Okay... I'm a Star Wars Galaxies refugee, and I absolutely loved the way that the player community could group off into guilds and not just have a guild hall, but an actual structured City envoronment that could grow from being a settlement to a full-blown metropolis. I long for another MMO that would allow something similar.

Having said that, there are certain problems inherrant to that sort of a mechanic...

Urban Sprawl, where player-placed buildings litter the length and bredth of the land to the point that no matter where you go, you end up in someone's front yard. It was an issue for Star Wars Galaxies, and it was an issue for Ultima Online before it.

Not only that, imagine how many cities would form in Tamriel that are not lore-supportive. Granted it could be explained that in the intervening centuries between the events of TESO and Arena, through countless wars and uphevals of both natural and un-natural causes, entire cities were razed to the ground. It would be a good explanation, and there are ruins all over Tamriel that might have once been part of cities or towns, the names of which have not survived the ages.

The big problem is Urban Sprawl. If a way can be found to avoid that, or if it proves not to be that big of a deal, then the notion of nothing outside canon cities surviving the later centuries can apply.

I had this idea that all canon cities would be hubs, with spokes branching off from them leading into neighborhoods or districts. Each one of these would have land where structures could be built. These would be separate zones. This won't be a problem if the streamed instancing talked about in the Hero Engine documentation on its web site is implemented. A city can sprawl as much as it needs to.

Solution's pretty easy: Limit the number of players that can be on a server. If what the article says is true and the MMO will be somewhere near Skyrim in Size, you can't have thousands of players on the same server anyways like in SWG or UO. For Fantasy settings player housing is difficult to handle. It's a lot easier in Sci-Fi or present time settings where you can always resort to appartments in a skyscraqer and thus are able to instance the single appartments.

Ever played runescape... little old now but the way they have there guilds and things seems to work.

Never played it. But I've heard a lot about it.

Or do the Mortal Online method, make houses incredibly difficult and resource-intensive to build and maintain.

I like to look into the real world for inspiration. As to the problems you mention ...

First of all: Have space. Lots and lots and lots of procedurally generated "wilderness" outside and between hand-crafted landmarks, towns, bandit camps and what-have-you.

Second: In "civilised" lands, building anything would require a permit from the local authorities, which besides making sure people only build where the designers want them to build also limits what kind of buildings can be placed there (if the local lord doesn't want a pink skooma den in his lands, you don't get to build one).

Third: In "uncivilised" / war-torn lands, anyone can try building anywhere ... but also everything can be attacked and destroyed (eventually), so it is in the best interest of people to either hide their settlements well or bunch up together, raise a big city wall around the houses, and thus making rather compact settlements to save on the costs.

Fourth: People can build big houses and partition them into appartements for rent by other players, again reducing the footprint of the buiildings.

Instanced neighborhoods sounds like the best solution to me. Guilds could perhaps acquire an entire instanced neighborhood for their own use, forming a sort of "guild quarter" where that guild maintains residences, shops, and a central guild hall. This would be reserved for guilds with a large number of active players and capable of paying very large fees. (think of a guild's personal arcane university) Smaller guilds could simply build guild halls in normal neighborhoods.

The fix to urban sprawl is making all player-made structures destroyable by players.

Edit: Quit using the I-word. Inst*ncing needs to die.

We don't even need free "house"-placing. It would be enough if there are building plots where the guilds(bigger AND smaller ones) can build their fortress, including some lockable houses and some houses with a special function.

Some fortresses need to be on pvp territory, some need to be on pve territory(on pve servers).

Believe me. Even if not everybody is able to get a building spot at once... There will be alliances, cooperations, politics. Or short: player generated endgame content. They will trade for - for example - time in their smithy, which is able to create very good weapons, siege weapons and so on. Or they are going to form alliances to be able to pay the high upkeep. There should be smaller settlements, too, for guilds with smaller numbers. You should not be FORCED to make 400 member guilds or such things.

The same goes for pvp. The buildable things there should be even more powerfull(alchemist, siege weapon smithy and such things). You could even think about guild vs. guild(if the spot is limited to a guild size of 30, only 30 vs 30 fights are possible - once per week, to balance the things for the carebears).

Its so easy to create such things. And it has been done already in the VERY FIRST BIGGER MMO ever. We already hat this battles for guild houses in Meridian 59. Its so easy and fun, i just can't believe why nobody just recreates this ideas in modern environments.

in Runescape, housing is done strangely. the explanation is that magicians found a way to push kilometers into tiny spaces, and a portal takes you home safely.
also, in The Sims 3, Lots have to be placed, and you cannot build in the very outside grid squares, leaving a 2 meter gap to walk through. something like that.

Why no instancing?
It seems like a logical and efficient solution that avoids world-map clutter and allows ease of travel.

Instancing introduce their own problems, but the most important one isn't technical, it's the fact that the "virtual world" feeling a lot of people want out of an MMO gets lost.

This is the main reason why I didn't play GW1 aside from a free trial: It wasn't a world, it was a bunch of solo outdoor dungeons with a chat.

Ok but every player (guild) being able to manufacture its own holding on the world map would not only be a logistical nightmare, it would create vast areas of the map that hold no interest to anyone, except those who happen to own that area.

Perhaps a compromise between the two is best, though I dont know how that would look.

Simple: make the world HUGE

Also, it would be great if players could build houses in existing "lore" cities, making these huge as well. One of my issues with most MMO's is that often "the capital of the world" is actually more like a small village :S

I personally hate instancing of player homes or guild fortesses. Especially in Guild vs. Guild battles this system in AoC was so boring and strange, that nearly nobody really liked it.

