1. Horizons - The plot management was second to none. Inside decorations ere unfinished. But one could spend days just designing the outside of their plot. Arguably the best crafting game ever made even if completely unfinished.
2. Rift - The ability to build and create on ones housing plot is truly amazing. There is nothing like it outside of Minecraft until Landmark/EQN arrive.
3. Wildstar - The sheer number of useful things one can put on their plot is amazing.
4. UO
5. Vanguard - Quite unfinished but like the rest of the game great potential. Only if SOE had not gotten ahold of it. But the same can be said for every SOE game great unfufilled potential.
6. SWG
7. EQ2
SWG on 7 and with those others ranked higher makes me doubt you ever used the housing system in SWG. As example, anything you can do in Rift, could be done in SWG. But in Rift it is just for decoration, in SWG housing actually has use and player cities even more. You couldn't even craft with max buffs in SWG without playercities. Also, anything you looted in SWG was also an object that you could use as decoration. Everything! And could then be manipulated similar to Rift items, but Rift just has a better GUI for that.
I can't understand how you can put Vanguard, Rift and Horizons above SWG. In terms of features and decoration options they are way more limited. SWG housing was a lot more then just fluff.
As a side note : I am not familliar with UO housing, so I just don't know where to put that in the list.
There is one thing that Rift (and especially EQ2) can do that SWG couldnt do: thats actually design your house. SWg had only interior decorating, EQ2 you can actually build your house from scratch.
I'm curios on how Aion compares to the games you guys listed.
Can't you guys list some feature their housing have? Not just the name of the game...
I never was interested that much in housing, and altough I played some of the games listed as the best housing. I never reached that point.
I'm curios about Archage and Wildstar in particular.
Aion had
- when you reached 20 or so you will have a quest that gives you a studio appartement. You could buy a bigger house but had to pay a lot for it and even pay rent.
- you could buy and place any kind of furniture, tapestry etc
- a feature i found interesting was plants/chest. You would get some token and you could water your plants or use on chest and friends plants. When they got to a certain range, they would open and gave you rewards from curency to buy items, to special armor skins.You also got currency each time you used those tokens to buy other stuff. You had a limit on how many token you can get per day.
- you could get through quest and dungeons some special items for the house. Like statues of the boss you defeated.
- you even had a buttler, that you could program to great people with anything you liked
- bed, chairs were interactable if i remember right.
- Entering someone studio appartment was only possible through friend list/ guild as they were instanced. But the houses you payed for weren't instanced and you could explore their houses
- you could have npc like wherehouse and others
I'm not saying Aion has the best housing, just telling what you can do there
SWG housing was and is #1 till another makes housing the same, or better.
Not only was it open world housing that let you place homes just about anywhere you wanted, but the fact that anything you looted, and that was in your inventory you could place down as a housing item. didnt matter if it was junk... if it was in your inventory you could set it down in home as decoration. Hell you could even place your money in your house as a credits chip item. I have yet to see another game that does this.Not to mention player run cities that allowed your city name to be listed on the map, with shuttle access, and a number of other thing.
if you never played Horizons/Istaria, you have never seen the best housing ever created in a game.
not only are there literally 1000's of combos for your plots, the fact that you build or hire someone to build it yourself made it extremely epic and rewarding. Once your basic house was completed, you could build your own crafting stations, stores, and storage units.
EQ2s housing is really good, too bad they are instanced though. There are really enough room in the cities for all players on the servers after all instead of letting everyone live in a few places.
Guildhalls is another matter, they take up a lot of space.
SWGs housing was good as well but you can't really count it anymore since the game is down.
SWG, for reasons already mentioned plus you could pack it up and move it to another planet, and own your own guild hall.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I always found swg housing too limited. I always wanted to change the shape of my house.
If they could take EQ2 where you can allready build whatever you want, put it in the real world and get rid of the item limit = most awesome housing ever.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
For me, the best mmo housing is always open world housing, non-instanced. I despise housing in an mmo that are instanced and prebuilt for me and I have no options to make it my own. I'd have to say the best housing mmo's for me were/are
Ultima Online
Asheron's Call housing was pretty good open world housing too, just wish the houses were more customizable when I played.
I vote Everquest in first place and Runes of Magic in second place for player housing. In both you had a huge selection for decorating and the ability to interact with house items. Final Fantasy 11 places a close third. It was hard to acquire items for your "mog house" but those items would give you field stats. Fourth place Mabinogi which had farm instances where you could grow crops to make healing potions.
