We still have a lot of questions about player housing

We got our first look at World of Warcraft‘s upcoming player housing yesterday, and while a lot of the features sound great — no artificial scarcity! No expensive costs or property taxes! Neighborhoods! — in many cases, we were left with just as many questions as answers. It’s possible even the development team doesn’t know the answer to all these yet, as I’m sure the system is still in active development, but here are just a few of the questions that we were left with after reading Blizzard’s preview.

How do I visit (or summon) my friends?

We know that we’re supposed to be able to visit our friends’ houses regardless of faction or zone, which is great — but how do we get there? Alternately, how do we allow our friends to come over to our new home? Will they be able to come over when we’re not home? Is “house portal summoning stone” potentially a type of cosmetic item for housing? One staffer has suggested that she wants a “Love is in the Air” type fancy magic portal to bring friends over, while I’d personally love to see something like a permanent Warlock portal like the one used to go to their class hall in Legion.

For that matter, will people be able to visit while we’re out, or is our house tied to us being online? Will we need to be grouped, or will there be a right-click “Teleport to House” option in the friends, unit frame, party, or guild interfaces?

How many houses can we have, anyway?

Blame the wording of the post on this one — Blizzard mentions that you can share your house among all members of your Warband, but then mentions that you can use your unlocked decor in any of your houses. How many houses do I get, Blizzard? Is it possible that I don’t have to decide between the Alliance house and Horde house, but can have one of each? Is it possible to get from one neighborhood to the other easily? On top of that, we already know that your Alliance characters can use your Horde house and vice versa — but how do I decide which character lives in which house?

We have so many Neighborhood questions

The tease of Neighborhoods at the end of the article raised so many questions. Here’s just a few:

• How private are Private Neighborhoods? Will you be able to invite people to visit you in a Private Neighborhood, or is it only open to residents?
• How will Neighborhoods, both Public and Private, handle declining populations? Will you wake up one morning to have new neighbors, or — if your friends lose interest, or the random people in your Public Neighborhood stop playing — will you be living in a ghost town?
• Can you move between Neighborhoods? This is implied, but not confirmed. If my random neighbors in my Public Neighborhood are toxic weirdos, can I relocate to a different one? Is it possible to move from a Private Neighborhood to a Public Neighborhood or vice versa?
• There is mention of Private Neighborhoods progressing together. Does this imply the existence of Private Neighborhood achievements of some kind? Will these be available to people in Public Neighborhoods, too? What would these even consist of?
• We know that guilds can create their own Private Neighborhood. Guilds have been cross-faction since so far back into Dragonflight that it feels second nature. Why, then, is there no neutral place to place a house? Are guild members forced to pick between Horde and Alliance houses and housing locations, or can the two be linked somehow? This is already a bone of contention in my guild, and having two separate Neighborhoods feels like an icky solution.
• Can we evict someone from a Private Neighborhood? Especially if their decor is too tacky. Every guild has that one guildmate, after all.

How deep does the customization rabbit hole go?

We know Blizzard is promising house customization as another neverending tentpole collection feature alongside transmog, pets, mounts, et cetera — but how far does that extend?

• Can I change the outside of my house? Are Alliance characters going to be restricted to Human-style Elwynn Forest homes, or can we expect things like the very cozy Worgen houses, open-air Night Elf houses? Will the Horde be stuck with spiky Orc dens, or can we expect multi-level Troll structures, extremely fancy Blood Elf homes straight out of Silvermoon City, and the black-metal-and-lightning Frankensteinian homes of the Forsaken? Let me have a giant Zandalari ziggurat, Blizzard; I’ll throw actual money at it. [Ed’s note: maybe don’t give them ideas.]
• Can I decorate my lawn or the outside of my house? Will there be gardening or landscaping? Can we add trees or other decorate plants to our yard?
• How far does the Neighborhood decorating go? It’s mentioned in the Private Neighborhoods tease that Private Neighbors can decorate their Neighborhood together, so uwhat kind of public area do we have, and who decides what goes where? Is someone designated as the Neighborhood HOA?
• Can I put quietly flamingos on my neighbor’s lawn while they’re out of the house?
• Can we change the music on our property or inside our house? I loved the music customization in the Garrisons — can we bring our record collection with us? It’d be a great way to carry this mostly-forgotten piece of content forward into the future.

Don’t let this plethora of questions fool you into thinking we’re in any way discouraged by the idea of housing — if anything, we’re all very excited here to see exactly how wild we can get with it, and look forward to Midnight when we finally get to play with it!