Ways to truly personalize our Player Housing we’d love to see in Midnight

As time marches on and we get closer to Player Housing being added to World of Warcraft, I find myself thinking of more features and decorations to put on my wish list. We have been getting a steady trickle of details for the last several months, and the ability to customize our Fortresses of Solitude promises to to be quite extensive.

Last time I talked about some specific things I wanted to be able to place all around my house. This time I’m going to think bigger picture, and throw out some more ambitious ideas that would ultimately take player house customization from “awesome” to “wait, there are quests in this game?”

Enormous customizable centerpieces

We know that we’ll be able to obtain a large variety of normal pieces of furniture for our living space, such as chairs and tables. But I’m really hoping we get the option to earn are gigantic signature items that could be the focus of your Trophy Room, Entrance Foyer, or Designated Rumpus Area. While I was in Dalaran’s Pet Shop, The Magical Menagerie, the humongous fish tank caught my eye. It would be the perfect item to make an impression on your guildmates when you invite them over for raid planning night.

Being able to acquire the fish tank would be cool, but what I’m really hoping for is the ability to personalize the stuffing out of it. I want to put my aquatic battle pets in there, or my Vashj’ir Seahorse, or mini versions of my favorite bosses from the deeps. Imagine being able to pop a tiny Blackwater Behemoth or Lurker Below into your living room. I want to be able to swap out the treasure chest, the plants, and the scenery.

There are a plethora of other large, attention-grabbing pieces that I can imagine customizing to be the focus of a room or even house. I’m a senior commander in the Horde, so I should have an enormous war table with maps and moveable troop tokens. I have spent so long in front of a Cooking Fire that my eyebrows refuse to grow without magical intervention, therefore I need a fully stockable ingredient shelf.

Putting screenshots on the wall

If you’re like me, you have probably already been perusing the artwork adorning the walls of Azeroth in anticipation of making your home a museum-grade exhibition of quality works. There are maps, portraits, still life, abstract compositions, and a whole lot more across time, space, and dozens of cultures.

While showing off my favorite in-game framed masterpieces is definitely on my wish list, what I’d really like to do is what most people do to their actual real-life living spaces: decorate the walls with my own photos. Between taking screenshots normally and the S.E.L.F.I.E. camera, there are an infinite number of things that players can capture that would make for great wall decor.

You could throw up a huge group photo of your guild posing with the corpse of the final boss of the latest raid tier. You could pick a wall and cover it with selfies with your favorite NPCs. You could take an artsy approach and put your own landscapes or action shots in frames and hang them where your friends will be forced to compliment you on your discerning eye.

Choosing your mood with lighting

Of course I want to put all kinds of different lanterns, braziers, and glowing crystals around my house. What would really take those pieces to the next level would be the ability to have them affect the actual quality of the lighting within the room they are placed in.

If you’re aiming for a Light’s Hope Chapel vibe in your quarters, you probably want a golden glow to go along with your stained glass and ample hammers. If you’ve chosen to be inspired by Revendreth’s gothic style, a blood-red atmosphere might suit your many gargoyles. Maybe you’ll settle on decor for your house within the first few weeks but constantly want to change the lighting based on season, holidays, and your current mood.

I really think this is one of those abilities that could take visiting other player’s houses from a novelty to a full-on experience. Instead of just seeing which of the long list of items your guildmates have chosen to decorate with, you can leave one friend’s wintry blue ice castle and head to another’s electric purple mansion of mad experimentation.

Legendary decorations

One of the features that I appreciated most about the Garrison in Warlords of Draenor was the monument system, which rewarded a dramatic statue for such difficult feats as winning 2,000 pet battles on the continent or defeating all of the raid bosses from the whole expansion on mythic difficulty.

Don’t get me wrong — I am all for a catalog of thousands of decorations for our homes that are free, along with thousands more that will be trivial or decently easy to collect. But it just wouldn’t be World of Warcraft without a few notoriously rare things to place on our mantles that require either a truly arduous grind or an astronomical amount of skill. So what is the decoration equivalent of absurd reputation treadmill titles, expansion-wide meta achievements, or legendary weapons?

I would love for these to be tied to World of Warcraft’s lore, but not in a way that’s been done before. We have already traveled around Azeroth’s past and present to obtain things like Legion’s artifact weapons. Onyxia’s head was featured in the original teaser trailer for Player Housing, and that’s the kind of vibe I’m looking for. We have seen the expansion meta achievements work backwards — maybe by the time we get to Wrath of the Lich King we will be rewarded with a legendary decoration? Say, a room-sized version of the Frozen Throne?

Literally everything

I know that we have been promised hundreds of decoration options in the catalog, amazingly detailed placement abilities, and even things like customizing the color of furniture. Yet after hoping for my own space within World of Warcraft for decades, I want it all. It already seems like we’ll be showing off our dwellings to our friends, guildmates, and more. I want to be overwhelmed with options for each and every tiny nook and cranny to make sure my own house is up to snuff with everyone else’s.

Remastering old models worked well for things like the Tier 2 raid sets we could obtain modern versions of for WoW’s 20th anniversary. But I don’t just want cool features like the gate in Serpentshrine Cavern leading to Lady Vashj. I want that raid’s walls, the floors, the columns, the stairs. I want other players to walk into my Hearthstone Room and ask, “where do I know that ceiling from?”

As hyped as I am for creating my own house, I might be even more excited about seeing what incredible interior design that other players accomplish. Any time that creative possibilities are open to a passionate group of people, the results are always unexpected and awesome. So what sort of grand concepts or items would you love to see added to the Player Housing catalog?