All these MMO's are old. Sadly all new games seem to scream "we don't have the bandwidth space w/e to make player housing!" Claiming player housing would lag the overall game - even though it's a separate instance. Sounds more like a dev excuse to have one less thing to worry about.
1) EQ
2) RoM
3) FFXI
4) Mabinogi
Any of you find a player housing you were impressed with?
There are only 3 games that have good player housing.
Star wars Galxies
Shadow Bane
Ulitma Online
All of which are completely ancient or shut down. You obviously haven't tried EQ2 housing. Even EQ Landmark can't compete.
Some people don't consider instance housing as real housing and just dismiss it out of hand. If you are one of those people games like EQ2, Rift and Wildstar's housing will never appeal to you and even if you have to look to long out of date examples of open world housing done right you will.
OP wants to know about housing not open world housing. EQ2 does indeed have the best housing at the moment.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
One feature that I didn't see mentioned that added to SWG's superior housing system was placing NPCs! You could place NPCs for flavor or as vendors. You could place droids too. That was fun.
As for current, I think Landmark will be amazing for housing and by extension EQNext.
My favorite housing in any game to date exists in Minecraft, however. It is exactly what I look for in construction and decorating options.
Lol at all the ppl that mention instanced housing, that shit doesnt belong in a mmorpg. If you want real housing it has to be open world where your house is set on a persistent world where you can also be attacked and are supposed to defend your territory. The best game with this system is probably Rust
Originally posted by YoungCaesar Lol at all the ppl that mention instanced housing, that shit doesnt belong in a mmorpg. If you want real housing it has to be open world where your house is set on a persistent world where you can also be attacked and are supposed to defend your territory. The best game with this system is probably Rust
I think Everquest 2 had the most varied,interesting ,spoilt for choice housing ever created. It was amazing what the Noranthian housing community was capable of. I was often left flabbergasted when I walked into some homes.
I always found swg housing too limited. I always wanted to change the shape of my house.
If they could take EQ2 where you can allready build whatever you want, put it in the real world and get rid of the item limit = most awesome housing ever.
You can't change the shape of your house in EQ2. Unless you mean the interior or garden/balcony, in how you can create dividing walls etc. But that was just as possible in SWG, so I don't see the difference here. I am very familiar with both systems and untill now, nothing comes even close to SWG's housing system.
Anyway, Rift gives more options for that then EQ2, because it gives you a dimension (small instanced piece of land) where it lets you put items anywhere. Even complete buildings that you can loot. Or built out of building pieces.
So for decorating, Rift trumps EQ2 for instanced housing. In terms of features however, EQ2 trumps Rift. EQ2 has more interactive objects for houses, lets you place mannequins to showcase gear, put down crafting tables and lets you sell from your house.
But all that was possible in SWG too, just a lot more. Many also don't seem to know that housing was one of the features that was expanded on after CU. How storytelling and chronicles tied into this was very impressive too.
Comments
There is one thing that Rift (and especially EQ2) can do that SWG couldnt do: thats actually design your house. SWg had only interior decorating, EQ2 you can actually build your house from scratch.
I'm curios on how Aion compares to the games you guys listed.
Can't you guys list some feature their housing have? Not just the name of the game...
I never was interested that much in housing, and altough I played some of the games listed as the best housing. I never reached that point.
I'm curios about Archage and Wildstar in particular.
Aion had
- when you reached 20 or so you will have a quest that gives you a studio appartement. You could buy a bigger house but had to pay a lot for it and even pay rent.
- you could buy and place any kind of furniture, tapestry etc
- a feature i found interesting was plants/chest. You would get some token and you could water your plants or use on chest and friends plants. When they got to a certain range, they would open and gave you rewards from curency to buy items, to special armor skins.You also got currency each time you used those tokens to buy other stuff. You had a limit on how many token you can get per day.
- you could get through quest and dungeons some special items for the house. Like statues of the boss you defeated.
- you even had a buttler, that you could program to great people with anything you liked
- you also had a sound system. You could write sounds in game there. I think the sound played for the person who went inside the room, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZKWwofrAh4&index=2&list=PLBhWSYbjK9mUBwYh4o82oZpInrZcgMU7y
- bed, chairs were interactable if i remember right.
