MauvaisOeil said:I'll disagree firmly with you on this one. Instanced housing is a Roleplay killer, as it seems like it multiplicate avaliable zones, but it ends up as a trap. Instanced housing fragment roleplay into non public zones, unaccessibles if you lack the knowledge/possibility to join them. It's breaking the world and map into non-public areas and end up slowly killing "wild roleplay" months after months. It's WAY better to have a big world with a lot of open spaces usable by players as unofficial guild halls, than an infinity of personnalized places that will either be empty, or used for private roleplays most of the time. The only moment where instanced housing is "barely usefull", is like for FFXIV, when the world is lacking depth in size or interiors, which leave no choices to opt for the worst of two evils.
I have extensive RP experience in the two MMOs with incredibly elaborate instanced personal housing (Rift and WildStar), and I have to say you're wrong. Housing plots are largely left flagged for the public, and open plots for taverns or other locales are advertised frequently on the RP community website, on the official forums, on the RP community discord, and in game. RPers know to seek out RP communities within MMOs (a simple google search pulls up tons of info, or just asking in chat in-game), so it's extremely easy to learn about regular RP events and whatnot. Not once have I felt like RP was more fragmented than in, say, WoW with its lack of instanced housing. If I want RP, I know exactly where to go looking in all three of those games, and it takes very little effort to find it.
WildStar's housing has led to some of the most immersive in-game RP experiences I have ever had. It's wonderful.