First there was a point to owning a house, it's where you put your NPC merchant to sell or buy stuff.
Second you could build almost anywhere in SWG and UO. You weren't restricted to plots like in those "other games". Those plots of land might as well be in an instance because they are empty of all wildlife, NPC's, and geographical importance.
GW2 will have a home instance which reflects what you have achieved in your Personal Story. GW2 will also have actual housing sometime after release. What this 'housing' will be remains to be seen. My guess would be costomizing the home instance.
GW2 will have a home instance which reflects what you have achieved in your Personal Story. GW2 will also have actual housing sometime after release. What this 'housing' will be remains to be seen. My guess would be costomizing the home instance.
Yes from all info that there is avabile and judging from how GW2 world is made you can assume almost certainly it will be some kind of instanced housing. Which surely is nice , but it is very very far from what open housing was in UO and SWG and from what can be.
Take a look at ArcheAge , it is not released yet , propabluy will be like in Q3 or Q4 in 2012 , but it will have in game housing in open world.
Yep...I am actually VERY dissapointed that we finally have a game trying to do thing s bit differet and add some things missing from gaming and gets almost no attention.This is PROOF that marketing is king,no way in hell SWTOR or GW2 deserves more notice than Archage.Both those games are selling off of marketing hype and name,neither one are doing as much as AA is.
I think housing in general is a MUST for gaming now,to eliminate it is removing alot of the fun people like in rpg gaming.I feel housing and crafting should be given a lot more effort in the games design.There is a lot that can be done with it,Eq2 for example chgooses to be lame by offering the best looking stuff on cash shop,it should ALL be craftable.
Say what? I follow AA and GW2, and I look really forward to playing both games. But saying GW2 is only marketing? I don't know, but the combat in AA is going to be same ol' same ol'. The only really innovative part is the housing and crafting aspects. Don't get me wrong, but both games do amazing things. Not just because of marketing.
Take a look at ArcheAge , it is not released yet , propabluy will be like in Q3 or Q4 in 2012 , but it will have in game housing in open world.
Yep...I am actually VERY dissapointed that we finally have a game trying to do thing s bit differet and add some things missing from gaming and gets almost no attention.This is PROOF that marketing is king,no way in hell SWTOR or GW2 deserves more notice than Archage.Both those games are selling off of marketing hype and name,neither one are doing as much as AA is.
I think housing in general is a MUST for gaming now,to eliminate it is removing alot of the fun people like in rpg gaming.I feel housing and crafting should be given a lot more effort in the games design.There is a lot that can be done with it,Eq2 for example chgooses to be lame by offering the best looking stuff on cash shop,it should ALL be craftable.
Say what? I follow AA and GW2, and I look really forward to playing both games. But saying GW2 is only marketing? I don't know, but the combat in AA is going to be same ol' same ol'. The only really innovative part is the housing and crafting aspects. Don't get me wrong, but both games do amazing things. Not just because of marketing.
I agree , I am waiting mainly for ArcheAge as it seem like my last chance for long term mmorpg game, but there is really good chance I will play GW2 as well , propably not nearly as much as ArcheAge (if it deliver) but I want to judge b2p model in mmorpg's myself (I don't consider GW1 an mmorpg) and cause it seem like ok game even if it is far from what I really want from mmorpg. Will be my first time having 2 mmorpg at same time.
Yeah combat in terms of mechanics will be propably better in GW2 , since AA will be conservative "standard" model.
It's strenght lie elsewhre - big open world without loading screens, open world housing , nice idea for crafting , sailing , 1 of 3 continent with diffrent rules , ability for players to create their own faction , social interaction tools like crime points and jail system and totally incredible graphics.
So I am waiting mainly for AA , but I will propably play GW2 a bit as well.
My ideal game has 3 essential elements.....Non instanced player housing.......fun deep crafting......pve and faction vs faction conflict.
What came close to these ideals.....VANGUARD has good crafting ...ok non instanced housing...good pve....NO faction vs faction conflict
DAOC...terrible grinding crafting.....ok non instanced housing.......unsurpassed realm vs realm warfare
AA and GW2 are at the top of my list to hopefully play. I'm following SWTOR as well.Prime,Battle for Dominus promises to offer great crafting and faction conflict....housing may happen after launch
Like many others.......I cannot find one mmog I wan't to play,thats available today.
