Last week, Blizzard organized a private demonstration of the housing system for the upcoming Midnight expansion to World of Warcraft. Selected content creators and journalists visited the Boston studio, where they tried out the demo and spoke to the developers. Based on their impressions, we’ve gathered key details.
First impressions of the demo
The system looks almost complete and offers extensive customisation options, which has made testers excited. However, the current version has some shortcomings.
- Items have temporary names.
- It is not possible to search for or sort decor.
- Some items cannot be scaled and will be reset to their original state.
- Some decorations cannot be returned to the collection once placed.
Testers were unable to explore the game’s neighbourhoods, having only seen a short clip of them. The developers avoided questions about how players will get home from the open world, which suggests that this feature may be incomplete. No details were also revealed about how to obtain jewelry and integrate it with pet collections, transportation, and transmogrification.
Nevertheless, the demonstration of the interior and system functionality was well received. The exact dates of the housing release have not yet been announced.
Nevertheless, the demonstration of the interior and system functionality was well received. The exact dates of the housing release have not yet been announced.
Development and inspiration
Blizzard views dwellings as a long-term project that will evolve over the years and be linked to other game systems. The developers expect players to get creative with unique interior designs, including the more unusual and provocative ones.
Sources of inspiration cited by the studio include The Sims, Minecraft, Animal Crossing, WildStar, Valheim, No Man’s Sky and Final Fantasy. Dwellings should motivate players to explore new and old content by mining rare items for decoration.
How is the housing system organised?
- Availability: Each player has two houses: Alliance and Horde.
- Unlocking: You will need to pay gold and complete an introductory quest to receive basic items such as furniture and decorations.
- Customisation: The dwelling is an ’empty box’, which can be divided into rooms and expanded or reduced. There were no size limits in the demo, but these will be introduced in the final version and will depend on the ‘dwelling level’ (the mechanics of which have not yet been revealed).
- Regardless of the internal layout, the outside of the house remains compact.
- Edit modes:
- Normal: standard placement of items.
- Advanced: allows you to rotate and scale objects by 20–200% and overlay them on top of each other.
- Features:
- Decorations are tied to surfaces (for example, paintings are tied to walls).
- Finished rooms can be moved around the house.
How do I get decorations?
Interior items can be mined:
- In dungeons and raids.
- You can find them from merchants and through professions.
- You can also earn them through achievements and by defeating rare monsters.
- Trophies include Onyxia’s head, boss thrones, and gladiatorial horses. Many items are tied to specific locations; for example, skins can be found in the Gray Hills and books in Karazhan. Rare jewellery requires more effort to obtain.
- Craftsmen will be able to create decorations, but they will need to achieve certain goals. There will be no separate profession. Specialised objects such as crafting tables and flower beds will appear in houses, but they are optional.
- Each item in the collection can only be used once — a new copy is needed to reposition it.
- Dwellings and neighbourhoods are PvP zones where combat is forbidden.
- In order to avoid the Warlords of Draenor bug, there are no in-game perks such as auctions or desktops.
- Houses stay with players forever, and there is no subscription fee.
- For those who do not want to design their own house, there will be ready-made options available that can be finalised.
Other details:
- A wide range of items will be available at launch, including furniture, utensils, webs, a guillotine and a toilet.
- Approximately 60% of the decorations are existing models and 40% are new.
- Some items can be repainted, but not the walls or floors.
- Up to 10,000 objects can be placed in the demo version.
Neighbourhoods and social opportunities:
Homes are grouped into neighborhoods of 50, with each neighbourhood being part of a separate phase. Neighborhoods remain anchored until someone moves in. Players will be able to create neighbourhoods with guilds, roleplaying groups, or random people.
Neighborhoods will have:
- Dynamic events and seasonal festivals.
- NPCs and quests will be added to create a living city atmosphere.
- Players will be able to decorate not only their houses, but also the streets.
The developers are considering introducing a system of an elected mayor or council to regulate the neighbourhood’s appearance and avoid chaos, such as an abundance of fountains.
The in-game store
Some jewelry will be sold for real money, but this will not replace the in-game items, which will have unique models. The store tab has already been added to the interface, but its functionality has not yet been finalised.
