SWTOR Housing = Boring Rift Dimensions.

Memories ...

Even a few offline RPGs have it. More or less.
In Divine Divinity (name not the dev's choice but the then-publisher's choice) you could buy a house and kind of decorate it with your looted stuff. Well, not exactly decorate, since real decorating was never really built into the game. The devs got an cease & desist letter by the Rift makers for their second game, Beyond Divinity, because they had originally named the game "Riftrunner", and not "Beyond Divinity".

Like in Real Life. Venice, for example, lots of ghost town, if I interpret things correctly.

In the Alps there are a few ghost towns as well (not many, though, only a few, 1 or 2), in the Gold Rush area as well, in Africa, too. Angkor Wat has been a ghost town. Machupicchu as well.

Hey, don't knock basement living. I live on the third floor facing north west... I got sunshine straight in my window almost all day.
Sucks when you're trying to play games or watch a movie

(thank goodness for plain black blinds)

Yes, and in real life there is also permadeath.
Are we really going to compare to real life here?

Probably shouldn't, since in real life, death is permanent.

I wouldn't. The last thing I want in this game is 14yr old kids making missions or (especially) PvP maps for me. Leave the mission design to the pros. I've played plenty of modded games in my life that I know that a decent quest/map/mission is an extreme rarity...90% of player made stuff is utter crap.

^^this lol, I used ot do modding for battlefront 1 and 2, and pretty much 9 out 10 of player maps where bad and the tenth was often only mediocre, the few great maps where ones where the creator spent half a year or so creating it, and in SWTOR I doubt your going to find players willing to do that.

Your house might not be a social gathering point. Interestingly enough, they're releasing Guild Flagships, too.

Meh. I've never understood the interest in player housing. Every MMO I've played that had it is usually just a bunch of abandoned neighborhoods mostly occupied by houses owned by players that long ago quit playing. They're creepy ghost towns. I'll buy a house for the storage ESPECIALLY if there's legacy storage, so that's cool. But I'd prefer not to have to travel to my housing for legacy storage.

But as much as I find housing to be lame, I fully acknowledge that this game is NOT designed to my personal preferences and I know that there are quite a few players that really like housing. A lot of my guildmates are very excited about it. So I guess its good its coming. Mostly I'm stoked about legacy storage.

Seeing tendency in game "how hard" is everything to get, do you realize how much grind involves get guild flagship. Have you already forgotten how Bioware over do everything. Best examples are latest expansions: Makeb, Oricon, CZ. Even getting HK-51 is ridiculous, personally I can not be bothered.

As for housing I personally don't see any practical use for housing, every player already has personal ship, plus fleet will be always #1 hub in game.