GW2 will have a home instance which reflects what you have achieved in your Personal Story. GW2 will also have actual housing sometime after release. What this 'housing' will be remains to be seen. My guess would be costomizing the home instance.
If it's instanced it's a useless gimmick barely anyone will use.
GW2 will have a home instance which reflects what you have achieved in your Personal Story. GW2 will also have actual housing sometime after release. What this 'housing' will be remains to be seen. My guess would be costomizing the home instance.
If it's instanced it's a useless gimmick barely anyone will use.
Say that to the hundreds of players usinf the instanced housing in EQ2, there is even a forum full of screenshots of player's houses.
Perfectly ok. Noone forcing you to like housing, you just don't enjoy it and it is ok.
For many people good housing is not "fluff" like it is for you. Simple , people enjoy diffrent things is games.
I didn't originally say "fluff", I was repeating someone else who was defending housing as "fluff". I simply asked what it was about housing that really mattered because honestly, I don't see it. These games exist for fighting and progression, this isn't "World of Warcraft Sims". It seems to me about as silly to demand housing in an MMO as it does to demand it in, say, Halo.
This is where many playes differ. If I want to fight and progress I'd rather do it in something such as Diablo, Darkspore, Hellgate, etc. If all there is in a game is to fight, it keeps me until I crack cap and a few instances. Then I'm done, because frankly I don't see the point in get some gear so I can do the next instance and repeat the cycle. That is boring.
I want a world to live in, not to conquer. Part of a living world would be to have a house that I can decorate. Not everyone wants to bash heads in MMO's all day long, because thats what I got FPS and action rpg's for. MMO's are focusing only on combat and not social aspects and the genre player base mentality and "community" has been in a large decline because of this.
I miss my AO apartment and all the silly, random drops I used to decorate it with. I miss the nightclubs and social clothing, too. It made the place a living world for me. I'm tired of games that revolve everything entirely around killing. No, not tired of them, I never liked them much in the first place.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
As nice as player housing and guild halls sound, a developer will have to chose between that or major cities. The two cannot dwell together at all. One will totally be abandoned. Player housing promotes isolation from others.
In the first month of SWG, the major towns, cantinas, med centers, bazaars, invention stations. were packed with people for interaction. A month later with people doing it all in house, and BOOM, instant ghost towns.
I guess you can't completely blame that on player housing. SWG just did it wrong.
Best and most obvious solution is to allow players to purchase actual physical buildings within the NPC towns/cities in the game, more like Fable series then anything, so you retain lively/active towns/cities AND give players open world housing.
You want population to be spread out so it's not like WoW where everyone is in one place or two places, but you don't want things spread out TOO much so everything is ghost towns.
Perfect solution = fable-like housing.
All homes/shops in game day 1 and run/lived in by NPCs, players buy from NPCs and bam.
Obviously some little details/specifics but you get the point.
All homes/shops in game day 1 and run/lived in by NPCs, players buy from NPCs and bam.
Obviously some little details/specifics but you get the point.
Well, yes--an average game server has fifty thousand players. Many of those have a dozen (or more) alts. Suppose there are anywhere near that many NPC buildings available to purchase?
Might be workable in a lot of tiny indy games, don't think it works in a big game unless the game devs create a lot of Pleasant Valley ("Rows of houses that are all the same") suburbs. There certainly aren't enough empty NPC buildings in your average MMO "city" to meet the kind of player demand they would be facing.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
From huge mansions down to the single-dwellings, nothing changed much except for the addition of apartments. They were merely single room storage sheds that one could place a limited amount of trophies and furniture. While housing may not seem epic, it will always be a favorite and necessary option for me as a gamer.
On a side note: WTH were they thinking when they failed to simply upgrade the graphics in AC1? Yea, Yea, coding and engine, blah, blah , blah...so what!?! You don't re-content a visually pleasing sequeal... you must connect the dots or people will lose interest... btw, OMG I LOVED AC2!!! But, 72 of my friends didn't.
