I think the most important thing about player housing is make it practical! Too many games have housing as only a novelty feature, so quite a number of people lose interest in it fast, and for those that remain, residences are only a status symbol.
This could be done in a number of ways, I think. The easiest (and probably best, at least in my opinion) way would of course be severly (but realisticly) limit player inventory size. This way housing becomes a sort of static \"base of operations\" for the player. A centralized point for item storage, quests, everything! And the prime way to accomplish this is to make residency a requirement! I\'m not talking about requiring people to buy houses, but instead requiring them to maintain a relatively constant point of living. Say there\'s an Adventurer\'s Guild in every large town that offers a very small amount of item storage and persistance for free. For a small daily fee, they could instead reside in a room at the Inn, where they recieve greater item storage, and some of the perks of an Inn (Perhaps quests provided by Inn staff?) Or instead, they could live in a friend\'s house, or their own. I think the matter isn\'t what people live in, its where they live.
And another potential feature of this residency is the persistance that a place of residence provides. Residencies could be used as mailboxes, where players can leave messages or items for offline players; or perhaps act as another means of questing and RP, imagine portions of quests handled through the mail.
If you\'ve ever played the MUD Core 2651, then you might know a thing or two about practical living. In CoreMUD, all players are offered a free apartment, where they get storage, shower, and television, three things not offered anywhere else (except for showers, but still, the apartment is a much more convient place than the sanitarium after a hard day\'s work in the mines). This is practical housing, as opposed to novel housing.
Just my two tria; now that I look at this, its probably a stupid post...
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As for what kind of house I\'d want, a small shack with enough room to comfortably fit me and all my gear (Alchemy/Spell ingredients, equipment, etc.) would suit me fine. I\'d have enough left over to buy most of Yliakum, me thinks.
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