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Player Housing - First thoughts

· 11 min read
Marlamin
Marlamin
Parrot

Huzzah! Blizzard released their first blog post talking about Player Housing! They explained the design pillars of player housing that they're keeping in mind while designing the system, as well as some other bits. I have a lot of thoughts, so I wanted to write up this blog post instead of making 40 posts on BlueSky. I was already going to make a player housing speculation blog post at some point, so I just collapsed that idea into this one and put all the fun future speculation bits at the end/in future posts.

A short recap​

You should have read the Blizz post, but I'll summarize my interpretation below. Feel free to skip ahead.

Design pillars​

The three design pillars they are working off:

  • Highly customizable; easy tooling yet allowing for fine-grained detail/changes
  • Social first; Encourages but doesn't require interacting, progressing and playing with friends
  • Evergreen feature; Has its own roadmap, stays around and is supported indefinitely

They also note wanting to make it accessible (low entry barrier) as well as try to scale with player interest so you can spend minutes or hours a day on it without getting bored.

Zoning​

  • Two zones at launch:
    • Alliance zone; Elwynn Forest inspired, traces of Westfall/Duskwood. (Concept art)
    • Horde zone; Durotar inspired, traces of Azshara. (Concept art)
  • Lots of work to make new zones
  • They don't want to spread out the players too much
  • More zones coming post-launch

Shop​

  • There will be a shop, but...
  • ..most are decorations/customizations should be available through normal gameplay..
  • ..with only some things on the shop as well, similar to how it works for transmogs/pets/mounts.

Accessibility​

  • No high purchase requirements
  • No lotteries
  • No upkeep/sub requirement to keep house
  • Houses are shared in warband, characters can visit eachothers houses
  • Decoration/customizations are shared between characters

Neighborhoods​

  • Public neighborhoods; server community based
  • Private neighborhoods; custom group based, e.g. friends, guilds or whatever
  • Roughly 50 plots/neighborhood
  • Neighborhoods are persistent, your neighbors will stay our neighbors unless they move

First thoughts​

Design pillars​

Loving the high customizability goal. I'm hoping that "The gamut of decor options spans not just the cultures of Azeroth but the many expansions of World of Warcraft as well." means that we'll be able to use various doodad sets inside of our houses (more on those assets in the speculation bit later). Given my technical, datamining and recently modding history with the game, I'm very curious as to how they're going to tackle it editor wise as that is quite genuinely going to make or break the feature. Blizzard has a ton of inspiration they can take from other things here, even from inside the WoW community.

Going off concept art they do seem to want to stick to the exterior of the houses being theme-appropriate, but hopefully that restriction is far less prevalent when it comes to the interior of our houses. The interior concept art does appear to pretty much be Alliance or Horde as well. They specifically call the Alliance decor "Folk" and Horde decor "Rugged", instead of using the racial names, so that's interesting.

Speculation: The accidentally shipped Lua file does also mention Generic and Opulent decor themes. Generic could be genuinely generic things like e.g. the Warcraft Rumble statues from the trailer. Opulent is a different word for luxurious/rich and given the goblins getting a good amount of new assets with that theme in 11.1, maybe that one is Goblin-based? /Speculation

Designing it to be social first sounds good, but I'm hoping it's not too forced/beneficial. I've very much turned into a solo player after most of my roleplaying guild left many years ago. While I'm sure I'd love to roleplay again with people from the neighborhood, I'd love some time by myself as well, not influenced by/influencing those around me.

I'm also very curious how Blizzard is going to make sure neighborhoods don't get too stale/empty over time without as they put it 'repossessing' houses after prolonged inactivity/no subscription. I'm very much against repossession and love that they're going that way, but it does bring up that question.

It being an evergreen feature is the only way this feature is going to work, but that being reconfirmed in the post is great.

Zoning/Neighborhoods​

The launch zones being Elwynn/Durotar isn't too surprising and I'm guessing they don't want to overpromise given how much work multiple-garrison spots ended up being and how the community reacted to that being scrapped. I'm hopeful that they'll have some things in the backburner already to ship as additional neighborhoods if the feature does end up taking off during Midnight. I also wouldn't mind smaller or even solo plots in some of the more distant places in the world. Some of my characters would be much happier living in a place like Newman's Landing than in a town or city, even if there is an implied penalty due to not having a neighborhood. Or, maybe, you could have your main in a thriving neighborhood with an alt far away in a solo plot and still reap the benefits. Maybe.

Shop​

There was obviously going to be a shop in every possible iteration of this system and them handling it the same as mounts/pets/sets is perfectly fine in my book. I just hope this won't be another thing I need to spend my tendies on.😅

Speculation: As for how the shop will work, I personally expect this to use the new account store system that was introduced with Plunderstorm 2025 in the form of the Plunderstore. It seems almost perfect as-is for browsing decorations/customizations and maybe even a suspiciously large amount of effort for a temporary feature like Plunderstorm. /Speculation

Accessibility​

This all sounds great. I'm curious what they're doing in terms of limits, both design-wise (Can I scale doodads? Can I place them freely?) and in terms of houses/warband. Can each of my characters have a house? Is there a separate limit? Can they be in the same neighborhood?

