Ever since ArenaNet announced Guild Wars 2’s Janthir Wilds expansion, there’s been considerable debate among core Guild Wars 2 players and dedicated MMORPG housing aficionados about just what the game’s planned new housing experience will entail. But apparently, we’ll have to traipse over to PC Gamer to find out, as ArenaNet has done its big reveal over there.
As anticipated, the Homestead system opens up during gameplay as players befriend the Lowland Kodan “naturally through the campaign.” There’s no upkeep or rent on housing, so you can’t lose it if you leave the game, and you won’t have to fight over prime property spots either. We’re looking at instanced housing here – I don’t think anyone expected otherwise – with huge decoratable yards, so it’s not just a lone building.
It sounds like the crafting system for the decorations are part of a new mastery-based crafting line with low resource costs, both regular resources and a new conversion resource that’ll presumably suck excess lowbie resources out of the economy. More than 300 items are planned for launch, with another 500 added over the next year, with mostly in-game recipes (though yes, some will be in the cash shop).
But the really exciting bit is that housing comes with a “major overhaul” of the game’s object-placement system, which now allows movement, rotation, scaling, floating, and clipping of items. Basically, it appears on par with the best decorating systems in the genre; the closest cognate I can think of its WildStar, which not coincidentally was also run by NCsoft in the long long ago. Fun fact for guilds: Eventually, guild halls will also get this toolset.
Probably my favorite bit is that the yard of your home will hold your alts, your unlocked mounts, your boats, cats, and even resource nodes from personal instances – it actually reminds me a bit of Guild Wars 1’s Hall of Monuments in that way and ought to function a bit like a museum for achievement-oriented players.
