Blizzard gives us a look at the philosophy behind housing decor (and some sneak peeks)

If there’s one thing I’m looking forward to in World of Warcraft‘s next expansion, it’s player housing. Ever since Blizzard dropped that first tantalizing look at how housing will work, we’ve been asking more questions, daydreaming about what decor we want to put in our house, and plotting to put a Maldraxxus-themed mad scientist spire with a ten-foot-tall Home Depot skeleton in the yard right next to Anna Bell’s fluffy pink pastel house of dreams. (Okay, maybe that last one’s just me.)

Today, Blizzard posted another meaty post of housing info: a lot of it is about the philosophy of where and how we’ll be acquiring decor, but there’s also a few sneak peeks at what kind of decor we can expect to find for our houses. Let’s take a look at it point by point.

The Progressive Journey is its own reward

One of Blizzard’s core principles in housing decor is what they’re calling the “Progressive Journey.” There seems to be a sort of progression inherent in decor itself, sort of like how gear ranges from grey items to legendaries and artifacts. Since these things are cosmetic in nature, it lets players have both short and long-term goals that don’t hamper their character progression and which they’re free to pursue — or not — like mounts, pets, and transmog. That said, the intention is that you should be able to kit your house out in at least the vibe you want on day one. Many decor types will be widely available from vendors or the auction house. If you need chairs, tables, or shelves, these things should be easy and inexpensive to get ahold of.

The second tier is what Blizzard calls “investment” decor — more niche items in terms of theme, look, or appeal, which in turn require more investment in either time or cost. Examples given are a sparkly fountain with particle effects or books that flap around on their own. Investment decor will require more effort than standard commodity decor, but should still be accessible to most players willing to put up the cost or spend the time on it, it sounds like.

The last tier is “trophy” decor. This decor requires Mythic+ and raid achievements, or long-term achievements for single-player content (the example that immediately leaps to mind for the latter are long-term meta achievements like Undersea Usurper). Maybe we’ll see the big The War Within-wide meta achievement that will inevitably roll around in 11.3.7 reward some furniture this time instead of a mount? The example Blizzard gives here is one that will doubtlessly be fairly popular: Onyxia’s head, mounted on your wall.

Where can you get decor? Yes.

The article notes that in an early draft, the above title was an actual line. It’s not far from the truth, either, thanks to the second guiding principle of Core Gameplay (With Variations): the intention is for housing items to come from everywhere. Vendors? Yes. Reputation? Yes. Old quests? Yes. New quests, dungeons, raids, probably delves? Yes across the board. They mention that if you want a specific jade-inlaid bookcase, you might need to have done a specific quest in Pandaria. They also just show a nice Stormwind-themed rug being available from the same vendor who sells tabards and bags right now for reputation.

It sounds like players might be able to spend the prepatch between The War Within and Midnight might end up being spent scouring the world for new housing items!

Thank your past self for getting this couch for your future self

The last guiding principle is Reverence for the Past, which covers several things. One idea is that all time spent in Azeroth is quality time when it comes to providing decor. If you spent time on it in WoW, Blizzard wants to give you decor for it. This includes legacy reputations, old profession tiers, and more. If you completed an achievement ten years ago that grants a piece of decor, you should get it on login once housing goes live. And if you worked for those big meta-achievements like A World Awoken, Back from the Beyond, and A Farewell to Arms — those are called out specifically as now granting decor!

They also want legacy content, currencies, and systems to be reusable where appropriate, and not just shoehorn in new clunky methods of getting furniture. For example, something that’s themed like the rust-and-gears aesthetic of Mechagon might require you to interact with the Junkyard Tinkering system we all know and… well, remember, if not love. This is also a continuing process as time goes forward; if things are added to old content, they’ll be available using the methods of that old content.

Lastly, they don’t want to include the decor equivalent of “transmog runs,” where you’re simply hoping for something to drop. The reason for this has a lot to do with how late housing is being added, comparatively, in WoW‘s life. To quote the article, “the thought of someone farming a mount for years across multiple characters every week, finally earning it, and then being told ‘welp, time to go back and grind for the couch’ is rough. We’d like to avoid this.” The intent seems to be offering deterministic, rather than random, ways of acquiring decor.

Crafting professions — all of them — will be making furniture

Rather than introducing a whole new profession dedicated to making furniture (sorry, folks who were desperately hoping they’d be able to take Woodworking), all non-gathering primary professions will be able to produce decor. As part of that whole “honoring the past thing,” there’s another level to this: all expansion tiers of professions will be producing furniture exclusive to that expansion, uniquely made with reagents from that expansion (including a new one!) The example shown off is Classic Inscription being able to make Brill Coffins, requiring materials we’re familiar with — Sorrowmoss, Iron Bars, and Royal Ink — as well as a new one, Ironwood Lumber. I suspect these new reagents will be where gathering professions get in on the housing market!

Each profession will make things that are generally themed along that expansion: Blacksmithing will make items made primarily out of metal, Enchanting makes magical decor like floating orbs and magical books, and Jewelcrafting will make gems and gem-studded objects as well as being the designated stoneworking profession. I would guess we can also expect Leatherworking to make rugs and furry objects, while we can see that Inscription apparently makes …weird stuff that requires writing on it? Wooden items? Either way, it might do between now and the Midnight prepatch to brush up on old levels of your professions as well as the current ones, just to be sure you have access to the full range of housing options!

A few additional notes

Lastly, there were a few notes that didn’t really fit in under any of the prior headers. Probably the strangest one is that your furniture count is based on how many you’ve collected — if you want to place four chairs, you need to collect four chairs. That makes sense, but also, this limit is evidently Warband-wide. If you have four sparkly fountains in your Warband housing chest, and your Alliance has house three of them in the front lawn, your Horde house will only have one to display. An interesting choice, to be sure, and we’ll have to see how this plays out, and if this limitation sticks.

Apparently some items are also intended to be unique, period: no matter how many times you’ve killed Onyxia, you’re only going to be able to put one Onyxia head on your wall. No word on if this means a single Onyxia head period — as in, only one between all your houses — but this combined with the prior limitation leads me to believe that might be the case.

Last, but not least, we are once again teased with the idea of “neighborhood-specific activities,” as well as a promise that housing will be released going forward attached to both new and old content. If there’s something you want to see in your house, Blizzard wants to hear about it!