Is the Housing feature dead? It may be fun to get into it if you are new to it, but for those of us who have been designing plots since 2010, we quickly run out of options. There is only one basic housing zone to use, most of the recent cool items are stuck behind a paywall, and numerous glitches over the years have caused players to lose their houses. I've been recording, writing, and editing some videos to give a tour of my housing zone, go over the subject, and give my opinion. Here is Part 1 of 4. I'm using free editors, so the quality isn't top notch, and I'm aware the audio is a little quiet. I'll try to improve that in the next few parts. I'll post here when I have another video to share. Let me know what you think! Enjoy!
This is fantastic. Thanks for sharing. I have a few pretty cool things that I've made in my neighborhood on Cazic Thule, and I think about the amount of time that I put in to it, and lament that so few will ever see it. I used to put on housing contests for my guild and a handful of people would enter their cool designs but I confess that I lost interest after Daybreak took over, stopped making new items, and shut down player studio. When the bugs happened that ruined guild halls and neighborhoods my guild was not very affected, but it definitely made a person cautious of spending the time on these housing designs that might just disappear. I think conservatively that I had spent somewhere between $500 and $1000 worth of Station cash purchasing the various things to create cool designs. I have a guild mate that retired from the game that must have spent a few thousand based on the things I saw him place around. Its frustrating that the playerbase in EQ is older than most games, with certainly much higher amounts of disposable income, but there is so little to buy to customize our characters and housing plots. Seems like such a lost opportunity. I understand that we have started to reach a point where new items are eating into a finite amount of memory but I just can't seem to wrap my head around that idea. There is massive progress in the world of media storage every year and memory speed and capacity is increasing just as fast. I would very much love to see a revival of player studio for housing and ornaments.
No, housing isn't dead. It's very useful for storage, gathering, transportation and tradeskills along with being mandatory for trophies. Housing for visual stimulation competes with so many things, instead of watching that video or visiting the featured neighborhood a quick youtube search pulls up many channels and videos including these for related content: https://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialRyanSerhant/featured https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC09jljgpnK3lNrfO9AfnIcg/featured Sunrise Hills allows full camera control and some limited interactivity but the long term appeal of housing is functionality.
Loosing items a couple of years back killed houseing for me, it is now just a dumping ground for the items I get from doing achievements. Still devistated I lost my 2 trout shockers Zatozia gave me.
I am going to circle back and watch this later at home, when I can turn volume up. But have a question... where do the different houses come from?? I've only been able to find two different models for sale by neighborhood vendors, and I'm tired of putting up the same two houses everywhere.
Thanks for the nice comments! Here are a few replies: Maedhros - I've done a few housing photo sessions for the EQResource housing contests, there were so many creative builds! I plan to show some of those pics at the end of Part 4. You and your friend have spent near $1000 each on items? That is some dedication! Bringing back Player Studio would be easy, I am sure one of the talented Designers in these forums could operate the system, if given the chance. But Daybreak obviously isn't concerned about Housing these days. Zamiam - I've got the Part 2 video ready to process, I just need to record the narration. Its hard to schedule time to do that, but I hope to get it finished in a week or so. Kialya - I met Phancy at their place during one of my housing photo tours I also saw the legendary Icesy! Speckle - I'm not sure recommending people skip my video and instead watch RL Housing or Miniature Housing is helping to answer the EQ Housing question. xmPradah - There is the rare LoN house you get from 3 items, called the Hermit's Hideaway. Same exterior but the interior is one room re-textured with a dragon/lava theme. You will see my Hideaway in Part 3. Other houses come from the Collector's Editions, with new exterior/interiors, which include the Tree House, the Ship House, and Bee House ( I forget the real names ). There are better Guilds Halls too but they cost real money. IblistheMage - Yes, I played the Beta of Landmark along with Paul, Nighon, and Nerriko. It had so much potential, combined the best features of EQ Housing and Minecraft, and had a great game engine. I think when Sony/Daybreak pulled the plug on that game, they pretty much gave up on EQ Housing too.
Great video! It's cool to hear some of the history and thought processes behind your designs. So much better than just cluelessly roaming through your plots in game. Must have been nice to have someone to collaborate with on builds and I like that you've been able to memorialize some of your guildmates. Lucky you still have old screenshots. That the plots blend together into the forest works well. Most of my plots are so different, that that sort of overall cohesion is not there. Too bad housing nowadays is mainly utilitarian. The way housing has been cared for in the last several years by Sony and now DBG has been horrible. Add to that, a lot of player interest had to evaporate with the wipes of their plots. Had that happened to mine, I likely wouldn't even be here on the forums, let alone still playing. Housing is the only thing that kept me in the game for a few years. It sucks that old housing posts are all gone, so one cannot even browse through those posts for pics of creations long gone. Just this last month I tried to tour a few old places that sadly aren't there anymore, like most of Beechwoodgrey's plots. So it's great that you are making the videos so that even if your plots disappear, they won't be totally gone. Wish I had it in me to make some videos, but I don't even have a place to store pics of my houses anymore- gave up on Photobucket. Keep up the good work and am looking forward to seeing the next installments!
Thanks Vlad! Yeah its sad the Housing forum was shut down years ago. It certainly didn't help the devout Housing fans. Well I finally got Part 2 finished. Its slightly longer and took a few tricks to fully process. I was able to improve the volume but now its easier to hear my crappy sound recording/editing. Oh well. Enjoy!
@Tsolaes - Really awesome, seriously. I was never into housing before, but this creativity really makes me want to.
Great video! Again, I have to reiterate how good it is to hear the history and the reasoning behind the placements. For example, the piece of the crane that has fallen. Had I just been roaming through, I wouldn't have connected it that w/ the crane. I cannot take any credit, other than passing along info given to me by others, about using the back of that painting for basically a black tile. There probably is so much info that could be/ have been passed by housing vets to anyone new to housing. One example is the Bulwark of Many Portals that looks like a wooden door, but isn't solid so you can actually pass through it. So many clever ideas have been lost due over the years. People that retired and didn't/couldn't upkeep( the old upkeep system didn't let lots stay up for very long and you had to log in periodically). Also the rounds of people losing their plots. At least when the archived forums were still up, one could go through it and occasionally find some pics of some of the early houses and plots, if the links still worked. Alas, even that option is no more. So kudos( that's a good thing, right?) to you for doing these videos!
Other than the specialty houses, there are three house types: 2 three room and a one room. All can be purchased in the Sunrise Hills housing zones from the Indy and Ragthar vendors, but only the three room houses can be obtained by using crowns. What is really sad is that the three room houses look like they should be in a Levittown village rather than anything medieval, and although there are two three room exterior configurations, they were too indifferent to actually have two matching interior configurations. That means half of the three room exterior designs do not match the interior configuration. Everquest had a great opportunity with housing, but it played out like an afterthought and was neglected more than Oliver Twist. Only the efforts of players and player studio creators made housing worthwhile, and even then was relegated to backwater instanced zones that are nothing more than overlarge closets.
Try didn’t even bother to add a housing item to preorder this year. Just the privilege of testing the game for them In their eyes housing is dead
