Homeless in an MMO (Part 1)

Developers: housing can make you $$$, the haters and whiners make you $0. Do it. Here’s why:

History and Premise Setup

I’ve played MMOs since the last century (I’m in my 40's), and there are a number of elements I’ve recognized that can help the success of these games for player retention. Spending years, especially decades at one thing leads to obvious outcomes: attachments and memories. Humans have a biological imperative to work towards a legacy. In the real world, that legacy is children or being remembered for contributions to society. In games, that could easily translate into halls of fame, being “the first”/”realms first”, getting some kind of feature for significance, or in some way rising in prominence over the thousands or millions of other players. That makes sense, as we bring ourselves into the game through the avatar and share an emotional bond through our successes or failures (and for everyone who doesn’t believe that, watch them when they lose… it’ll be very telling).

For many of us, this legacy translates into a trophy hall, museum, or memorial to past efforts; a legacy of time and effort spent there. One element of this MMO thing is the core of the experience: other players. Being a Massively Multiplayer Online necessarily includes other people, it requires social interactions. For some, it’s no more than faceless banking transactions. For others, that social interaction is the basis for every action and moment of their gameplay.

Here’s the thing: as the years go by, life happens both in-game and out-of-game, right? I’ve lost many friends and gaming acquaintances due to various reasons (death, quitting the game(s), personal reasons, etc). I got to know someone for 11 years in the World of Warcraft, called them my best friend for a time and even eventually moved in with them in another state. A year later, I also took them to small claims court and WON (long story, but habitual liars can be good at lying even over long periods of time). You never really start to get to know someone until you live with them… esh. But on the flip side, as I’ve written about before, I met my wife in WoW:

So yeah, life happens. Sometimes you find others to share it with, sometimes you don’t. For those who do not like MMOs, try asking them why. Often times you’ll hear about the “other players” not supporting them enough to keep the interest, especially in most MMOs where teamwork and allies are the axis upon which most of the content is framed.

The content of the game (book, movie, whatever), especially well-written stories in a compelling campaign will drive all of this. Regardless of how a story is conveyed, we love a good story. When it resonates and relates well to us it forms a small emotional bond-especially with what we were doing during this time. Memories will form around it that could trigger decades later: smells of something you were eating that one time something major happened that made you almost spit it out, that kind of thing. We love good stories, and we love remembering those stories-especially with how they make us feel. Listening to something that gets your nervous system sending tingles down your extremities and the goosebumps flare up a little bit… yeah… you know those moments.

So let’s get to a point, eh? Immortalizing and enshrining those moments in player housing and guild halls is something many games have developed to enhance the player experience. And yeah, not only does it enhance the experience but it helps reinforce the desire to keep playing… which, as everyone knows, is in every game company’s best interest. Who says game companies have to act like greedy parasites? They actually *can* act like the symbiotic relationship it should be: fun for us, sustaining the company for them.

And for my part, here is a bit of my MMO history (while I’m proud of my hours, there are those out there who put these to shame!):

• Champion Online: barely started but noteworthy.
• Dynasty Warriors Online: ~200 hours.
• Elder Scrolls Online: 1,061 hours.
• Eve Online: probably well over 2,000 hours (played for 8 years, created the Eve Online Ode to Adam Smith YouTube video for a Political Econ class)
• Final Fantasy Online (the first one): ~100 hours.
• FFXIV: 373 hours.
• Guild Wars 1: ~400 ish hours probably.
• Guild Wars 2: 843 hours over the last 2,822 days, and counting.
• Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted: ~300 hours on my dragon (yes, played AS a dragon!)
• Neverwinter Nights HotU (Australis Nordock server): ~400 hours playing and building areas (wrote a 100 page toolset guide back in 2008 ish).
• No Mans Sky: 825 hours.
• Riders of Icarus: 95 hours.
• Robocraft: 102 hours.
• Rust: 224 hours.
• Tera: 39 hours.
• Trove: 74 hours.
• Warframe: 1,677 hours.
• Wildstar: barely started due to it being shut down, but noteworthy.
• World of Warcraft: 6,600 hours and counting, played on and off since day 1 of public release.
• (many thousands more together from others like Diablo II-IV, Path of Exiles, Battle Pirates, Vega Conflict, Dragons of Atlantis, Starbound (2,305) and Terraria (2,800) server we had for a little while, Minecraft server with a Twitch streamer (vanilla server, made a YouTube vid for wife and I’s Castle Apartments on 8bc), Space Engineers, Palworld, and other games that at least have some online nature with other players)

That…. uh, that’s a LOT of time. For the games we have left, I think it can be shown that the games that support celebrating player achievements will have better player retention and game reputation in the community than those who do not spare any time for such things. And for the big ones like WoW, what are their player retention numbers like? Just how much better would it be if they spent some time on this? Betcha it would be quite interesting.

