Carbine talks housing philosophies and "Expeditions" in this week's WildStar Uplink Analysis.

On Wednesday the WildStar team showed us some pretty nifty player created houses that the WildStar beta testers created; including some of the dev teams top picks. Staying on the topic of housing, this week's WildStar Uplink Analysis dropped even more housing info which also included a brief overview of housing "Expeditions". As If I wasn't on the edge of my seat for WildStar housing features already.

WildStar Uplink is a bi-weekly conversation or question that the WildStar team poses to it's community in order to spark conversation on specific in-game features and go a bit more in-depth regarding the system being discussed.

This Week the WildStar team asked the community how they plan on using their in game house. While there was a pretty wide-ranged list of answers, it was clear that the majority of the answers centered around the idea that players loved having a plethora of housing customization options and wanted their house to be used as social gatherings locations for friends, guildmates, and events.

Joseph Piepiora, WildStar's Social Systems Team Lead, had this to say in response:

"The one message we get loud and clear from our fans is this: "We love housing!" It would be easy to sit back, shining our knuckles on our smoking jackets whilst simultaneously patting ourselves on the back. "Next feature!" We'd proclaim, pushing Player Housing aside, never to be examined again. Damn, that would be so easy.

That doesn’t ever seem to happen though as the social systems team is pretty hyper about housing. We talk about it every day, whether it's an engineer bringing forward a tool improvement, an artist showing off some new decor or a designer working on fresh gameplay for a plug. Were we not able to work on housing in Wildstar I think we'd be the ones exchanging ideas on forums about the stuff we want in MMO housing."

Player housing in MMOs is something that is clearly loved by many fans of the genre. Giving you something to do outside of just the typical PvE and PvP content and tieing in the social systems that MMORPGs are based around.

While adding player housing to your game is usually a big plus to any game, building those housing systems with a wide-range of customizable options is also necessary to make it an engaging experience for the players. It sounds like this is exactly what the WildStar social systems team is trying to accomplish.

"Player housing means a lot of things to different people. As you can see above though, there are some basic trends. Players demand agency in the customization and decoration of their homes. This shouldn't serve as much of a surprise to anyone, but I want to call it out. It’s our goal to ensure that if you want to build something unique that it’s within your grasp. We regularly review our décor schedule to determine whether or not we have enough options for different types of props. I had a meeting about flatware last week. We get pretty granular with this stuff, sometimes.

Players also want to know that their home can serve as a hub for their friends and guildmates. Whether they’re coming for the amenities, in order to engage in some plug challenges or just to chat we are working hard to make that easy. This conversation affects all parts of housing. Now that we’ve included our first pass of neighbors in beta, we’ll be reviewing the feedback and make tweaks where necessary to make this a totally viable option."

As I mentioned earlier, a housing feature that was also discussed was the implementation of "Expeditions". Expeditions are a type of housing plug that can connect to a socket on your land and are essentially scaled group instances. The example given to us was an Expedition called "Graylight Grapplefest" in which players who entered were tasked with defeating foes inside the arena spotlights in order to get a maxium amount of points per kill. Players who manage conquer Graylight Grapplefest are rewarded with Renown (WildStar housing currency) and unique housing trophies.

Carbine is definitely going all out with their WildStar housing systems and I'm sure many players, myself included, are eager to jump in and test them out first hand. For more things WildStar be sure to visit the official website and keep your browswer locked to ZAM for all your WildStar news updates.

See you on Nexus!

Corey "Crimzen" Jenkins

Follow me on Twitter @coreycrimzen