I'm playing AC at the moment after a break of 6 years and loving getting back into the best MMO experience I've had. I've just taken ownership of a villa - a large house with small courtyard, several rooms and storage facility. Functionally, the storage is a godsend - a safe way to transfer items between characters.
Aesthetically, the wall, ceiling and floor hooks give a great way to display quest rewards, trophies and other memorabilia - walking through a couple of the larger rooms is like a timeline of character development, with all the quest rewards lining the walls. And watch out for the giant venus fly trap in the courtyard....
On a side note: AC doesn't need better graphics - the game play is fantastic, you could spend years just exploring the vast landmass and the community is a great one to be a part of. Not to mention the content updates EVERY MONTH SINCE 1999!
'Nicer' modern graphics would just attract the demographic that only play games for graphics - probably to defect when the first 3d MMOs come out in the next few years - or when WoW offers another free pet.
I agree with the OP. My first PH experience was with Horizons though it was not a well completed game then when first release. There was also alot of community building/rebuilding to do which could have incorporated things like rep although that game didn't.
We need to have more than just whatever gear we are wearing or the thing bogs down quickly and people tend to stop wanting to endlessly upgrade endgame items with every expansion of a game in PVE. In PVP the making of a map and some gear to wear with absense of much else is often initially ok but there are so many now the things just can't hold up.
A game incorporating exploration on large scale maps with an in game dwelling that could be refurnished would keep things going for a lot longer for a lot of people. A taxing/repossession system could be in place help balance the amounts of dwellings vs players.
Perfectly ok. Noone forcing you to like housing, you just don't enjoy it and it is ok.
For many people good housing is not "fluff" like it is for you. Simple , people enjoy diffrent things is games.
I didn't originally say "fluff", I was repeating someone else who was defending housing as "fluff". I simply asked what it was about housing that really mattered because honestly, I don't see it. These games exist for fighting and progression, this isn't "World of Warcraft Sims". It seems to me about as silly to demand housing in an MMO as it does to demand it in, say, Halo.
This is where many playes differ. If I want to fight and progress I'd rather do it in something such as Diablo, Darkspore, Hellgate, etc. If all there is in a game is to fight, it keeps me until I crack cap and a few instances. Then I'm done, because frankly I don't see the point in get some gear so I can do the next instance and repeat the cycle. That is boring.
I want a world to live in, not to conquer. Part of a living world would be to have a house that I can decorate. Not everyone wants to bash heads in MMO's all day long, because thats what I got FPS and action rpg's for. MMO's are focusing only on combat and not social aspects and the genre player base mentality and "community" has been in a large decline because of this.
This.
Player Housing (the kind you actually had to build/design) has always been a sort of side level character progression for me. The houses I built with my own hard work and time meant just as much (if not more to me) as my character. I can remember all the houses I built/placed in past games (UO, Horizons, Vanguard, etc). It was an extension of my character - and all the work I put into it. Aside from hanging out with friends, its what kept me playing after I had maxed out character levels.
And it adds for great immersion. Patiently waiting for another MMO to come along with great open world player housing elements.
As nice as player housing and guild halls sound, a developer will have to chose between that or major cities. The two cannot dwell together at all. One will totally be abandoned. Player housing promotes isolation from others.
In the first month of SWG, the major towns, cantinas, med centers, bazaars, invention stations. were packed with people for interaction. A month later with people doing it all in house, and BOOM, instant ghost towns.
I guess you can't completely blame that on player housing. SWG just did it wrong.
Instant ghost towns? So cantinas weren't active for people looking to heal wounds(or get buffed later patches)? Doctor's weren't at all major spaceports selling buffs? People were active everywhere on Shadowfire at least.
Player cities became economical hubs where people bought and sold items. Spaceports retained the rest as well as held many battles between Rebel and Imperials. I'll give you med centers went the way of the dodo, but thats about all. Cities were alive and well, not all of them, but still a large portion of them on the major planets.
Really the only thing they did wrong was allow your houses to not auto-pack up once your account expired. That left many empty buildings. (I think it was fixed though at some point right?)
All homes/shops in game day 1 and run/lived in by NPCs, players buy from NPCs and bam.
Obviously some little details/specifics but you get the point.
