During last month's Warcraft Direct presentation, the World of Warcraft team announced that player housing would arrive with the next expansion in the Worldsoul Saga, Midnight. This is something that a sizeable portion of the community has been asking for for a while. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts. I’ve been all in the feeling that something I thought would never happen is suddenly going to be a reality; there’s a part of me that just doesn’t believe it. However, I know that’s just my pragmatic side talking, and for today, I will set all of that aside. Let’s go through the most significant things I hope for and the aspects I have concerns with.
1. A Home For Everyone
My biggest concern is that only some people who want a home will be able to get one. I’ve played FFXIV since ARR launched, and it’s so difficult to get a house there that I never put much effort into it until after the lottery system was implemented. I know there are many issues with the lottery system, but with it, I feel like I have a real chance of getting a house. Although scarcity can drive interest, it can also dissuade people who would enjoy spending time in their own homes in WoW. Getting a home in real life is a significant enough pain; I don’t feel the need to recreate that experience. On the flip side, players with no interesting housing should be able to ignore the system entirely.
2. What Cities Will Have Housing?
In an interview with Taliesin, Ion Hazzikostas confirmed that although the teaser looked like it was in Stormwind, other cities will have housing. The obvious other choice is Ogrimmar since it and Stormwind always have portals between them and the current expansion. Since they always have portals, it would make it simple to keep player housing relevant and easily accessible in future expansions. However, I sincerely hope every city is an option for player housing. At the very least, the main cities for each race would be a good starting point. That said, I hope we get to choose which city we live in rather than it being determined by what race our character is. I wouldn’t mind living in Thunder Bluff, but I’d rather not live in Thunder Totem.
The obvious solution for making player housing easily accessible no matter where it is, would be to let us teleport directly to our home without setting our hearthstone to it. If we can live in any city, this will be an absolute necessity. Hopefully, this will be a “teleport to home” spell rather than another hearthstone. Similar to how druids can visit the Dreamgrove from anywhere. Speaking of the Dreamgrove, another option that would be a ton of fun is to let us have a house in our class hall. I’ve always been sad we left those behind, and having player housing in class halls would be a great way to make them relevant again. Class halls will probably not be an option, but I hope that’s a future development. Now that I’ve thought about it, there’s nowhere else I’d rather have a house. After all, I am an Archdruid.
3. Visiting Other Houses
I’ve never been huge on decorating and setting up housing, but I always love visiting other player’s homes. I used to spend hours in Wildstar visiting random players’ plots to see how they used their space and what choices they made. I also enjoy walking around the neighborhoods in FFXIV and seeing how much variety there is. I hope this is baked into WoW’s player housing as well. Of course, the player should be able to decide if other players can visit their home and set parameters for it—something like choosing between everyone, guildmates, friends, or no one. Also, choosing if other players can interact with your stuff would also be necessary.
4. Design Capabilities
As I mentioned, I’m not a very home decorator type, but so many people who love player housing are, and letting their creativity fly is always a treat. There can be some plug-in play where players can choose from limited options—for example, a suit of armor or statues showing accomplishments. However, I hope there’s also a robust menu of various items and materials we can change and place freely. I remember someone made a piano in Wildstar, and it had nothing remotely like that in the available assets. Having the freedom to create things the developers wouldn’t think of making is one of the best aspects of player housing.
5. Faction Mixing?
This one is one I’m probably about the only person who wants, but I’d love being able to live in different cities regardless of faction. I was Alliance for most of my time playing World of Warcraft, and nearly all of that was on a night elf main. Even though I am now a highmountain tauren, the night elves are very dear to me, and I’d love to have a home in Bel’Ameth. I know this would not work for many players, and it’d be a bit odd seeing the opposite faction wandering around a city. At the same time, the faction barriers have been falling, and this feels like the next step. Keeping houses faction-specific would also cause issues for cross-faction guilds when they wanted to visit a friend’s house. Introducing a new faction-locked system at this point would just feel bad.
Those are my main thoughts regarding player housing in World of Warcraft. It’ll be interesting to see how everything plays out over the next year, and I can’t wait to get more details on it. What features are you hoping to see in the player housing system?