But if you look at Neocron(you were able to conquer factories and such things), Meridian 59(Guild hall which was attackable by other guilds), EvE Online(you can conquer star systems and build your base in them) and other games, you'll see that free house placing isn't a neccessity. Its absolutly 100% enough to just place some conquerable fortresses all over the map. Yes, guilds should be able to upgrade them and build special buildings. But its not neccessary to allow 100% free house placing like in Star Wars Galaxies. This was a MESS. Upgradable PvP and GvG Castles(not reachable by the enemy faction) for different guild sizes would not only be easier but also be more beautiful, better integrable into the landscape and it would generate REAL player generated content, since you fight and trade for them, as you are going to want what you can produce with them.

Limites Player Fortress would be much more interesting. For example, on a server with 7500 players(2500 on each faction) at the same time:
30x 5 Story Tower(with one special building(out of five)) for Guilds with 20-50 Members(20 different accounts, not 20 twinks)
15x Minicastles(Tower + 2-3 special buildings) for guilds with more than 50-100 Members
5 Castles(Tower+5 Special Buildings)+1 very special buildng(out of three)) for Guilds with more than 100-400 Members
2 Big Castle(2 Towers + 5 Special Building + 3 very special buildings) for Guilds/Alliances with more than 400 Members.

This only in the PvE Reagions from Level 0-max level for each faction. some more of them should be in the PvP regions with even more bonuses. GvG should be allowed once a week and with 50% of the min-guild sice(10vs10 Battles, 25vs25 Battles, 50vs50 Battles, 200vs200 Battles).

The players would fight for them like wild animals. They would start to forge alliances, treaties, trade agreements and so on. This is called Player generated content and would lead to the first big game with meaningful pvp since ultima online, eve and partially daoc/warhammer AND real endless endgame content.

What was it about the GW1 instancing that you diddnt like? The fact that the only players you saw in an instanced world zone were those in your party or the fact that the world was not just one continuous landscape?

Housing is ALWAYS about immersion. Its the idea of building your own home in a fantasy world. But why create something potentially immersive and then destroy it with "Go to Zone 20123 to find your house!". This is unbelievabaly boring and the ugliest possible solution. If housing then it should be a nice part of the world and no cheap solution with instancing.

I disagree. It's only a logistical nightmare if the game world is too small for the amount of players.

And speaking from SWG experience (where the game world was indeed to small for the amount of players...) these areas hold great interest to other players. Complete cities with shops, transport hubs, in- and outdoor decoration... it's what made SWG actually feel like a virtual world. I loved travelling to player cities and marvelling at what people had created... of course, I didn't gain any loot tokens or whatever-points, so I guess a lot of MMO players would consider it "a useless waste of time" ...

You are partially right. Player Cities are a good thing. Including Player vendors and city design. But it was NO good thing to allow the players everywhere to build. At high times the game was so crowded with buildings that you had to walk 10-20 minutes until you came out far enough to see anything of the landscape. It looked everywhere like this: http://www.geektown.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/screenshot0010.jpg. This was nor beautiful or usefull. Its just no solution. And it wouldn't work in the hero engine anyway since there were no instances and a huge landmass on every planet.

Partially. Mostly though the fact I couldn't go outside town and PK these idiots who have been bothering me, and neither they could do the same to me. Where's the fun if you have no random, unplanned, unfair PvP?

You know what else kills immersion? Traveling to what is supposed to be a remote untouched part of the wilderness and finding a thriving player run town, or traveling to a harsh inhospitable land and finding someone has set up their pleasure palace right next door to the Daedric ruins.


Unfortunately Merari is right, it is easy enough to say "well just make the map bigger to support the larger player base" but this is easier said than done and besides you still have a problem with Eyesores popping up in inappropriate places as well as most of the best spots getting snapped up by those who get in early, if you are truly serious about offering player housing or even player run settlements then instancing is really the only way to go, why SWG diddnt go down the instancing route is beyond me as if the game offered up unexplored and unamed planets as instanced zones they would have had enough space to sustain the player cities and housing of a larger population of players without cluttering up already existing planets.

I totally agree, however how Guild Wars handled instances is not necessarily how instancing needs to be handled in every game, especially if those instances are being used for player housing and/or cities.

Of course that being said the chances of player housing being introduced in TES online are slim at best but if they were to be introduced then instancing would probably be the best method.

It's an MMO. You're supposed to have to deal with other people.

Besides, what stops you from just running for a few hours more into the wilderness, past the last player settlement?

This is how it should be. This is how the real world is build. You go into the wilds and find a town, because someone else was there first. What you describe is not immersion. Its called jealousy because someone else got something you want first. And thats why this is interesting. Gather your guildmates, kick their asses and take over this beautifull place. Whats the problem?

Easy solution. Instead of allowing players to just drop their settlements anywhere (ala SWG), just have predetermined locations where settlements can be placed (ala Darkfall). Not only would this allow players to have their own fortress/cities to protect, giving them a personal investment in the territory, but ZeniMax Online would be able to control where the stronghold was and what strategic advantages it would include as a result. This system worked amazingly well in Darkfall Online and I think it could do wonders for this game as 3-faction world pvp will be one of the major components of this game.

That being said, ZeniMax Online already confirmed there will be no player homes, which doesn't necessarily rule out player cities (as Darkfall had cities but player homes weren't within them), but certainly makes the likelihood of player cities seem less certain. It sounds as if ZeniMax Online wants to keep most of the PvP focused around Cyrodiil, but only time will tell. ZeniMax Online has also stated that Tamriel in their game dwarfs the size of Skyrim, as it should considering it's just a single province.