Midnight > Player Housing > WoWMay 20, 2025 4:00 pm CT

Content creators get first hands-on look at housing, teasing new and exciting features

By Phil Ulrich

Last week, a whole bevy of WoW content creators got their first hands-on look at player housing, followed by interviews with a number of the developers and artists behind the upcoming feature in Midnight. While a lot of housing is still in active development, so we didn’t exactly get a bunch of tell-all videos, we still got a number of tantalizing tidbits from these interviews and reviews that are just making us more excited to get our hands on it by the day!

Decor you’ll click with, furniture that’s to dye for, and more

One thing we learned from a couple of interviews, including Taliesin interviewing Jesse Kurlancheek and Rachel Bussone, is that decorations won’t just be pretty background material for our houses: many them will be interactable. Some that are specifically mentioned include interactable lore books that players could use to build their own library (although apparently there won’t be a full-on separate lore book collection system — I know, I’m sad about that too) and (mentioned in T&E’s hands-on video) a guillotine called the “Gilnean Problem Solver.” Other items include interactable lights, weapon racks (currently empty, but maybe you can fill them up with all your copies of Ashkandi someday), bookcases that serve as secret doors, magic floating books, and more — they’re being pulled from just about area of content in the game, including low-poly models for people who desire that Classic WoW look at home!

Furthermore, a lot of furniture will be dyeable. Dyes will come from Alchemy, so be sure your Alchemist is up to date; a lot of older models aren’t dyeable at the current time, but that’s something the devs are actively working on (although older assets may still be restricted in some ways — that’s just how they work).

You can expect to get creative with combining a lot of decorations, as well — one example mentioned is combining a rotating roasting spit with the head of Onyxia to create, well, a dragon head on a spit. Positioning is truly open-ended in a lot of cases, working pretty much exactly as you expect — click to place an item, and it goes. Don’t worry about clogging your bags, though — Zepla’s preview confirmed that housing items will be stored in a new tab under Collections.

There are a few limitations, of course. There appears to be a placement limit of around 10,000 items, although in testing so far most players have never gotten above two or three thousand — including players trying purposely to lag out or crash the servers (an important part of testing — but it’s worth noting the servers stayed stable). Additionally, the inside of your house will require a loading screen, since it’s its own instance, which means things like windows inside your house won’t automatically appear on the outside of your house, nor will they be synced with the real world time or weather outside. (And that’s fine: maybe I don’t want sunlight in my spooky skeleton pit room.) Lighting in general is a work in progress, but the intention is for players to set their own vibe.

One upside of the loading screen is that houses can completely break the laws of physics — they’re much larger on the inside than on the outside, if you want them to be. You can create anything from closets to corridors, rooms estimated to be 600 to 800 yards long, basements, secret passages, and more. The sky really does seem to be the limit when it comes to WoW housing, and that’s no surprise — they’re pulling in almost any idea they can think of, including things they’ve loved from games like FFXIV and WildStar, and — perhaps just as importantly — what they didn’t like.

Won’t you be my neighbor?

We also got some more information on Neighborhoods, a feature Blizzard intends as a way to avoid the isolationist nature of Garrisons. An interview by Breakflip confirmed there will be no HOA — sorry Anna — nor any rent, maintenance, or loss due to inactivity. You will be able to decorate your Neighborhood together; if you decide you want to have a spooky Hallow’s End Neighborhood year-round, Blizzard is going to let it happen — decorations won’t be enforced by the game, but rather by players deciding to put decorations up themselves!

Neighborhoods are intended to have about fifty lots each, and each of them should be desirable in some way. There won’t be any economic difference between where you decide to park your home, nor is there any kind of lottery system; everyone who wants a home should be able to get a home, and preferably in a spot that they enjoy. Neighborhoods are not, however, intended to replace major cities, so amenities like an Auction House or Bank are not planned at this time — but you will have a mailbox and a Hearthstone point in your own home. Also, Neighborhoods (and houses in general) are Sanctuaries right now — meaning you cannot PVP in them ordinarily, and right now you can’t even take damage — but Blizzard is open to the possbility of people using their house to, say, run a fighting arena, so players might be able to change it within their own home.

For those of you concerned about who can get into your house and who can’t, the T&E interview confirmed that — while we don’t have full details — the idea is essentially to let the people you want into your house, while keeping the people you don’t want out. In fact, you can go full hermit mode and allow no one in, or open it up to anyone at all. The goal is for you to be safe in your own home, whatever “safe” necessarily means to you. And if you don’t like the Neighborhood you’re in? You can pick up your whole house as-is and move it to a new Neighborhood.

Neighborhoods are also meant to be more than just the backdrop for your house — they’re designed to be social places where you visit, with spaces everyone can work on together. There’s also some evidence that suggests maybe your Neighborhood will have NPC visitors, although Blizzard was suspiciously cagey on confirming this feature, indicating maybe something ‘s in progress already; you’ll also find your pets walking around your house if you want, mounts are in your stables, and there’s a desire to add Warband alts walking around to truly make your house feel like a group space. Blizzard did say that there may not necessarily be communal spaces in Neighborhoods, but this is a pretty popular feature for players, so I suspect we’ll see something like this down the line — and if not, player creativity will likely take over. Every guild has that one person who’s willing to turn one of their two houses into a tavern, right?

Collection and customization at the forefront of housing

A lot of discussion has been had about how to collection housing items, and Blizzard’s stock answer has been that it should come from anything and everything — and they mean it, evidently. The intention is for a lot of player housing decor to be accessible no matter what kind of content you choose to partake in in the game; on the flip side, if you’re doing things that require effort — high Mythic+ scores, Mythic raiding, meta-achievements, and so on — those things should also be rewarded with furniture you can flex. It’s also evergreen — the idea is that, like transmog, players should be able to pursue the thing that interests them; or, if it doesn’t interest them, that they don’t have to worry about it. The Breakflip interview even mentioned “pre-made” houses for less creatively inspired players, and that a system for sharing layouts is currently under consideration.

To no one’s surprise, items in the cash shop are already planned. Blizzard is putting some pretty severe limitations on themselves with what can’t go in there, however; items in the store will have a free equivalent available in-game, core race and class fantasy items will never be paywalled, and they’re intended to be completely non-functional items — it’s not like you have to pay real money to get the ability to cook in your house, for example. They listed them as intending to be less canon, more fun extra decorations; my comparison would be some of the things like the garden Gnome transmog we’ve seen on the Trading Post of late. There was, however, a cash shop button directly in the housing interface, which many testers felt was intrusive — and they’re right.

Blizzard, if you’re reading this: I’m making a face at this idea that I typically reserve for the pushy way Diablo 4 does monetization. Get that button out of there!