The news that World of Warcraft is getting housing with its next expansion, Midnight, shocked the whole MMORPG genre – and us too, as we even called it the biggest MMO surprise of 2024. And as of this afternoon, we’re finally getting a peek at just what the MMO’s take on MMO housing will look like. Not literally, though. There are no screenshots of houses in Blizzard’s blog post today – just concept art and broad outlines of what to expect.
The studio says it has three pillars for housing: offering boundless self-expression, being deeply social, and generating a long-lasting journey. The team also hopes for “wide adoption,” believing that the housing has to good enough that “most players” actually want to engage with it, scaling from hardcore housing folks to casuals. Of note in the pillars is the mention of a toolset, which hints that the housing decor itself could be slightly more free-from than a lot of people are probably expecting.
Blizzard does douse some hopes, though, by clarifying there will be only two factional housing zones on Midnight’s launch – an Alliance/Elwynn/Westfall/Duskwood zone and a Horde/Durotar/Azshara zone. The studio claims to be worried about spreading people out too thin in these zone to the point that they don’t ever see other humans.
“Putting it bluntly, zones are a lot of work,” Blizzard says. “We’d much rather do a great job with a small number of zones than do a passable job on a large number (or come up with solutions that take the player out of the world into their own personal instance of a zone).”
The phrasing here initially made the housing zones sound more like New World or EverQuest II housing (instanced housing directly off the main world) or Elder Scrolls Online (phased housing directly in the main world) than like Lord of the Rings Online housing (open-world housing in a large housing instance). But Blizzard does clarify that there will indeed be neighborhoods with 50 housing plots, both public and private for guilds, so yeah, it’s more like LOTRO’s ‘hoods. So much for not spreading people out too thin, we guess?
On the business side of things, the studio says housing is “designed to be primarily player-first and not revenue-first,” with housing items in the game and in the cash shop. Houses won’t cost a lot in in-game money, either, with no faction issues for warband alts, “no onerous upkeep,” and no risk of losing your home if you stop subbing. Nice.
So yep, it’s a very, very high-level outline without a lot of World of Warcraft-specific details, but if you know MMOs – and you do! – you can already see the form taking shape.
