultaneous instances. This might mean upgrades to the existing hardware, or new hardware.
 
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(I suck at backing up my info, but...) I remember reading a blue post that said that the instance in the water area in the canal district of SW, was originally designed for player housing, but after release they decided to postpone player housing for now, but it has been 3 years now... :(
 
XionTawa said:
(I suck at backing up my info, but...) I remember reading a blue post that said that the instance in the water area in the canal district of SW, was originally designed for player housing, but after release they decided to postpone player housing for now, but it has been 3 years now... :(
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This is true, that instance in SW was slated to be for player housing. But no promise was ever made that it was going to open up in any particular patch, just vague allusions to a feature they were working on :) I think that other development priorities have trumped player housing, since all it will really add is some fluff and not substance to content for the game.
 
I was sitting here trying to remember why player housing had excited me when we last talked about it. I realized that the implementation of the guild bank gave me most of what I wanted with player housing. I'm not sure what value player housing would bring other than a cool place to spend gold on :D
 
oooo..I just thought of one thing. Perhaps the hunters could leave their other pets in the player housing rather than at a stable and I could "borrow" a pet to solo with...What do ya think?
 
Hmm... I'm trying to remember how other MMOs had implemented player housing, or what it brought to the game. I don't remember what Star Wars did with theirs, but I know that City of Heroes had "bases" where you could put cool stuff and devices, assuming you had enough money of course. Things like a teleporter, a lab where you could make other things, repair stations, etc...

Actually that brings a few things to mind... IF you had the money to implement them, you could possibly put in a portal room, an alchemy lab, a forge, a stable (yeah Anita!), a private arena/dueling room, a repair station (free repairs for everyone!), a kitchen area... there's lots of possibilities. Although I think probably the biggest supporters of guild housing are role-players... when I was on an RP server our guild had claimed the meeting room over the gates of Darnassus as our "guild hall", but that didn't really work when other groups had their meetings there as well.
 
In UO you started off with a set house, then they gave you a lot and you could build your house. It was a place to show off your design skills, a place for pack rats to store things and just a place to call your own.
 
Coming from Ultima I would LOVE player housing. It is so much more convenient to pass stuff off, keep mats available to your account, etc..

That being said, they would have to vastly revise the travel system. Perhaps something as simple as two hearthstones, one to home and one to the inn. I would love to see them institute the travel system from Ultima, but I doubt that.
 
I remember when Asheron's Call implemented player housing. I played mainly on a pvp server and our lowbies could "hide" in our own house or in a friends who had added you to their guest list. Guilds could get a mansion to which all guild members were admitted. The neatest thing about it was secure storage of your stuff. It was a big step - like buying your mount and training - and comparably expensive.

Yes, it would be nice, but the guild bank and our own bank accounts meet those same needs and more storage is available to WoW. As for a "hiding place" - well we are not on a pvp server though it would help those on a pvp server. But I have too many other things in game to worry about... Maybe if I was getting bored at end game, but then the pleasure would be short-lived and the new would wear off.
 
My big problem with the bank, is that if I have 3 sets of armor, it takes up a lot of space, so why not a closet that can hold 5 sets of armor or something like that...
 
In Dark Ages of Camelot, Player housing really killed the major cities. Instead of porting there and conducting business as usual, everyone was in their individual house. Made it hard to meet anyone new, and really made the cities ghost towns.
 
Those of us with older computer's wouldn't mind ghost cities :) Although getting a gig of ram for Christmas sure helped!
 
From what I have seen the possibility of going straight to your house in WoW does not seem likely. The zones for housing will be in the major cities so it will still be a hub.
 
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