Speculation/The Future​

Getting into speculation territory here, but this is what I love doing. Obviously take everything with a huge grain of salt and everything is based on my opinion alone.

Features​

I'd love for neighborhoods to be more than a collection of plots. I don't know what they're planning and I'm sure we'll find out this year, but it'd be cool if there's your usual neighborhood amenities as well. Maybe a street of stores, a tavern (I know a place! 🤫) and stuff like that. Places where people from the neighborhood can come together. Also a lot of possibility for added flavor here by having NPCs walk around similar to how they do in modern cities and maybe have random encounters like they do at the trading post right now.

It would also be great if some things from garrisons could return like the trophies, the pets that walk around, etc. The concept art showed a mount stable with a gryphon in it, that'd be pretty awesome.

Themes​

It appears that Blizzard wants to keep the houses (and I assume customizations) applicable to the theme of the zone and player races giving the amount of existing assets to use, so any new zone does require assets to exist for that theme. But even then, there are so many possibilities. Far too many for them to add them all, especially if they want neighborhoods to be a thriving community. Regardless, this is a very fun exercise for the mind to think about and if the system blows up and remains popular, these could be great candidates.

I'll list zones that make sense for settlements, as well as how old most assets are for said theme, although keep in mind that perfectly fine existing assets doesn't automatically mean that there's enough stuff there for them to properly do housing for that theme/zone. It's also possible for Blizz to just add these sets as interior sets for existing themes without a new zone. I'm also noting when we could start inhabiting said zones given we know some of these are getting refreshes/big changes in the future, if relevant.

This is just off the top of my head, it might not be complete as I don't keep up with all races. If you have anything I obviously missed, leave me a comment or poke me on BlueSky.

Night Elves​

  • Zone(s): Amirdrassil, Darkshore.
  • Assets: Night Elf assets got big refreshes in Legion and new assets in BfA and DF.
  • When: Shortly after launch? Good amount of assets to use, Amirdrassil is a fresh and empty zone to work in.

Dracthyr​

  • Zone(s): Forbidden Reach, Dragon Isles.
  • Assets: Dracthyr mostly use the generic dragon theme of which there are a ton of assets for in DF.
  • When: Mid-Midnight. While Dracthyr don't seem relevant story-wise time soon, this would be a nice epilogue.

Blood Elves​

  • Zone(s): Quel'Thalas/Silvermoon.
  • Assets: The Blood Elf kit is likely being updated for 12.0.
  • When: Late/After Midnight? Whatever happens in Midnight will need some time to simmmer down probably.

Goblin​

  • Zone(s): Kezan, Undermine.
  • Assets: A very large and expanded kit in 11.1.
  • When: Mid-Midnight, it's very possible the datamined "Opulent" theme is Goblin-based given their luxurious lifestyle.

Worgen​

  • Zone(s): Gilneas.
  • Assets: Almost all Worgen assets were added in Cata (+a handful in Legion) and would need work.
  • When: Mid-Midnight? Even though rebuilding started in 10.2.5, a good amount of work needs doing both model/zone wise.

Draenei​

  • Zone(s): New Exodar.
  • Assets: Got a bunch of new assets in WoD, but many are relatively outdated.
  • When: Late/After Midnight? I'm guessing they'll pick the 10.2.7 "new capital city" story back up in or after Midnight.

Undead​

  • Zone(s): Undercity/Tirisfal Glades, although both still need cleaning in-game.
  • Assets: Some asset updates in BfA, everything else is very outdated.
  • When: No clue, while they are 'rebuilding' story wise, I'm not sure when that would come into play. Maybe 13.0?

Pandaren​

  • Zone(s): Pandaria, obviously. Not on the list for a revamp/upgrade, but still holds up.
  • Assets: While pretty low res, a lot of Pandaria assets still hold up.
  • When: No clue, but damn would a house on top of one of those mountains be cool.

Dwarves​

  • Zone(s): Khaz Modan, Twilight Highlands, Khaz Algar.
  • Assets: Large amount of Earthen assets in 11.0, everything else is very outdated.
  • When: Mid-Midnight? Khaz Algar's story will likely be largely wrapped up during 11.0. Other zones not so much.

Tauren​

  • Zone(s): Mulgore, Highmountain.
  • Assets: Good amount of new assets in Legion, everything else is very outdated.
  • When: ???

Trolls​

  • Zone(s): Echo Isles, Zandalar.
  • Assets: Lots of new assets in BfA that still hold up well.
  • When: ???

Gnomes​

  • Zone(s): Gnomeregan, Mechagon. I think both zones have been 'retaken' at this point.
  • Assets: Mechagnomes got their asset kit in BfA, the rest is very outdated.
  • When: ???

Other notable kits​

These are kits that have been either recently updated or could simply be pretty cool for player housing.

  • Arathor: New kit in 11.0.
  • Tuskarr: Kits updated in DF with maybe more coming in TLT.
  • Kul Tiras: Large kit added in BfA, still holds up.
  • Nightborne: Added in Legion, but can still hold up.

More soon​

I didn't intend on ending the post here, but this is where my internet gave out for the night. Posted this draft from mobile and will likely do another post when I have enough other stuff to talk about and speculate on, which is very likely to be very soon. If you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments or on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/marlam.in