Well, yes--an average game server has fifty thousand players. Many of those have a dozen (or more) alts. Suppose there are anywhere near that many NPC buildings available to purchase?
Might be workable in a lot of tiny indy games, don't think it works in a big game unless the game devs create a lot of Pleasant Valley ("Rows of houses that are all the same") suburbs. There certainly aren't enough empty NPC buildings in your average MMO "city" to meet the kind of player demand they would be facing.
Some scarcity is a good thing.
Makes sure those who purchase would actually use them and "live" in whatever town/city the own a home or shop in.
Obviously, as with all things in a MMO, all the systems are related so you can't just talk about one "new" system without going into expansive detail about how it'd integrate with the rest of a game etc.
It would require a fairly large world with fairly large cities and many smaller towns/villages.
You'll never see in game housing in wow-clones. The WOW-clones have perfected homogenization. You will do exactly the same amount DPS as another character that has played the exact amount of time you have played. A house, oh boy, that's a no-no. You can build a house in a well traffiked area and have an advantage over players who have their houses in useless areas.
So in wow-clones, the only way to get housing into the game that's not instanced, and for everyone to be perfectly equal, you can only put houses in certain areas (Darkfall), but in essense it's still a wow-clone.
.
.
.
The real solution to prevent a small list of players from dominating all the good spots (UO, SWG), is to allow all player owned structures to be destructable in PVP. Yeah yeah you're thinking Eve Online, but think again, those player owned structures can take 1 player a week to destroy with a bajillion or so hitpoints, they might as well be invulnerable.
This is where many playes differ. If I want to fight and progress I'd rather do it in something such as Diablo, Darkspore, Hellgate, etc. If all there is in a game is to fight, it keeps me until I crack cap and a few instances. Then I'm done, because frankly I don't see the point in get some gear so I can do the next instance and repeat the cycle. That is boring.
I want a world to live in, not to conquer. Part of a living world would be to have a house that I can decorate. Not everyone wants to bash heads in MMO's all day long, because thats what I got FPS and action rpg's for. MMO's are focusing only on combat and not social aspects and the genre player base mentality and "community" has been in a large decline because of this.
The problem is, there are rules to any game and in pretty much every MMO, if you don't go kill things, you stop progressing, you stop playing the game. It's like saying you want to roleplay while playing Monopoly. Okay, if it really turns you on, but while you are roleplaying, you stop playing Monopoly because you've moved outside the rules of the game and thus, are acting against the established goals of the game.
Nothing says you can't do it, but there's no denying that it's not what the game was designed for.
I never really understood the whole housing thing to be honest. Nobody sees it but yourself for the most part, and it really doesn't serve any purpose other than acting as a private lobby that you can decorate.
If there was more meaning to it in an MMO sense I might feel different. For instance, you can break into them and rob them or they offer services to the public or something.
I think they aren't that common anymore because they are essentially meaningless fluff, and fluff that takes developer resources.
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind" 1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN 2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements
Comments
And you've just reminded me of my various decorated houses in SWG. All holding rare stuff., which will soon be deleted by the push of a button
SWG and UO did housing right.
First there was a point to owning a house, it's where you put your NPC merchant to sell or buy stuff.
Second you could build almost anywhere in SWG and UO. You weren't restricted to plots like in those "other games". Those plots of land might as well be in an instance because they are empty of all wildlife, NPC's, and geographical importance.
GW2 will have a home instance which reflects what you have achieved in your Personal Story. GW2 will also have actual housing sometime after release. What this 'housing' will be remains to be seen. My guess would be costomizing the home instance.
Yes from all info that there is avabile and judging from how GW2 world is made you can assume almost certainly it will be some kind of instanced housing. Which surely is nice , but it is very very far from what open housing was in UO and SWG and from what can be.
Sure they will still do better than WoW though.
Say what? I follow AA and GW2, and I look really forward to playing both games. But saying GW2 is only marketing? I don't know, but the combat in AA is going to be same ol' same ol'. The only really innovative part is the housing and crafting aspects. Don't get me wrong, but both games do amazing things. Not just because of marketing.
