I hope Trion Devs read this post on Massively

Enter at Your Own Rift: A case for player housing

We've talked a bit about player housing here before. I think this is a very well written article and, if you can base player demand off of the comments on this article alone, it appears to be highly desired by a number of players.

I think someone said it best that something like this would go a long way to helping to build Telara as a true virtual world instead of just another "murder simulator". I know Neleria and I sometimes grow weary of the questing style of Rift (go here, get X of these, kill X of those, come back -- then go right back to the same area and get X of this other thing, etc.) and would really love to have more things to do in-game other than just questing and rift hunting.

I guess it comes down to adding what some would consider to be "fluff". Along with player and guild housing, I would be happy to see well implemented cooking and fishing professions. Perhaps some refinements to the existing gathering and crafting professions.

Anyway... yeah. The article is a good read and I think it would go a long way to breathing more life into Telara and giving us all a bit more attachment to it.

Housing is not a bad idea and it should be implemented with time. But for a starter, i would rather be able to see the mobs that I'm fighting first or have the same quest giver refusing to give me the quest, I also would like to see buildings that I could take over and hold, but that is in the same category as yours. What I'm trying to say is that they should fix the fundamentals before they add new things that also will contain bugs (nobody is perfect) and then build upon content.

Generally bug fixes are not and should not be in the same category as new features... every game has bugs that need to be fixed, but new stuff also needs to be added for people to stay interested. Housing not being in the game, along with no RVR, are my two biggest complaints, and if they both aren't added in, my time in Rift will not be as long as it could be. I love much about the game but I really would like to have some sort of housing or at least guild-claimable buildings, and RvR is absolutely essential for my continued enjoyment of the game, because I really do not enjoy PvP as it stands right now, it feels too pointless. anyways, a good massively article, but from what I understand Hartsman or some other major dev person(s) do not want housing, while others do. There were some podcasts on it... it's not something I ever expect, but if they do put it in, they will astonish me.

To be honest, I don't even want to know how this server would handle a PvP objective, already do with the few PvP quest there are and it would probably be disabled. I'm also not very happy with the state of the PvP. But this is an MMO where you can only be about 40 people in the same area, not very massive to me, so imo fix the fundamentals, but yes still work on additions.

As Zavrin pointed out - they should have two entirely different teams of developers working on new content and bug/existing content fixing. The same team just can't do both. Player Housing would enhance my playing time - build housing would be far higher up my list though and I think that should be added first. Honestly they can do this as instances in the towns - they don't even need to allocate "property for this - unless they wish to do it like LOTR where the entire housing area was a separate zone. But I would love to see us start out our family events in our own big hall rather than on the steps of Sanctum. As the guild levels give them perks for inside their guild hall - their own banker, bartender, merchants, and even a port - then within the guild hall put in "quarters" that the guild members can rent from the guild. This pays for the upkeep of the guild hall to the server (money sink) but the members who rent quarters are actually paying for it. If the guild is smaller - then they may have to also pay taxes to the guild. The "quarters" are instanced just like in EQII. Then the games has to drop trophies off of Bosses so we can decorate our hall with the heads of those we kill :)

I definitely agree that the basics and fundamentals get worked out and/or don't have any dev time taken away from them. It is, after all, a new IP from a company that came out of nowhere. It'll take time -- but I'm patient, so long as they keep communicating with us. They could even integrate the guild quests with housing. Dailies for upkeep of the guild hall, the community in which you are located or your own personal homes. They definitely need *something* other than the usual collection/kill quests and dungeon running. I don't think Trion will be able to sustain the player-base that they've amassed thus far by simply adding more of what already exists in-game. I also whole-heartedly agree with your assessments of the current state of PvP -- it is very frustrating and pointless at the moment.

Personally, I don't much care about the pvp aspect of a game. However, I adored having my own house to decorate and fiddle with. That alone has kept me in many games even when my interest was waning because I felt I had a vested interest now. I was a landowner! SWG had a very nice setup with the trades all being tied in and being able to run your own actual business where people could walk into your house, and buy your goods off your own goods vendors. Runes of Magic had way cool homes, but the upkeep was expensive and was done with an item store. Fine for a "free to play" game, but wouldn't work here. Still, the houses were cool and a lot of fun to decorate. Anarchy Online, the first that i remember having housing, not counting UO since that was an odd systems for guild housing, was a lot of fun but not very well developed. The best bar none was EQ2. Racial homes in racial areas. All tradeskills had specialties that made things for your home. Tailors could make rugs, wall hangings, etc. The crafters LOVED this system and made it a real, viable economy. I would love to see something like this in Rift. I hope the devs see these posts as well and consider it.

Cindermist brings up a good point. SWG had, in my opinion, the best player housing system of any MMO. The houses could be customized, you could hang your hard fought for weapons on the wall for display, create a bar from crates dropped by mobs. Also, as Cinder mentioned being able to host your shop in your house was awesome. You could find the best weaponsmith in the middle of nowhere on Dantoonie. What SWG had going for it though was the vast landscape. A massive player city would only take up less than a percent (made up number) of the planet. I think in Rift they would have to be instanced like EQ2 as the world just isn't big enough. I find instanced housing to be good but not quite as awesome as seeing your house in the real world.

I've tried out the instanced housing and really did not like it, but I'm not sure how placing houses all over Telara would work, it would suck to place it on a invasion highway. With evrything else Trion is doing to this game, I'm sure housing is going to be put in sooner or later.

We had housing in Asheron's Call 1 and it was good. There were housing settlements with personal storage and "hooks" where you could display items obtained in the game. Housing ranged from instanced Apartments, to landscape Cottages, to landscape Villas, and finally to landscape allegiance (guild) mansions. All had monthly upkeep (rent) costs and you could open them to the world, just to your friends, or close it off completely to anyone but you. This worked for AC1 because the land of Dereth was HUGE! Each major town/city had a set of housing settlement portals for others to get to your settlement, but not every house had a settlement. Some of the most exclusive and sought after were places that only had 1-3 houses with some beautiful view.