Old ideas, new spin...maybe...

[Under the moon]

Before you wave your magic wand and set me afire, let me say that I spent the last three hours Searching the forum and reading posts on the subjects I wish to expand upon.
  First, portals and instant transportation.  The fear that this will ruin PS is well founded.  However, players may have the need or wish to get to their destination quickly.  So here is my solution: Draw inspiration From Robert thJordan?s ?The Eye of the World? (a must read book) and create a form of the Ways.
  Imagine this... The sting of an assassin?s Shendar Beetle poisons a wealthy merchant?s daughter and she has only hours to live.  In desperation, he  calls on the aid of your group of heroes to find the only known cure , a four days journey away in the far off Cliffs of Asuran.  It looks hopeless.  BUT WAIT!!  There is still the Ways!  Asuran is only a half-hour away by the Ways.  You know, however, that as the distances are compressed, so too are the dangers.  Are you willing to risk the suffocating  darkness, fighting  off half seen nightmarish creatures, and the very real threat of having your soul ripped out by the ?Black Wind?, or do let the girl die. The choice is yours....
  That is my solution.  Make ?portals? posible, but also a thing to fear.  The stronger a person is, and the more they use Ways, the more evil they draw, so the \'Ways\' would never become safe.  Wecome to your personal nightmare...

  Second, farming and housing.  I suggest having farms and houses off the map and/or even off-line.  Lets say you enter the city or town your house/farm is ?located? in or around and type ?home?.  You are taken out of the game and enter your ?house? or a ?Harvest Moon? type mini game.  Your home would be an extension of your character, keeping your trophies (Nice troll head!), costumes (Does this make me look fat?), and personal decor (Loooove the pink curtains.).  If you are home, others could visit by typing  ?visit/PinkHammer?.  Also, thieves could steal with ?rob/Doomstayer(or random)? unless you had the proper alarm scroll.  And bankers could evict you to a hovel if you owed them money.

[Altharion]

teleportation is stress, if you need to travel in haste then buy or rent a carridge/riding animal.

the housing and farm thing has some few holes in it.

[kronon]

I think it\'s a good idea if that wind is also there .

[Madouc]

about the housing thing.

you might place it off-map, but you can\'t place it off server.
else people could be adding tuff to their houses oncontrolled. like: \"look i found a \'Uber Hammer Of Doom\' in my closet\"
and the houses itself should be accessable via the city map and not just via a typed command i think.

[Seytra]

Thw whole idea of housing is that is integrated into the game, ans therefore into the map. It would be incredibly unrealistic if you wouldn\'t be able to see the houses. If it were this way, there would be only invisible cities, as you would simply use /visit tavern or whatever for everything.

Also, the teleportation thing has been throughly discussed, as well as the idea of something like the ways (but you already know that). However, the example you used doesn\'t really justify it, since this quest would be a result of teleportation being available, and not the other way. The way I see it, there is nothing that requires teleportation, as well as there being nothing that forbids it. I, too, think that teleportation can be successfully integrated into an MMORPG, but it\'s the designers\' decision to attempt it, and so far they have consistently refused to.
I\'ve been advocating teleportation, but as I have said everything that I had to say, without the devs changing their mind (probably they have\'t even looked at it), I really don\'t see a benefit in continuing to waste my time on it, especially as I don\'t think it\'s essential to have teleporting.

[Under the moon]

You may have noticed that I did not include \'treasures\' in my list of home decor, for just that reason.  Your house is more of a statement of who you are, along the same lines as body art.  Anything you have there would be superfluous to the game and \'hacks\' would have no efect on the game.  It would be more like a chat room that says to other players \"this is who I am\".  It would not even have to be a 3D space.  And it would free up PS\'s servers.

[Adeli]

Houses = prestige.
They need to be seen, they need to be 3d, they need to be customisable, not a chat room, but a house! For your character, not for yourself.