I agree , I am waiting mainly for ArcheAge as it seem like my last chance for long term mmorpg game, but there is really good chance I will play GW2 as well , propably not nearly as much as ArcheAge (if it deliver) but I want to judge b2p model in mmorpg's myself (I don't consider GW1 an mmorpg) and cause it seem like ok game even if it is far from what I really want from mmorpg. Will be my first time having 2 mmorpg at same time.
Yeah combat in terms of mechanics will be propably better in GW2 , since AA will be conservative "standard" model.
It's strenght lie elsewhre - big open world without loading screens, open world housing , nice idea for crafting , sailing , 1 of 3 continent with diffrent rules , ability for players to create their own faction , social interaction tools like crime points and jail system and totally incredible graphics.
So I am waiting mainly for AA , but I will propably play GW2 a bit as well.
My ideal game has 3 essential elements.....Non instanced player housing.......fun deep crafting......pve and faction vs faction conflict.
What came close to these ideals.....VANGUARD has good crafting ...ok non instanced housing...good pve....NO faction vs faction conflict
DAOC...terrible grinding crafting.....ok non instanced housing.......unsurpassed realm vs realm warfare
AA and GW2 are at the top of my list to hopefully play. I'm following SWTOR as well.Prime,Battle for Dominus promises to offer great crafting and faction conflict....housing may happen after launch
Like many others.......I cannot find one mmog I wan't to play,thats available today.
If it's instanced it's a useless gimmick barely anyone will use.
I love in game housing. every mmo should have it
Say that to the hundreds of players usinf the instanced housing in EQ2, there is even a forum full of screenshots of player's houses.
This is where many playes differ. If I want to fight and progress I'd rather do it in something such as Diablo, Darkspore, Hellgate, etc. If all there is in a game is to fight, it keeps me until I crack cap and a few instances. Then I'm done, because frankly I don't see the point in get some gear so I can do the next instance and repeat the cycle. That is boring.
I want a world to live in, not to conquer. Part of a living world would be to have a house that I can decorate. Not everyone wants to bash heads in MMO's all day long, because thats what I got FPS and action rpg's for. MMO's are focusing only on combat and not social aspects and the genre player base mentality and "community" has been in a large decline because of this.
I miss my AO apartment and all the silly, random drops I used to decorate it with. I miss the nightclubs and social clothing, too. It made the place a living world for me. I'm tired of games that revolve everything entirely around killing. No, not tired of them, I never liked them much in the first place.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
As nice as player housing and guild halls sound, a developer will have to chose between that or major cities. The two cannot dwell together at all. One will totally be abandoned. Player housing promotes isolation from others.
In the first month of SWG, the major towns, cantinas, med centers, bazaars, invention stations. were packed with people for interaction. A month later with people doing it all in house, and BOOM, instant ghost towns.
I guess you can't completely blame that on player housing. SWG just did it wrong.
Best and most obvious solution is to allow players to purchase actual physical buildings within the NPC towns/cities in the game, more like Fable series then anything, so you retain lively/active towns/cities AND give players open world housing.
You want population to be spread out so it's not like WoW where everyone is in one place or two places, but you don't want things spread out TOO much so everything is ghost towns.
Perfect solution = fable-like housing.
All homes/shops in game day 1 and run/lived in by NPCs, players buy from NPCs and bam.
Obviously some little details/specifics but you get the point.
Well, yes--an average game server has fifty thousand players. Many of those have a dozen (or more) alts. Suppose there are anywhere near that many NPC buildings available to purchase?
Might be workable in a lot of tiny indy games, don't think it works in a big game unless the game devs create a lot of Pleasant Valley ("Rows of houses that are all the same") suburbs. There certainly aren't enough empty NPC buildings in your average MMO "city" to meet the kind of player demand they would be facing.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I'm playing AC at the moment after a break of 6 years and loving getting back into the best MMO experience I've had. I've just taken ownership of a villa - a large house with small courtyard, several rooms and storage facility. Functionally, the storage is a godsend - a safe way to transfer items between characters.
Aesthetically, the wall, ceiling and floor hooks give a great way to display quest rewards, trophies and other memorabilia - walking through a couple of the larger rooms is like a timeline of character development, with all the quest rewards lining the walls. And watch out for the giant venus fly trap in the courtyard....
