Player Studio Houses Coming! Big Decorating Sale Too!

Greetings to our decorators – existing and potential,

These are very exciting times for passionate decorators! On April 2, when we start Open Beta for Game Update 66 “Scars of the Awakened,” we will also be inviting you to test our Player Studio House category that allows you to buy and sell decorated houses of all types, shapes, and sizes in our marketplace! Sellers earn a real portion of the profits!

We are working on details right now to make decorating simple to do and test. For example, your new character copies to Beta will include the houses you have on your server so setting up homes to sell should be easy.

We are working on a lot of details behind the scenes to get Player Studio Houses ready too, including a new Web page that will allow you to pre-qualify to sell houses through Player Studio (if you’re not already qualified through Player Studio) so you can get ready to sell houses when the category launches. We will let you know as soon as pre-qualifying is live!

Our goal right now is to launch Player Studio Houses with our game update on April 30!

And if you want to get a head start on decorating and supplies, we are running a pretty big sale on decorating items and houses starting this Friday at 12pm PDT and ending next Thursday, March 28 at 12pm PDT (right before our EQII webcast!). All decorating items will be at least 50% off. Some will be discounted a lot more, like building blocks! Prestige Houses will also get a price break over the week!

We will be releasing more details as we get closer to Beta and the launch of the Player Studio Houses category. Ready, set, decorate!

Holly Longdale
Producer, EQII

Really looking forward to this update!!

ooOOOOO! That sounds cool! Better get to decoratin'! Mamma needs a new pair of boots!

Now this is a feature I can't wait to test and try out! Thank you very much!!

Woo I can finally login to post...

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*reads*....

*thuds* I gotta get busy!

Will the houses that we can sell also be ones that were made with the Layout Editor ?

Hang on... you have to register with Player Studio (with no small bit of rigamarole, I understand), to be able to sell/transfer decorated houses? Just clarifying.

Does that also mean that houses are only sold for station cash?

Well I was excited for a very brief moment, until I realized we won't be able to design new houses... What a waste. I'll never get my Iksar style housing. (Sebilis/Charasis/etc)

Yes, the houses will be sold for Station Cash in our marketplace and in order to be a seller you will have to qualify through Player Studio (submit a W-9) so you can be paid your share of profits if your home sells. Anyone can buy a house, though.

Specific details on the program and pre-qualifying will be on the web page when we finalize all the details.

Holly Longdale
Producer, EQII

I see the other side of this, perhaps because I have no idea how to even start a player studio project. But I am worried this is going to knock out those decorators who actually do this for people in the game for plat .. fun,, and love of decorating. I put myself in a players place and see:
"Oooh ,, great a house already decorated, I don't have to ask around and get someone to do it,, yeah I'll buy that. "
Carpenters.. another hit,, just buy off SC.
Nope, I feel dread, when reading this. However, I am sure those elite few who do the player studio are happy.
I am a 9 yr vet and I am usually happy about most things SOE does but as a blossoming carpenter and decorator,, not so happy.
<walks away sad>

Well, you know your business, but I suspect that this will rather severely reduce the amount that this feature gets used, if instead of individual decorators selling individual houses to individual patrons, we have cookie-cutter decorated houses sold by SoE contractors for station cash. Up until this morning, I for one had been awaiting this feature, but now its in the bin of stuff I dont expect ever to use

I think how much this affects the decorating market will depend on a LOT of factors, including:
Is the predecorated home only available once or indefinitely?
Is the furniture in the predecorated home permanently set, or can the new buyer redecorate or even take items from that home and move them to other houses they own?
Does the decorator lose that home and all included furniture on that character when they put it up for sale?
Can the buyer preview the home and/or see a complete list of included items before purchasing?
How will the value of the furnishings affect the cost of the pre-decorated house?
Whether someone has more SC or plat to spend?
If a person has already bought a prestige home, then buys a decorated home of the same type, does the decorated home replace the previously-bought blank home, since prestige homes are one per type per character?
How will predecorated homes handle heirloom and no-trade furniture items within?
What about mounts that have been converted into house items?
Are only Marketplace homes eligible, or any prestige homes, or can any house in any city be sold via player's studio?

I mean, depending on these, I can see a fairly big market in Skyblade Skiffs or houses containing limited-release mounts or pets. Heck, I've two baby dragon house pets from the original EQII CE - if I keep the originals, I'll quite happily put up a home that includes them for other people to buy. And I might be willing to buy a home someone else put up that included other baby dragons I don't have.

I created a multi-house dropdown for each of the accessor doors so that you can now stack houses on the same door - up to the housing limit, of course.

Our designers have a list that they can add items to that they feel should be restricted to not be sold with the house. If a house has any of these, it will fail to submit until they're removed. Aside from that, any items in the house at time of submission will be present on the other side, regardless of no-trade and heirloom.

It's good to see that SOE is putting time and energy into building the housing features.... but, I do hope you'll take this farther to include the designing of new homes by player studio. I'm more interested in the variety that would bring to prestige home models. I can decorate myself or commission a custom job by one of the many highly talented decorators on my server.

I guess my question has to do with the furniture itself. Let's say I sell a "shell" of a home, a simple tudor on an Island prestige lot. Now, this is made from (made up number) a hundred tiles. Someone buys this "shell" for SC. Now, where do the tiles come from? Currently, when we sell layouts for plat the customer must have the items in their home or moving crate for this to work. Does this mean the items are created of nothing? If not, that means that you're tacking on preqs to buying homes: "you must have 1500sc, and X items".

Just a little confused!

Yes, the tiles get created, but they are created as virtual items that cannot be taken out of the house. To preserve the item limits on the house, you can hide unwanted items to make them not count towards your item total.

Thanks for the quick reply, Terrogaunt. One more question if you don't mind -

Is it too early to go into detail about this? Like, I can hide the part of the home I bought for SC (let's say just the outside again) to not count against item count, but anything extra I add (like a pool outside) will still count?

I'll for sure be Beta testing all of this GU, at any rate. Excited!

Yep yep. You hide on a per-item basis. There will be some new UI and a button for you to toggle whether or not a virtual item is rendering in the world. When the particular item isn't rendering, it will show as hidden in your item list and not count towards the item totals.

That's actually a really nice feature. Thank you, sir! Can't wait to test this.