We still have a lot of questions about WoW player housing

We keep getting tantalizing teases of World of Warcraft‘s upcoming player housing (which is coming on December 2 with patch 11.2.7); and while a lot of the features sound great — no artificial scarcity! No expensive costs or property taxes! Neighborhoods and Endeavors! The never-ending decoration hunt! — 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 while we wait for the next housing reveal, here are just a few of the questions that we were left with after reading all of Blizzard’s housing previews.

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?

Luckily, we now know the answer to this one — it’s two, one Horde and one Alliance. Your houses are owned by your entire Warband, and your Horde characters can teleport to your Alliance house and vice versa. That means your characters can own two houses; talk about living unrealistic dreams inside of video games!

We also learned a little bit about how guild housing will work for factions — essentially, your guild leader will decide which zone you will set up shop in, the Horde or Alliance housing zone, but then you can have a house there on either faction. This seems like the best possible compromise given the bi-factional nature of guilds, but still slightly disappointing if, say, you were hoping to snag the Azshara/Durotar “beach house” spot but your guild leader prefers the tranquil forests of Elwynn.

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?

• How much can I change the outside of my house? We know that there are only a few styles of exterior appearance to start: Human-style architecture, Night Elf-style architecture, Orc-style architecture, and Blood Elf-style architecture. Blizzard has been mixed on saying whether these looks will be allowed in both Alliance and Horde neighborhoods, but we suspect they’re faction locked to their neighborhood type. As to things like the very cozy Worgen houses, open-air Night Elf houses, 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, they may show up in the future… but probably not at launch. Let me have a giant Zandalari ziggurat, Blizzard; I’ll throw actual money at it. We know you’ll be able to make some changes to the exterior, just not how much.
• 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?
• 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.

Getting down to the nitty-gritty

As Blizzard reveals new features, we are often left with questions that hone in on the fine details of how housing will work. For example:

• How will housing interact with guild membership? We know from the neighborhood preview that if a guild kicks a player (or a player leaves a guild), their house will be removed from the guild’s private neighborhood. Does that mean per character — i.e., if I buy a faction transfer, am I going to have to put my house back up when it’s over? — or will all of a player’s characters need to leave/be removed from a guild to remove them from the neighborhood?
• What will my house cost? In a more recent post, Blizzard has finally used the term “buy” for acquiring a house — how much will it cost? I can’t imagine it’s a lot, since they’ve mentioned wanting everyone who wants a house to be able to get a house, but if Warband bank tabs have taught me anything, it’s that Blizzard has a tendency to wildly overprice things in the name of gold sinks. I’m crossing my fingers this is just a token fee to prevent bots from overrunning public neighborhoods.
• When can I get my hands on this? Seriously, Blizz, you’re killing me here. Let me at it! We know players will get “early access” to housing in patch 11.2.7 if they’ve pre-ordered Midnight. The patch is likely arriving in December, but we don’t have a firm date.

We even have some answers!

Some of our initial questions have been answered by Blizzard’s own updates on housing! Almost all of our initial questions about neighborhoods have been answered by Blizzard’s own post focusing on the feature. Lots of questions about moving, how many people can be in a neighborhood, how to progress them (the system we now know is called Endeavors), and more were all in that post. These also answered some things like “can I put flamingos on my neighbor’s yard” (answer: no) and “how does my neighborhood decorate together” (answer: Endeavors).

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!

For more on player housing, check out Blizzard’s other housing posts:

• A first look at Player Housing
• Interior design
• Where to get housing items
• Midnight: Come home to Azeroth with Housing

Originally published July 29, 2025. Updated October 1, 2025.