Anyone still playing ESO? I started quite recently. I found this article about ESO Housing. I think you might find it helpful: https://steemit.com/elder/@snfpartner/elder-scrolls-online-housing-come-inside-make-yourself-at-home. I have read many guides. In this, everything is described quite clearly.

And I got friends in low places cough(Smooth Criminals, Blood Money)cough.

 Ummm...I have minions, ya know. 

Agreed, Heori.

Galaxies is a sad story for me. I wanted to play it so badly, and I bought it at release. However, I was a relative PC-gaming noobie and did not understand how system requirements worked. I mean, surely since SWG was made by the same guys who made EQ and I can run EQ on my family's PC, then SWG should also run on it. Right?

No, wrong. Ignorant and wrong.

It crashed every time I attempted to open the game. I asked a guildie in EQ that knew a little about PCs, and he suggested upgrading my video card. So I bought the first one I could find at Walmart, even though I knew zip about compatibility. It did not fit, and I gave up in frustration. I did not return to SWG until years later, after the combat upgrades. I never really experienced the housing, even though that was one of the features that I had been most excited about.  

Funny thing is, though, that a year later World of Warcraft released and I was able to get it to run on that same PC. Well... "run" in the sense that I could log in and kill things, just so long as I never stepped foot in a major city and always ran through zones in first-person while staring at the ground to minimize lag. Whenever I needed to sell stuff, I'd mail it to my real-life friend who'd auction it off for me since he could enter cities. WoW was actually the reason I learned to build PCs.

I hate the idea of having to pay for housing with crowns/real money. The only housing-related stuff that should involve real money is purely cosmetic decorations. I know that it can be argued that if you pay for a subscription fee that you are technically paying for everything in the game with real money, but it feels different to me. I don't mind the idea of having to build up renown to build a guild hall.

DDO had a guild airship, but no other guilds could see it.  The ship and the upgrades in it, many of them cost real dollars.  A lot of dollars.  I remember putting in like $200 for our guild ships alone.  But it was gated by "guild level" so you couldn't have a top airship by just throwing money at the game, your members had to work hard to accumulate guild renown over many years.  Neither could you have the best if you didn't throw cash at it.

I think the housing itself should have as few barriers to entry as possible.  For instance, if it required the Guildmaster to have completed certain content or achievements, that would be unacceptable in my view.  So would charging money for the base house.  Having decorations cost crowns is another matter.

I guess I was lucky cause my first 2 mmos that I played had player housing. Star Wars Galaxies and Vanguard. I thought both had awesome housing. Galaxies had open housing and people made their own towns. Vanguard had zones set aside. Both had guild halls that kinda made for the city center. Oh... I miss Galaxies (sigh).

  I liked UO's house building tools a lot. My house was located in what was essentially a war zone between my guild and a player killer guild, so I built my house into a defensible fort that we could fire projectiles out of. The whole first floor was designed for battle, but the other 3-4 floors (can't remember) were luxury. At one point, I actually bought gold so that I could kit out my house and show off to my guildies because they were there so often.

I never played DAoC, but I heard great things about it. I just think having instanced areas like neighborhoods is the best option, especially in a game taking place before firmly established lore in the series. We could "settle" towns that are lore-friendly, such as Anvil in the southwestern most area of Cyrodiil (not currently in the game, I believe, but should be a coastal town). 

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<Lord Dogma Wrote>                    

Awww Faded Jeans, Dude...this is awesome!

Interesting that you found her so quickly though...hid her quite well I thought.

Hmmm, well I guess my little secret is out...heh heh heh  

OK. !st thing we do is strap Dogma and Batosai in the Iron Maiden in the corner.  You know........just to keep the neighborhood safe.

The Ultima Online housing was exceptional...........building brick by brick and creative decorating.  DAOC had housing much as Heori describes.  Instance zones with little town centers.  Around the towns were numerous little neighborhoods of about 15 home sites.  There were like 5 home models you could pick from. We had a huge guild house and members built what they could afford around it.  You could recall to your house and set up crafting tables and storage chests as well as some decorative options.

                                                                Hmmm, perhaps.  

So, here are a few thoughts I had on housing... 

I think that ESO housing likely has a few givens:

1. Must be highly customizable (if not in structure, then definitely in decoration)


2. Should have utility beyond just decorating and/or building


3. Should feel like a status-related venture


4. Can't be open world


5. Shouldn't be such a focal point for gameplay that the player feels forced to use it heavily

Owning a house should be entirely optional. In most MMOs it is, and in previous TES games it has been, and you should use your house only as much as you want to. WoW's last expansion gave everyone housing (of a sort), but it was so integral to the story and gameplay that it almost trapped players. You shouldn't feel forced into using it, and you should also be able to use it as much or little as you want. In my first playthrough of Skyrim, my house in Whiterun essentially became one giant storage container. However, once Hearthfire released, I became obsessed with building and decorating my houses. ESO needs that kind of freedom in its housing.

As I said in a previous post, I don't see ESO attempting open-world building. Frankly, it's too messy. Randomly placed houses would upset the flow of the world around them. I also don't know that following EQII and SWTOR's example is the right way, either, because it cuts the player off from the world when inside. It unfortunately might be the best way to allow for customization, but I think it feels shallow.

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My Vision for Housing:

I think that a good option for the game would be to establish instanced neighborhoods or villages/towns in the same sort of way that they have multiple AvA campaigns. These neighborhoods could have various plots that can buy bought up by players which could have pre-established houses on them or empty plots that allow you to build similar to Hearthfire. With a neighborhood system, it could create a sense of community among the citizens of each neighborhood. Lord of the Rings Online used a similar system, and particularly active neighborhoods held their own events and parties within them. Also, kinships (LotRO's guilds) would often try to settle an entire neighborhood themselves so that they would have control over it and use it for events. I think that something like this would appeal to most guilds.

What I'd like to see is an instanced map that allows a player to set it as their "home" neighborhood or village/town. Inside, there would be a few buildings in the center that function as a town center and would provide utilities such as a bank, stablemaster, crafting stations with a writ board, a wayshrine, and even an inn for provisioning and RP purposes. Surrounding this center would be numerous plots of land that could each be purchased by a player. 

Once the player has purchased land, they could then build a house in stages from a design template similar to Hearthfire. Materials could be purchased through a vendor, or created by player crafters. Nicer furnishing would also be crafted by players, with some basic options purchasable from vendors. Players would be able to decorate their house and property as they see fit, even allowing others to enter their house by setting access permissions. Perhaps if enough guild members make up the neighborhood population, they could establish a guild hall near the center of town. This could even have a default guild storefront that anyone could visit and shop from.

For some reason I picture whips, chains and maybe some other medieval accoutrement in Dogma's real house. 

Yeah, I don't see it ever happening because: 1.) Having player houses all over would break lore and the flow of the game, and 2.) Having one giant megaserver would severely limit space. UO suffered from housing clutter, especially around cities, and trying to find a place to put a new house was extremely difficult.

I will personally be miffed if they let players buy houses with crowns; that would make it cheap and meaningless. I think houses should convey status and be earned through in-game effort.

I would be ecstatic if they were able to implement world interactive custom housing like Ultima Online, but doubt that would happen as it would put too much of a strain on the server. I imagine housing if it ever happens in ESO will be more like Everquest where it is instanced to the player and you can buy houses in the Crown store.