Player housing is finally coming to World of Warcraft after 20 years in the upcoming Midnight expansion, and I went hands-on with the new feature at Blizzard’s Boston office earlier this week. Despite experiencing an early, incomplete development build, the housing system’s capabilities have thoroughly impressed me. This new avenue for rewards provides yet another carrot on a stick to keep players like me returning to Azeroth.
In fact, after returning home from my session, I promptly reinstalled World of Warcraft to begin catching up on the latest expansion, The War Within, so I’m fully prepared for the long-requested feature. However, Blizzard tells me owning a home in Azeroth is a simple, low-cost effort — even new, inexperienced players should be able to afford a house soon after leaving the starting area. While I might retroactively unlock rewards by completing quests I’ve missed, there are no requirements I need to worry about satisfying before Blizzard introduces its neighborhoods.
“If you come in on day one and say, ‘I really want a house in the Horde map,’ we’ll get you there pretty quickly. We want to get you a house you like […] and into a neighborhood with people you like—whether those are your friends, guild mates, or just people that vaguely align with the type of player you are,” Principal Designer Jesse Kurlancheek says.
Neighborhoods, each hosting roughly 50 plots of land, are instanced and persistent. Your neighbors won’t change unless they choose to move away. Alliance neighborhoods feature biomes reminiscent of Westfall, Duskwood, and Elwynn Forest, among others. The Horde can purchase land in environments similar to Durotar’s redrock landscapes, the Tauren’s mesas, and coastlines where Trolls typically reside.
Blizzard doesn’t answer most questions related to neighborhood activities, external decorations, or how mounts, pets, and other collectibles might interact with those features. Notably, Kurlancheek does not envision neighborhoods like subdivisions; instead, he reiterates that the team wants to help players realize unique homes, inside and out.
“We’re still figuring out what game functionality to include, but it’s important we don’t associate player power with housing. You won’t get a stove that gives you +5 cooking or anything like that. If we do [make it interactive], it’ll be just a stove you can use,” Kurlancheek tells me.
Adding rooms or interior decorations works just as you’d expect: select the object from the asset library and drop it onto the floor or hang it on the wall. Additionally, you can enter Advanced Mode to scale, rotate, and position the asset using gizmos – the colorful shapes representing X, Y, and Z axes in 3D software engines – to situate it wherever you like easily. Gravity does not affect building components, so players can presumably create floating platforms or kitbash items to create new assets.
For example, I designed a small tavern with elements from Orgrimmar, Frostwolf, and Pandaren art sets. While the build’s asset library didn’t have many cooking appliances, I obscured half the mesh of a campfire pauldron inside of a Pandaren bar table to simulate an active stovetop. I complemented the fixture with cheeseboards, beverage steins, and a large keg before bringing it all together with stone floors and wall textures you might find in an Orcish establishment.
“You’ll get decorations for your house the same way you get items in the rest of World of Warcraft. You can get them from questing, raiding, Mythic+ dungeons, and achievements,” Kurlancheek says. “It’s really exciting having a brand new rewards vector that’s completely orthogonal to everything, because now we can incentivize players that may not have wanted to do other content.”
Both old and new quests may offer decorations upon completion, so returning players are likely to obtain many retroactive rewards when logging in for the first time after the expansion drops. With 20 years’ worth of content to consider, there are going to be many decorations available at launch, with more coming later as Blizzard updates older assets for implementation. While the functionality wasn’t ready for my visit, players can discover new items to unlock using a similar menu to how they currently search for equipment transmogs.
“There are plans in place for people to be able to see items and know how they can obtain them, so that they can search for and find them. We’re also providing a [decor] starter pack with a wide variety when you get your house,” Game Producer Rachel Bussone says. “If you’re someone who hasn’t played much before, haven’t gotten a lot of previous achievements, and you’re worried that you won’t have anything at the start, we’ll have a lot of stuff available.”
Despite essential tools like a duplicate button still missing, the early glimpse of player housing Blizzard gave me left me very excited for the future of World of Warcraft. I’d still love to see the inclusion of non-uniform mesh scaling and custom light sources, but the building tool provides deep customization in an easy-to-understand package. I cannot wait to own a home in Azeroth — it’s surely cheaper than the real thing.
Disclosure: Activision Blizzard covered flight and hotel accommodations to Boston. Game Informer’s editorial team proudly remains impartial, professional, and committed to the truth in all forms of our coverage.