Gaslaw asks on the forums whether backpacks will be bigger in Wrath of the Lich King, and (kind of surprisingly) Drysc says it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

I guess it's not that surprising-- it does seem like we are carrying more stuff around lately, in terms of quest and rep items, if not just plain old extra gear sets. We've already had lots of ideas on how to fix things, from creating more keychain setups, to just plain coming up with more bag space. But fortunately, Drysc doesn't seem to have just bigger bags in mind-- he seems to have "better stuff in the works."

What that could be, we have no idea. Pack mules? Dimensional suitcases (made, naturally, of sapient pearwood)? Finally, player housing? Drysc says we'll find out soon.

We unfortunately don't know much about what's coming next, but we do know one thing that's scheduled to show up, at least before the next expansion: some sort of housing. All the Blue hints point to guild housing, but player housing is an idea that's been tossed around as well. There's just one problem to MMO housing, however. As Hardcore Casual points out, it often becomes a ghost town.

Back when I played Dark Age of Camelot, I remember visiting the guild housing area only once (the guild I joined was mostly lowbies, and we never had enough cash to buy property of our own), and it was a strange experience-- acres upon acres of customized buildings, all completely and totally empty as far as I could see. There were a few NPCs around (DAoC had a feature where you could have NPCs stand outside your house to sell your crafts while you were gone), but otherwise it was more like an abandoned trailer park than anything else. As HC says, the "IDEA" of housing is great-- you can have your own place to hang out, show off, and build to your heart's content. But in practice, most players would rather be exploring the world Blizzard designed then stuck in a small room that they made themselves.

Now, the obvious solution for this is instancing, and in fact, Blizzard has already foreseen this-- there are currently instance portals in a few cities that have been rumored to serve as either player or guild housing. If instances were used as housing, we'd just all own the same apartment in Stormwind. But you have to balance that against the other feature of housing-- actually showing it off. Wandering around the houses in DAoC was a kind of (lonely) fun, if only to see what other people had created, and with just an instance, all you'd get to see is the inside. It'll be interesting to see how Blizzard balances player-created content (which can sometimes be boring or ugly), with their own interesting design.

Much like many of you, I've been playing WoW since the start. In the two-plus years that have passed, my bank has become a bit cluttered with mementos; tabards, pets, and in the case of my rogue, the entire set of Dungeon Set 2 (or Tier .5) armor. At the time the set was completed it was a real achievement to me and to my small guild. Despite the fact that my rogue also happens to be an enchanter, and I could seriously use the Large Brilliant Shards and Nexus Crystals, I just can't bring myself to shard the set. Never mind that I know I'll only ever wear it again for looks, if that. (Did I mention the collection of festival dresses I have?)

Why? Call me sentimental, but a lot of those items represent gaming milestones to me. Keeping them has meant that I've had to spend free time farming the mats for the 18-slot-bags. It also has made me stay on top of my inventory at all times, which is a good thing in a lot of respects. But there's a reason for the madness. It's something I dream of, and I hope that the Blizzard Devs will consider if (or when) they implement housing...

There's not much new to say about this (Blizzard is still stonewalling on any plans for development), but players are still very interested in getting some form of player housing in the game, and one interesting form of that would be the idea of guild halls, an instance or a place ingame for a guild to make their own.

Drysc gives a standard response on this one: it's a good idea, but there are no plans to implement it or anything like it in the game. But he does encourage discussion on it, and players have some interesting ideas. First and foremost would be a way to recognize the guild's accomplishments ingame-- trophies or heads of defeated bosses on the walls or in the building.

Another purpose of such a place might be a few items of convenience, including a physical guild bank, and maybe even special vendors or profession workspaces. Drysc does say that if Blizzard did create something like this, and if it was guild halls, they wouldn't want to include anything that would take players away from the main game-- if they did put NPCs in the guild halls, it wouldn't likely be anything like trainers or auctioneers that kept players away from the main cities.

Other interesting ideas include guild buyable portals to cities or even instances, an area for PvP-- either within the guild or between guilds, and even a raid signup system or scrimmage area of some kind. All interesting ideas-- what have you got? This is complete and total speculation, but it could be that Drysc is fishing for feedback because Blizzard is poking around at this idea to see if it's viable. If they included a guild hall area in the game, what, within reason of course, would you want to see there?

The good guys over at Curse Gaming have pointed to a Jeff Kaplan interview at MTV.com, in which he talks about comparisons to Second Life, how the Sword of 1,000 Truths didn't make it to the expansion, and the idea of player housing!

They caught him on the phone at the BC Launch at Universal CityWalk in LA (where, strangely enough, he's being asked to sign things as "Tigole"), and it seems as though the interviewer doesn't quite have a grasp on online gaming-- Kaplan is asked how Second Life compares to WoW, and as he says, while Second Life is great, it's not really a competitor to what Blizzard has built. There's a huge difference between Blizzard-created content, and the user-created stuff. He also namechecks the Starcraft and Diablo universes (not the first time we've heard those hinted at).

But the most interesting part of the article is what Kaplan says about player housing: "I think housing can take 'World of Warcraft' to the next level." That's definitely not a "no" to the idea, and frankly it's much more credit than I ever thought Blizzard would give to creating an in-game customizable area for players. While he does say it's an idea they had in the beginning (the huge inaccessible instance in Stormwind was rumored to be a player housing area at one time), Kaplan also confirms that if they're going ahead with it at all, they won't release anything until they have a "Blizzard-quality feature." So while there's no way we can expect it in the next patch (or even the next expansion), it's very interesting news that the gears appear to be turning over at Blue HQ about player housing.