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Far more people signed up than expected for a narrow event not focused on combat, where most of our missions and raids aren’t available.  The vast majority of participants report that they had fun, despite the bugs that need to be fixed; that’s the main measure of success.  Player comments have been very positive, beyond the usual little hiccups and suggestions for improvements.

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91% of players enjoyed the freedom and creativity of SoH housing. Players praised the option to place anything anywhere, without being limited by hooks. This also led to requests for better placement control. Players also praised the ability to edit many of the objects available.

People had a roughly even split of requests for different kinds of new props and items. 56% of players said that just 1-2x the current number of props would be enough for launch, and we may end up with more than that many at launch. Similarly, the variety of layout and customization of décor was praised, with requests for even more variety ranging from pre-designed homes with furnishings to more layouts of larger sizes to creating new layouts by connecting or creating individual rooms. Obviously, some of these ideas aren’t easy to implement, but you can expect to see many suggestions added to the game in the coming months.

Common requests also included a 3rd person view while editing, a way to invite other players to visit one’s house, improved UI, and in-game tutorials. These tutorials will be optional since many other players commented how simple and easy-to-use the system was. We aspire to make a game where everyone feels this way; we plan to add something to address every one of these requests, and the rest of the housing system will also expand over time.

This Beta was the first one where we sent all of you to Steam, and that worked out very well. The Steam Launcher and patching system is excellent, so that was a clear upgrade from our process in other Betas. But we had a new problem: Yahoo and a few other ISPs kept blocking the emails we sent out with Beta keys. We were able to get keys to those who contacted Customer Service, but in the four-day event, the scope of the problem was not entirely clear until the end. This is not how we want to run Betas, so we are searching for a solution to this issue. Since some people were excluded from this Beta, we’re going to run Housing Beta Part 2 within 60 days so that anyone who missed part 1 can try it out and experience the improved player housing.

The survey results also illustrate a very wide range of play styles. Some people like having a different base for each character, while others want just one base that all their characters can share. A few even want to own several bases at once with each character! Apparently, some of our testers desire a real estate empire. It’s an intriguing concept, for sure.

We observed a lot of different things being done, too – some players joined the Housing Beta just to play the Iris Arc again! We’re also pleased to see that people still like playing with our character creator; it has some new costume pieces now compared to previous Betas. But the vast majority of Beta participants expressed at least some interest in housing, evenly split be-tween those who care a lot about it, and those who say it’s a nice feature but not a main focus. It’s clear that there’s a lot of demand for housing in SoH. Best of all, 67% of players said that our system will be among the best in the MMO industry if we implement some fixes and ideas from the Beta, and we will certainly do so.

Once again, thank you for participating in the Housing Beta. We hope you had fun. You can look forward to Part 2 in July as we get SoH ready to launch.