Player housing and guild halls should be a standard element of all MMOs.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It requires development time, which requires funding. I get that… and I think, after these last couple of decades of various MMOs implementing different concepts to this end, a good solution can be found to EASILY fund these concepts.

So okay, this will take a little bit to lay out because, shockingly, it’s a complicated topic. Why? Because it's a human social and emotional thing that involves balancing real-world money and disposable income for entertainment purposes. But… it can be done :)

Quick Reason Why I Write This

I’m writing this as an adaptation to a forum post I made a while ago on the Blizzard site that runs the World of Warcraft. I started playing this game the first day it was publically released, and they are quickly coming up on their 20th anniversary!! Can you believe that? Pretty amazing! There are a few that are indeed older, but few that are quite as popular, even today as they are not nearly as played as they have been in the past.

But here’s the problem: they’ve spent zero time on player housing or guild halls.

Here’s my Tauren Horde Warrior that I’ve spent some 6600+ hours on over these last couple of decades… and he’s homeless. We all are, as another forum poster mentioned, homeless vagabonds squatting in whatever inn happens to be near whatever we are doing at the time. And even that is nothing more than one single, small entry room with no visible sign of where millions of us sleep for the night lol.

Yeah, my big cow gets to fall asleep against a wall in some tiny inn. That’s my home, right now. NPCs always hail me as a Commander or other terms of endearment/respect to my station… but… for sleeping? Yeah, off in the corner of some shack. Bah.

My inventory and Void Storage is stuffed with momentoes from all those years, too. I’m running out of space for those in-game memories. I still have one of the very first Obsidian Edged Blades from the Molten Core raid. At the time, that made me one of the best-geared warriors on Doomhammer, and it showed in battlegrounds like Alterac Valley. I still have trophies from some great adversaries in that battleground too-and it’s made me smile every time I look at them. See that one thing in the corner of one of those bags in the screenshot below? Yeah-that represents dozens of hours of hard-fought efforts to obtain. That other shiny bit down there? Took months of effort. Etc. Lots of cherished memories, and lots of things that you can’t get anymore.

So that’s why I’m putting this all together heh. ~20 years and nothing to really call a home on the main MMO I’ve put in the most effort. And no, for all the WoW players about to point to the Garrisons, that is not a home. It did have a couple of the elements I want to discuss later, but they are not what any of us call ‘housing’. The Class Halls were not anything even remotely close to housing or a guild hall, and it may as well have been a solo instance for all the use there was for other players. And, as you might guess, I do not count the Covenants in that either. All of those were good efforts with some interesting ideas, and we’ll get to those later.

The Hook for Blizzard and its Managers/Developers

As an objective fact, you are missing out on a huge revenue stream if you don’t implement some kind of housing/hall system. More than just micro-transactions, too: this can strengthen member retention. That alone should merit consideration.

Obviously, you don’t have to develop a massive system to include everything all at once, either. No one does that. Phases are a good way to go, especially when you check player feedback from the ones that are actually taking part in the system (in-game mail/survey? forums aren’t the best way, perhaps).

Blizzard: ignore the haters. They won’t get you any new money with this kind of stuff whereas even a basic housing or guild hall system WILL get you additional money and positive feedback.

But… you have to do it right. Start with a few simple rules to govern the system as a whole. These are complex and each will be expanded on as to why they are so critical/important, but here:

• Non-expansion dependant, but incorporate functionality from each expansion.
• Modular and expandable via in-game and micro-transactions (part of funding source).
• Accessible to the player base for free at basic levels.
• Develop around the theme of remembrance: trophy walls, memorials, and other such emotional ties.
• Ability to invite others to join you (as done with Garrisons).
• Long-term/endlessly repeatable projects to emphasize team effort and continual contribution/interest (for Guild Halls).
• Decorations that are achieved through world collection/quest/etc as well as micro-transactions (part of funding source).

Part 1 Conclusion

And there we are! A foundation has been constructed for this discussion. For the future parts of this topic, I’ll go over maybe a dozen MMOs and similar games I’ve played with my experiences in what they’ve done regarding the question of Player Housing and Guild Halls. Since this is mostly aimed at Blizzard developers, I will absolutely be going over Garrisons, Class Halls, and Covenants in it’s own part. Finally, I’ll go into a proactive discussion of what could be done… because it isn’t enough to point out flaws, you have to actually try to move things along, it's just polite!

The discussion on specifics and ideas will continue in Part 2:

And now, I’ll take a moment to sit in my chair to judge those who do not implement player housing or guild halls in MMOs. There is no excuse these days, and you are only missing out on development funding opportunities.

If you enjoyed this, I have a few more game-related articles! (I’ll be writing more as time permits):