On a side note: AC doesn't need better graphics - the game play is fantastic, you could spend years just exploring the vast landmass and the community is a great one to be a part of. Not to mention the content updates EVERY MONTH SINCE 1999!
'Nicer' modern graphics would just attract the demographic that only play games for graphics - probably to defect when the first 3d MMOs come out in the next few years - or when WoW offers another free pet.
;¬)
I agree with the OP. My first PH experience was with Horizons though it was not a well completed game then when first release. There was also alot of community building/rebuilding to do which could have incorporated things like rep although that game didn't.
We need to have more than just whatever gear we are wearing or the thing bogs down quickly and people tend to stop wanting to endlessly upgrade endgame items with every expansion of a game in PVE. In PVP the making of a map and some gear to wear with absense of much else is often initially ok but there are so many now the things just can't hold up.
A game incorporating exploration on large scale maps with an in game dwelling that could be refurnished would keep things going for a lot longer for a lot of people. A taxing/repossession system could be in place help balance the amounts of dwellings vs players.
Atlantica Online has a great housing system after lvl 80 XD
This.
Player Housing (the kind you actually had to build/design) has always been a sort of side level character progression for me. The houses I built with my own hard work and time meant just as much (if not more to me) as my character. I can remember all the houses I built/placed in past games (UO, Horizons, Vanguard, etc). It was an extension of my character - and all the work I put into it. Aside from hanging out with friends, its what kept me playing after I had maxed out character levels.
And it adds for great immersion. Patiently waiting for another MMO to come along with great open world player housing elements.
Instant ghost towns? So cantinas weren't active for people looking to heal wounds(or get buffed later patches)? Doctor's weren't at all major spaceports selling buffs? People were active everywhere on Shadowfire at least.
Player cities became economical hubs where people bought and sold items. Spaceports retained the rest as well as held many battles between Rebel and Imperials. I'll give you med centers went the way of the dodo, but thats about all. Cities were alive and well, not all of them, but still a large portion of them on the major planets.
Really the only thing they did wrong was allow your houses to not auto-pack up once your account expired. That left many empty buildings. (I think it was fixed though at some point right?)
Some scarcity is a good thing.
Makes sure those who purchase would actually use them and "live" in whatever town/city the own a home or shop in.
Obviously, as with all things in a MMO, all the systems are related so you can't just talk about one "new" system without going into expansive detail about how it'd integrate with the rest of a game etc.
It would require a fairly large world with fairly large cities and many smaller towns/villages.
Non instanced housing.. love it
Horizons / Istaria has probably the best mmorpg housing system so far
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Playing : Uncharted Waters Online
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You'll never see in game housing in wow-clones. The WOW-clones have perfected homogenization. You will do exactly the same amount DPS as another character that has played the exact amount of time you have played. A house, oh boy, that's a no-no. You can build a house in a well traffiked area and have an advantage over players who have their houses in useless areas.
So in wow-clones, the only way to get housing into the game that's not instanced, and for everyone to be perfectly equal, you can only put houses in certain areas (Darkfall), but in essense it's still a wow-clone.
.
.
.
The real solution to prevent a small list of players from dominating all the good spots (UO, SWG), is to allow all player owned structures to be destructable in PVP. Yeah yeah you're thinking Eve Online, but think again, those player owned structures can take 1 player a week to destroy with a bajillion or so hitpoints, they might as well be invulnerable.
The problem is, there are rules to any game and in pretty much every MMO, if you don't go kill things, you stop progressing, you stop playing the game. It's like saying you want to roleplay while playing Monopoly. Okay, if it really turns you on, but while you are roleplaying, you stop playing Monopoly because you've moved outside the rules of the game and thus, are acting against the established goals of the game.
Nothing says you can't do it, but there's no denying that it's not what the game was designed for.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I never really understood the whole housing thing to be honest. Nobody sees it but yourself for the most part, and it really doesn't serve any purpose other than acting as a private lobby that you can decorate.
If there was more meaning to it in an MMO sense I might feel different. For instance, you can break into them and rob them or they offer services to the public or something.
I think they aren't that common anymore because they are essentially meaningless fluff, and fluff that takes developer resources.
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements