Player housing

Player housing, or Guild housing, are theoretical features that would give players a place to store items and have a place to call home. Introducing housing into the game could have many primary and secondary effects.

Potential types of player housing

 * Common building or room with a private (maybe expandable) storage area similar to a bank.
 * Instanced building or room that allows a player to enter their "house".
 * ...and party members or guild members.
 * Separate building or room with a "lockable" door that only the player has a "key" to, but other players can enter when the door is open.
 * Private area (instanced or not) that allows "furnishing".
 * Wall items (murals, paintings, wall hangings, etc.)
 * Floor items (carpets, rugs, stains, etc.)
 * Non-container furniture (chairs, sofas, tables, etc.)
 * Container furniture (cabinets, chests, shelves, Wardrobes, etc.)
 * Miscellaneous stuff (books, bottles, candles, papers, scrolls, etc.)
 * A soulbound item similar to a Hearthstone that transports you to your house.

The player-driven debate
Throughout the years, the players have discussed and debated how the features of Player Housing (PH) or Guild Housing (GH) could be implemented within WoW. Most are in agreement that the Housing feature will inevitably make it into the game. Here are the arguments:

Reasons to add housing for players

 * While banks are good for storing the things you don't need right now, a demand for displaying the accrued equipment or special items has not been addressed directly.
 * Players have requested gear racks so that a complete armor set could be displayed properly.
 * A players house could help remove the clutter of one's inventory, provide a meeting space that friends can visit, and increase the in-game feel of WoW.
 * It would be ideal for roleplaying and taking care of your house would add a whole new dimension to the game.

Reasons to not add player housing

 * The development costs and added storage requirements for player housing could be detrimental to the continuous demand of developer's time and the infrastructure's resources.
 * Player-based housing only creates more management and frustration. Players already forget important items and gear in the bank.  Adding PH will force them to remember where they stored the items (though a "Warehouse" addon, similar to the one Carbonite provides, could help to fix some of the confusion)
 * Adding storage space within a house duplicates city-based services (the bank)
 * The lore implications of the background of the character changes from its current background as a nomadic hero.

Reasons for guild housing

 * Guilds need a common meeting place. Guild Halls would be perfect
 * Guilds need help fostering a sense of cohesiveness and loyalty, providing player housing within a guild-based, instanced housing community would do that.
 * Housing provides the developers with an excellent opportunity to add to the professions.
 * Guild vs Guild PVP has been in demand, GH provides an opportunity to implement that.
 * Guild Housing can become an important recruiting tool, as one-day passes could be crafted.

Reason to not add guild housing

 * Allowing guilds to congregate inside guild-only instanced areas will remove those guilded players from the major cities. The end result could turn the major cities into Ghost towns.
 * If GH was implemented in a way that the city's services are duplicated inside the instanced GH area, guilded players will have another incentive not to leave their specialized area.
 * The developer hours and resourced dedication aren't worth the reward/detriment that GH causes.

Housing's effect on professions
The advent of Player and/or guild housing in WoW, provides the developers an opportunity to add new professions and augment the current professions with more recipes. The mechanism for acquiring housing could be a mass resource turn in. Implementing housing in this way will promote the crafting economy as the resource gathering will have to be repeated for new and rerolled characters or if you want to change your house-style.

Every profession can be augmented. Here's a list of new items that could be added:

Alchemy

 * Large potion powders to apply to communal fountains
 * Special scents for decorative smoke

Blacksmithing

 * Coat-of-Arm pieces (armor assembled to look like stationary guards)
 * Cannon casings
 * Spikes, hinges, other door pieces.
 * Beer Mugs
 * Furniture (eg: tables/chairs barring the potential addition of Carpentry as a profession)

Enchanting

 * enchants for stationary objects.
 * portkeys to take you from one end to another

Engineering

 * Robot guards
 * motion sensors, behavior components, arms, legs, chest, head
 * arrow shooters
 * door locks

Jewelcrafters

 * Crown Jewels, Thrown jewels, jeweled cups

Leatherworking

 * Rugs, Canvas, and rope
 * Tanned Banners

Tailoring

 * Banners and Flags
 * tablecloth, runners, chair decorations
 * specialized guild-only garments for cloth wearers

Current status
While there are models and spells in the game files related to player housing, these are more likely from the alpha version of World of Warcraft but never made it live.

During the Gamescom 2010, Tom Chilton declared that "housing will be introduced to World of Warcraft some time right after "never"."