Alternate Realities

I log out of Twitter for a few hours this afternoon and miss the breaking news. /huff

What? You haven't heard about the new cross-realm dungeon finder premium service that Blizzard is working on??
 
Well, then, my friends, let me be the first to tell you that the Gnome and Goblin Engineers of Azeroth have been working overtime on a cross-faction project that will Blow Your Mind! The Elite Engineers of Azeroth (EEA) are proud to present: New and Improved Reality Transporters! That's right, friend! Soon you'll be able to step into a Transporter and visit those long lost friends in an alternate reality for an hour or two and then return home to your own reality in time for supper. No, no. They're perfectly safe I assure you. Not like the early generation Reality Transporters that disappeared countless foolish /ahem brave test subjects. These Transporters are New and Improved! (As based on our previous string theory experiments.) That old friend or lover who stepped into a Transporter and never returned isn't dead or lost in the Twisting Nether as you thought. No, Sir! Your buddies are living it up in an alternate universe very similar to our own and very soon you'll be able to visit them at will. Well, for a fee of course. Time is money friend. And this sort of Engineering takes a lot of time....

Yeah. I know. Craaazy! It's like LFD met Sliders.

Enough with the silliness. I don't do humor well. (Or poetry.) My apologies.

I have mixed feelings about this new premium service.

Homeless

A link to World of Warcraft Players Could Be Homeless Forever came across my Twitter feed Tuesday and it got me thinking.

Player and/or Guild housing isn't a new topic in WoW. RPers especially have been asking, screaming, whining and begging for it since Beta. I appreciate the unique challenge it provides to developers and I can completely understand why Blizzard has shied away from it. And I agree with the statement J.Allen Brack makes in the article about there not being a need for player housing beyond just saying, "Oh yeah, we have housing too." Player housing has no relevance on gameplay in WoW (though, if it helped clean up whoreshire, that's more than enough reason IMO!) and there are plenty of other games where people can buy and decorate houses if that's what they're into. Guild housing on the other hand, is something I'd love to see and I think the new guild perks system is the perfect vehicle for it.

True, guilds, and players, can, and do, use some of the spaces already available in the game world as guild halls. The main drawback to this, especially on a high population server, is one of supply and demand. Or as they say in real estate, location, location, location! The good spots are popular and therefore in high demand. Sometimes you can share a space with another guild or two quite amicably. Sometimes not. Guild housing that's specific to the guild and only accessible to guild members would solve that. How great would be it to have guild meetings at your guildhall and not have random players wander by and interrupt/interfere? True, the drawback is you couldn't hold rp events at your guildhall for other players if it's only accessible to guild members, but it's a drawback I'd be willing to live with. After all, if I want to host a server-wide rp event, I can still do it in a public location in-game.

As far as where such housing should be or what it should look like... well, I could ramble on about what I'd like to see, but it would be what I'd like. I'm sure each player would like to see something different, which is one of those challenges that has probably had the devs tossing in the towel each time housing comes up at a meeting. Still, I'd love to see Guild housing introduced as a guild perk option sometime in the future. That's an objective I'd definitely be willing to dedicate guild time to unlocking and spend guild gold on purchasing.