I mean I guess the answer is probably "because WOW doesn't have housing." But I have wondered about this.


I guess it takes a fair amount of resources to handle. But it seems like the MMOs that did have housing got a lot of player time out of it for a fairly small resource investment. As content goes it seems like a good investment. I never did, but I know people who probably spent dozens of hours decorating their houses. It lets players feel like their character is unique in some way and by letting them have some control over the environment you can create content with a lot of "replay" value.

i have my own ship in TOR

 

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And it's exactly the same as everyone else's ship and has a big fat zero customizable options that actually are viewable anywhere. You can't even sit in most of the seats!

I miss houses in UO

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/House

Housing (whether or not to have it/include it in your game) is a huge decision with many far reaching impacts.

A lot of it comes down to implementation... Is the housing area part of the active game word, or is it some random zone that's not part of the active game world (UO vs DAoC). Do you just have cookie cutter houses, or do you allow players to build their own and customize. Plots or free placement. Decorating - do you have a set of things a player can purchase, or do you allow players to craft their own decorations. Interacting with your home, do you allow complete customizations of items on tables, floors, blah blah blah.

All in all it's time consuming and resource intensive to include player housing...

Most of the time the decision is to focus on the game, the game world, balancing etc...

 

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this also.

Even more of the reason why DAOC was awesome

 

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Housing in games always seemed stupid.

Except for Sim City. In that game it kinda makes sense.

 

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Housing in DAoC was awful, god god god awful...

 

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