LOTRO Housing: Everything you could possibly want to know!

I’m hooked when it comes to MMORPG housing.  DAOC and Star Wars Galaxies had the greatest implementations of any MMORPG housing attempt I have ever seen and EQ2 didn’t do so badly either.  I love owning property and decorating it.  There’s something amazing added to the immersion of a game when you don’t feel as though you are a guest in the world anymore.  It’s because of this passion for housing that I am excited to share with you all a great compendium of LOTRO housing knowledge.  I found this information compiled in one place on Turbine’s official LOTRO boards in a topic called “What we know about housing”.  Enjoy!

• Instanced Neighborhoods
• Multiple Housing Sizes
• The House itself will be buyable, not buildable
• First Area Being Developed is in Bree
• Ability to Decorate
• Items for Houses can be made via Crafting (New recipes)
• Houses will have extra storage
• Friends will be allowed to enter
• To Be Released w/Book 11
• Possible “Equip” Slots for House Upgrades
• Raid Housing Trophies
• Anyone who wants a house will be able to get one
• No Kinship-only Neighborhoods
• Possible ability to set entry Permissions
• 30 Houses per Neighborhood

Read More for an enormous compendium of LOTRO Housing info! Clicky! ->
*Update*
When you approach a neighborhood, you will be presented with an entrance much akin to other landscape instances. When you attempt to move through the entrance, you will receive a UI panel with all currently available neighborhoods (limited to specific locations – the Breeland Neighborhood Entrance will only give you access to the Breeland Neighborhood Instances). From there, you can choose which ever one you desire to enter.
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p… #post1020546

Each neighborhood instance will consist of 30 houses across three tiers (one of the tiers being Kinship). As a neighborhood fills up, new ones will come online automatically.
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p… #post1020604

Sprite – *Jables-* What are the designs going to be for housing? aka did you plan on how much storage or what they look like?
Scenario – We have a fairly complex design system which involves locking Orion in a room with an angry nest of hornets… er…
Scenario – Housing, like any large scale system, has taken a lot of planning and development to bring it online. Each aspect of the system (from storage, to permission, to visuals) has gone through concept, development and iteration.
http://lotro.stratics.com/content/hoclog/hoc10.php

Sprite – *Lever* With player housing officially announced, is it going to be based on instanced kinship “neighborhoods”, or just one big instanced lot for the whole server?
Orion – There are currently no plans for kinship only neighborhoods. Kinships can buy their own houses for communal use. We might look into kinship neighborhoods in the future. Neighborhoods are instances, and not open to the whole server.
http://lotro.stratics.com/content/hoclog/hoc10.php

Sprite – *Loup* In book XI,is there only a small amount of houses,or is there enough houses for guarantee that each player can own his own house?
Tens – In Book XI we should have enough houses available so that every player that wants one will get one.
Tens – And, yes, that’s alot of houses!
http://lotro.stratics.com/content/hoclog/hoc10.php

For you folks at the other end of the spectrum, I *do* also happen to be working on raid housing trophies and similar content – but that’s a matter for another discussion. 🙂
http://lotro.turbine.com/article/394

*End latest Update*

“In the fall we’re going to be looking at housing again,” Mersky said. “I don’t have many details to give you, though.” He mentioned that the team was still finalizing housing details, but that Turbine would possibly hold an event in the fall to “give people a preview.”
Will housing be instanced? Mersky couldn’t say. He did say, “We can’t have tract housing in the Shire!” Then he laughed and added, “We’re thinking that in the way a character has slots, housing will also have a vault with slots. You can earn stuff, say a carpet, and then you’d put it in your carpet slot and it would show up in the room.”
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/9076
LBeff – *Boomheadshot-25* my question is. how is player housing going on. could you give us a few insider hints on how its gonna be?
LOTRO_Scenario – Housing is coming along great. In fact, we broke ground today on one of our first neighborhoods to the south of bree-town.
LOTRO_Scenario – As we get further along in the development of housing, we’ll have more information to give you.
http://community.codemasters.com/for…d.php?t=197393
[20:11] I would like to know how the player housing will be made. Do you have to build the house? And will there be new professions to do so?
[20:11] Hi Chanelle! You won’t have to build the house, but you’ll be able to purchase it – and decorate it too!
http://lotro.stratics.com/content/hoclog/hoc9.php
LBeff – *Zanelas* We already know that you are planning on implementing player housing with Book 11. Can you tell us how this will be implemented? Will it be instanced rooms or instanced communities?
Rhidden – Housing will be in instanced communities that will have multiple house sizes.
http://lotro.stratics.com/content/hoclog/hoc9.php
LBeff – *afira1* ok so housing….will we be able to decorate it..put our items we gain in game in it for decoration,,also use it for storage and have a vendor maybe?? also have ppl over to have parties in it?? thx
LOTRO_Scenario – RE: afira1/Housing – That’s a lot of little questions. Let see… Yes, you will be able to decorate your house. What exactly you will be able to use to decorate the house is still being determined at this time. Yes, you will be able to use it for storage. And, if you want to have people over to party, you will certainly be able to do that.
http://lotro.stratics.com/content/hoclog/hoc9.php
[20:56] Will we be able to craft items for our house , for an instance woodworker creating beds, tables, chairs etc
[20:57] Yes. You can expect that most, if not all, of the crafting professions will get recipes to produce decorations for housing.
[20:58] Tables, chairs, etc. should all be covered
http://community.codemasters.com/for…d.php?t=197393
And on top of all this, they told us they will definitely be introducing player housing in Book 11, which should be available sometime this fall. In the meantime, you should definitely take a look at what’s new in Lord of the Rings Online. That is, unless you’re chicken.
http://e3.gamespot.com/story.html?si…ories;title;23
Shack: I know you haven’t announced anything specific about player housing, but could you share some of the possibilities you are considering in terms of how you plan to integrate that into the current game? Will they be instanced houses inside a sort of demarcated “player housing zone”?
Jeff Anderson: Well, it’s something that we’re currently kind of still working at and designing, but there’s a couple of different things that we do know. There will be some cross-section of landscape housing and instance housing, and I think it depends on whether it’s for a kinship, or whether it’s an individual player. When we talk about Lord of the Rings, we’re talking about a really successful game right now, where we have maybe over 10,000 people per world. And when you start doing the math, that’s a lot of homes to have on the landscape. You don’t want it to feel that it’s gone from Middle Earth to suburban sprawl. [Laughs] So we need to kind of maintain some balance there, and to achieve that, let people have homes and feel like they’ve got that part of Middle Earth. Instancing is a way to do that. But we’ve come up with some pretty innovative ways to do instancing as groups, so that you’re not just alone in your house. I think we’re going to be doing neighborhoods, and letting people have multiple homes in the instanced area so that you can actually have that sense of publicness to the space.
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2007…ffanderson_1.x
Shack: I assume the player will be able to do standard things like customize the appearance and contents of their house?
Jeff Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. We want to give players the ability to do upgrades and visual appearance upgrades. But you know, we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about that over the next couple of months too. Players love housing. I think of housing as kind of your second avatar, because when you’re in the game as your character, everyone gets to see who you are, but then when you log out you’re gone. Homes are one of those persistent avatars that exist even when you’re not online, and people can see by looking at your home the amount of energy that you’ve placed into it, the commitment you’ve had to the game. You can express a lot of your persistence through that.
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2007…ffanderson_1.x