Quote:

Original post by Daaark The whole point of this genre is that you are a wandering adventurer, traveling from land to land, having all kinds of adventures while your legend grows across the globe.

That's not necessarily true - any MMO which has factions, for example, has the player build ties to the faction's town or headquarters building. A lot of MMOs are built around a central city that is ostensibly everyone's home, or has a capital city for each of two major factions, and that city is the home for that faction. Other MMOs have racial homes, usually a combination of the noob area for that race and a city in that race's style which may have special features only members of that race can use. Some MMOs are as much or more about sim or strategy empire building than adventuring, and in these games your empire is your home. And in games in general, every player's inventory, equippage screen, any list of trophies or title's they've earned, even a forum thread or subforum where they hang out all the time, these are all psychologically the player's home.

How about a game where the point IS the player's house? I'm under the impression that Tale in the Desert is like this, and Wurm Online takes it to similar extremes.

Players are suppose to go out into the world, find a spot of land, claim it as theirs, and try to make a go at it.

Not all MMOs need to be linear hack and slash "You've clicked enough times to move onto the next segment that looks nearly the same as the last, except here the bad guys are BLUE! Oh, and it will be the exact same as the last time you had a character here. Thanks for your money" style games.

Quote:

Original post by Daaark Personally, I don't see the point. If you want that, why not play The Sims? If I'm playing an MMO, I want to go out and raid dungeons, kill monsters, rescue maidens, and level up. I can screw around with my own house in real life. Who has time for a tea party? The orcs are invading! And, Second Life lets you buy up land and put whatever you want on it.

The point is because MMOs were "supposed" to be more than just games. The cool factor that made them so interesting and special was the virtual world aspect. The game was just what got people there and gave them a shared reason to start interacting.

Honestly, the pure game aspects of most MMORPGs are done far better in non-MMORPGs. If an MMO can't provide interesting virtual world mechanics, then it should just be single player/LAN.

Admittedly I haven't played in a while, but I thought these mmo's weren't confined to solely being just a "fighter". Ie. you could be a tailor, a blacksmith, a <whatever>, so then a house to operate from would be reasonable.

SWG has housing. Granted the diversity of styles is virtually non-existant, there are no windows and people put houses next to all the points of interest making them sometimes impossible to get to, but the up side was using them as shop fronts. People have and still are very creatively decorating their shops to make unique experiences in what was a unique game but is now a "you must be luke or han" game.

Quite a lot of the people I knew, including my fellow forum correspondents at the time were there to socialise in a star wars universe, making shop or music aided the fun of it.

I miss the old swg.

Quote:

Original post by SwitchIn Admittedly I haven't played in a while, but I thought these mmo's weren't confined to solely being just a "fighter". Ie. you could be a tailor, a blacksmith, a <whatever>, so then a house to operate from would be reasonable.

Yes, but how many people want to play as a blacksmith or a tailor?

That's like playing as the janitor in quake 3 arena. "Hey, you guys go have all the fun, I'm going to stay here and scrub the blood off the walls between rounds..."

Or the guy who sells peanuts to the crowd in a sports sim.

The best games are going to be focused on providing good core game play, and not having 20,000 subsystems that don't really add anything to it.

The fantasy genre is about people who wander the globe searching for new adventures. They rest when they die in a dungeon. :D Why do you think all the dungeons are always full of skeletons.

I remember having houses in Morrowind. They were a waste. Only good for hoarding items needlessly, and inflate your save file size.[lol] I remember collecting all the helmets in the game, and lining the shelves with them.

Why not play a game that focuses on that stuff? Like I said earlier, Second Life does what you mention. You get your own property, and you can create any items you like, with your own 3d models and textures, and other members buy them from you.

Here is a thread from the AoC forums, asking for player housing. It has over 150 signed posts and over 4000 views. And here is an article about player housing for WoW.

Two things:
1). There are a lot of players that want it.
2). There are a lot of devs that don't understand why.

Maybe players and devs are not the same type of people?

"The old question of whether or not players would be able to have houses in WoW came up again at the conference, and again, Brack said that while the developers were huge fans of the concept and would love to have it in the game some day, nothing concrete was planned. He delved slightly deeper, saying that the particular issue that concerned Blizzard was what they could do to make player housing in WoW feel "cool," and what they could offer that other games didn't - it wouldn't be sufficient for them to just copy-and-paste it from, say, LotRO."

[Edited by - AngleWyrm on January 28, 2009 12:23:03 AM]

Quote:

Original post by AngleWyrm Two things: 1). There are a lot of players that want it. 2). There are a lot of devs that don't understand why. Maybe players and devs are not the same type of people?

They aren't the same, but not because game devs don't understand their audience.
Anyone whose worked on a real software project knows adding features for the sake of having more features isn't as good of a idea in practise as it is on paper.

Quote:

Original post by Daaark Quote: Original post by SwitchIn Admittedly I haven't played in a while, but I thought these mmo's weren't confined to solely being just a "fighter". Ie. you could be a tailor, a blacksmith, a <whatever>, so then a house to operate from would be reasonable. Yes, but how many people want to play as a blacksmith or a tailor? That's like playing as the janitor in quake 3 arena. "Hey, you guys go have all the fun, I'm going to stay here and scrub the blood off the walls between rounds..." Or the guy who sells peanuts to the crowd in a sports sim. The best games are going to be focused on providing good core game play, and not having 20,000 subsystems that don't really add anything to it. The fantasy genre is about people who wander the globe searching for new adventures. They rest when they die in a dungeon. :D Why do you think all the dungeons are always full of skeletons. I remember having houses in Morrowind. They were a waste. Only good for hoarding items needlessly, and inflate your save file size.[lol] I remember collecting all the helmets in the game, and lining the shelves with them. Why not play a game that focuses on that stuff? Like I said earlier, Second Life does what you mention. You get your own property, and you can create any items you like, with your own 3d models and textures, and other members buy them from you.

No, I'm afraid it's not like playing a janitor in Quake 3 at all. SWG was hugely popular for it's diversity of play styles before they turned it into a combat fest WoW clone. Now it's on the rocks with server merges likely, yet prior to all the changes they had a half million players.

It's simply a case that your preferred gaming arena is combat only. It sounds like you don't know too many people who aren't of the same mindset as you, and that's fine, but please don't profess to know how the rest of us feel playing the "janitor in Quake 3". Look around, you'll be surprised.

Houses in morrowind however is a waste given that it is a single player game.

Edit: To answer your question "Yes, but how many people want to play as a blacksmith or a tailor?", the answer is: A lot.

To edit yet again, I believe the most played profession in Ultima online was Fisherman.

You had me at Diversity of Players.

In Fallout-3, there's about 40 mods that offer new player housing.