At the end of last year, I laid out some of my hopes and concerns after Blizzard confirmed that player housing would be coming to World of Warcraft with the next expansion. I was eager to learn about how they planned to approach it and how they planned to avoid some of the more common pitfalls of player housing. Last week, Blizzard finally pulled back the veil slightly in a new housing blog, which gave us a peek at what they have in store for us. Some of it is promising, but some may cause unintended strife in the community. Let’s jump in and take a deeper look at it.

A home for everyone?

When I think of player housing in MMOs, I always enjoy ones with neighborhoods. I can wander around and see what everyone is up to. Essentially, I like being a nosy neighbor in an MMO. Unfortunately, these setups often result in a limited housing supply, which can be incredibly disappointing for players. Thankfully, they have confirmed that they intend to build housing so that not only will every player who wants a house have one, but they also won’t take away a player’s house from them. Additionally, there will indeed be neighborhoods, both public and private.

This is everything I was hoping for regarding the general setup of player housing. I’m still not sure how they are going to pull it off. One of the other things Blizzard revealed was that, at first, there will only be two housing zones: one horde and one alliance. When it comes to the public neighborhoods, I’m not sure how they’ll avoid having an extensive list of neighborhoods with many pages to go through. Final Fantasy XIV’s housing is nowhere near enough for every player who wants a house, and paging through the neighborhoods to find open lots was extremely frustrating. If they aren’t careful, the neighborhoods in WoW will be even more frustrating to go through.

Ideally, there will be a way to search the neighborhoods, as not everyone will want to be in a private neighborhood. In my dream situation, public neighborhoods won’t just be numbers; they will be named neighborhoods. However, that may be difficult to scale up with demand. It may end up being a situation where in public neighborhoods players can’t choose which one they live in. That would be rough for anyone who would like to be in the same neighborhood with a small group of friends but also wants to be in a public one because a large neighborhood with only a few people in it would feel pretty dead. There will need to be a way to navigate these issues that won’t be frustrating and cause players to give up.

Guild Neighborhoods!

I wasn’t expecting the possibility of having a guild neighborhood, but this was one of the best reveals in the entire post. I don’t know about everyone else, but my guild immediately started freaking out about how cool it’ll be to build our houses in one neighborhood together. Even if it isn’t possible to name the public neighborhoods, I really hope naming a private neighborhood is possible. I’m sure standard naming rules would apply, and they should, but having that level of freedom would be wonderful. Undoubtedly, my guild’s neighborhood name would have something to do with bacon.

With there being two zones to start with - one alliance and one horde - and guilds being cross-faction now, that opens up some potential contention for guilds who choose to do this. Will the guild master have to be the one who creates the guild neighborhood, and if so, would the faction of the character that is the guild master determine which zone the neighborhood is in? What if the guild master changes? How would that change things? What if the guild master is turned over to an opposite faction character? What if a player only has characters of the opposite faction than the zone the guild neighborhood is in? Creating a character to get a house in your guild’s neighborhood doesn’t feel great. I hope the rules for creating guild neighborhoods err on being more lenient and letting the guilds determine as much as possible for themselves.

Another potential issue for guilds is Blizzard indicated the neighborhoods will have roughly 50 housing plots. For the majority of guilds, this will likely be enough. There are many guilds out there with more than 50 players, and for them, they’ll have the challenge of setting up multiple neighborhoods - if possible - and then deciding how their guildmates are divided between them. As the post put it, neighborhoods will let “players live next to each other, work together, and share in the rewards of being part of the Neighborhood.” Since there seem to be rewards for a neighborhood to work together towards, this could be a source of contention among players in guilds that can’t fit into one.

Another unique challenge for a guild neighborhood is players aren’t supposed to be able to lose their houses, but this presents a unique challenge when it comes to a guild neighborhood. Even the best guilds have players who leave occasionally, and how that is handled will make a huge difference. If guild neighborhoods are tied directly to the guild system and not something independently managed, that would make things a bit easier for when a player quits or is kicked from a guild - though it would also lead to the other issues I mentioned previously. However, what happens if a player stays in the guild but quits WoW? If their house remains in the guild neighborhood, that could become a significant problem over time. However, if they then get shunted to a public neighborhood, that could be a whole different issue if they later decide to return.

I’m also reminded that one reason Blizzard decided to retire the old guild perks system was it became a deterrent for players to leave a guild, such that players often felt that they had to stay even when their guild was toxic. Feeling forced to stay somewhere you are unhappy is a terrible experience for anyone. If neighborhoods have rewards to work towards, this could serve as round two of the negative impacts of the guild perks system. Hopefully, the rewards are of the sort that a player won’t lose access to them if they decide to leave a guild and the guild neighborhood.

Overall, the concept of a guild neighborhood is incredible, and I am currently the most excited about this aspect of player housing. However, it also feels like the area with the most potential pitfalls. How Blizzard chooses to address these issues will significantly impact how successful this feature is.

A Long-Lasting Journey

Continuing the focus of building systems for the long term, which started with Dragonflight, player housing is intended to be a system that can grow over the years. We don’t know exactly what this will mean, but seeing this as a core pillar is reassuring. Undoubtedly, there will be new items to display and decorate your space with. That’s a baseline for any player housing system. One thing I’m very curious about is if we may get multiple house options. That alone could open up a plethora of customizations. Or maybe they’ll be house features we can swap out, similar to how we customized our dragon mounts in DF.

We’ll also get more zones to live in, though that likely won’t arrive during Midnight or maybe not even in The Last Titan. Whenever that does happen, we’ll have questions about how to move our houses and even neighborhoods. However, that’s likely a few years down the line; for now, the future looks hopeful. I know I talked a lot about potential problems, but the devs seem to be taking a thoughtful approach to player housing. It’ll be interesting to see what solutions they come up with.