- Entering someone studio appartment was only possible through friend list/ guild as they were instanced. But the houses you payed for weren't instanced and you could explore their houses
- you could have npc like wherehouse and others
I'm not saying Aion has the best housing, just telling what you can do there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCjTM8wWLt4
SWG housing was and is #1 till another makes housing the same, or better.
Not only was it open world housing that let you place homes just about anywhere you wanted, but the fact that anything you looted, and that was in your inventory you could place down as a housing item. didnt matter if it was junk... if it was in your inventory you could set it down in home as decoration. Hell you could even place your money in your house as a credits chip item. I have yet to see another game that does this.Not to mention player run cities that allowed your city name to be listed on the map, with shuttle access, and a number of other thing.
if you never played Horizons/Istaria, you have never seen the best housing ever created in a game.
not only are there literally 1000's of combos for your plots, the fact that you build or hire someone to build it yourself made it extremely epic and rewarding. Once your basic house was completed, you could build your own crafting stations, stores, and storage units.
Dragon Lairs took it to a whole other level
nothing even comes remotely close
EQ2s housing is really good, too bad they are instanced though. There are really enough room in the cities for all players on the servers after all instead of letting everyone live in a few places.
Guildhalls is another matter, they take up a lot of space.
SWGs housing was good as well but you can't really count it anymore since the game is down.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
dragon's prophet housing surprised me the most
is really well made. pic related
i personally liked Daoc and EQ2 but i haven't played all the mmo's with housing so.....
Current MMORPG: Tera takes that spot, EQ2 is a close second.
All Time BEST even to this day. : Star Wars Galaxies Pre CU. Most fantastic crafting and housing system ever created for a mmorpg.! Bar NONE!
I always found swg housing too limited. I always wanted to change the shape of my house.
If they could take EQ2 where you can allready build whatever you want, put it in the real world and get rid of the item limit = most awesome housing ever.
Instanced housing similar to EQ2 .. There should be multiple choices in housing per location and size of residence..
SWG was a double edge blade, it cut both ways.. I loved part of it, and hated part of it..
FFXIV is a serious contender.
- Semi-instanced areas
- Three unique environments to build
- Small, medium, large plots
- Tons, tons and tons of furniture all with their own unique 3D models
- Highly exclusive and rare furniture to pimp your house with
- Somewhat exclusive, carebear housing locked behind guild houses with less features
- Constantly supported with more features added
- No massive advantage gameplay wise, mostly vanity content with some gameplay perks
- Clear player hierarchy for e-peen showoff
FYI this is not a list of pro's, just what it is.
the EQ2 housing is instanced but the guild halls are great shared housing
EQ2 fan sites
For me, the best mmo housing is always open world housing, non-instanced. I despise housing in an mmo that are instanced and prebuilt for me and I have no options to make it my own. I'd have to say the best housing mmo's for me were/are
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
OP wants to know about housing not open world housing. EQ2 does indeed have the best housing at the moment.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Funny you say pre-CU, if I recall housing was mostly unchanged with the CU/NGE
Even the crafting made it through both phases in good shape
LOL, that is because I left for DAOC when SWG went to CU. So never had that particular experience :-D
SwG
I would run around flagged and kite players to my home, obviously outclassed I would stand on my balcony taunting players. That game was so much fun.
One feature that I didn't see mentioned that added to SWG's superior housing system was placing NPCs! You could place NPCs for flavor or as vendors. You could place droids too. That was fun.
As for current, I think Landmark will be amazing for housing and by extension EQNext.
My favorite housing in any game to date exists in Minecraft, however. It is exactly what I look for in construction and decorating options.
Why would you voluntarily say that outloud?
You can't change the shape of your house in EQ2. Unless you mean the interior or garden/balcony, in how you can create dividing walls etc. But that was just as possible in SWG, so I don't see the difference here. I am very familiar with both systems and untill now, nothing comes even close to SWG's housing system.
Anyway, Rift gives more options for that then EQ2, because it gives you a dimension (small instanced piece of land) where it lets you put items anywhere. Even complete buildings that you can loot. Or built out of building pieces.
So for decorating, Rift trumps EQ2 for instanced housing. In terms of features however, EQ2 trumps Rift. EQ2 has more interactive objects for houses, lets you place mannequins to showcase gear, put down crafting tables and lets you sell from your house.
But all that was possible in SWG too, just a lot more. Many also don't seem to know that housing was one of the features that was expanded on after CU. How storytelling and chronicles tied into this was very impressive too.