How to navigate the pitfalls of sharing, importing (and possibly even buying) Player Housing Blueprints

While some players have embraced Player Housing feature of World of Warcraft Midnight wholeheartedly, others have found the system very intimidating, and constantly compare themselves to the polished houses being posted by big content creators. With patch 12.1, Blizzard added a new Blueprint system for player housing, which allows you to save, export, import and share codes for housing designs. As soon as the feature was announced, people started asking for codes from those creators — and have talked about selling or buying codes. Once you have successfully imported a Blueprint, you can then re-save it and share that code with other people, so there have been concerns about potential theft, with people giving away or reselling codes for Blueprints they got from someone else.

To understand this issue, it’s important to know there are a lot of restrictions on whether a Blueprint will work.

Unlike the codes that are created when you save a talent build, the codes generated by a saved Blueprint are just a pointer to the data file on the Blizzard servers. The code by itself is worthless unless the data file is still active. Each player will be allocated 50 blueprint slots. If you get a code from another player and they delete that slot before you import it, the code will no longer work. If you try to load a Full Layout (entire house) blueprint, unless it uses a faction neutral exterior, it won’t work. So if you tried to import a house that used a Human Small exterior into a Razorwind Shores plot, it would fail.

Also, getting a copy of a Blueprint does not include the Decor items required, or upgrade your house to unlock the placement budget or room types. It will be your responsibility as a player to ensure you have upgraded your housing level sufficiently to be eligible to import that Blueprint, and to supply all the items needed.

Are we even allowed to buy Blueprints with real money?

The housing community has been asking Blizzard to make a clear and unambiguous statement about the sale of blueprints for real money outside of the game. To date the language has been fuzzy reminding people that Real Money Transactions (RMT) are against the terms of service, and that any transaction that is negotiated outside of the game channels cannot be monitored by Blizzard, and therefore they cannot resolve any disputes that result from such a transaction. However, what constitutes a RMT is vague. Similar to the issues with addons having additional filters or datasets being locked behind a Patreon membership, they have been inconsistent in how they view subscriber benefits versus an outright purchase.

Even before the introduction of Blueprints there have been sites selling house designs for ridiculous prices. Most of the house designs being advertised on these sites are scraped from images posted on other sources such as Reddit, the WoW Housing Hub, YouTube, or various Discord servers. Mechanically the only way it would have worked would be through account sharing which is categorically against the terms of service. And most of those services are from sites that also sell gold for real money outside of the WoW Token system. These sites rely on hacked accounts to strip them for saleable assets. Even if the account sharing was not against the TOS, by supporting those sites you are supporting hackers who directly harm other players and the game as a whole.

If you do decide to buy a Blueprint for your house, make sure you only pay using in game gold. Make sure you negotiate in-game channels for an extra layer of protection for yourself if it is a scam. Try to import the code as soon as possible to ensure it works. If possible ask the seller for a list of any unusual or hard to get Decor items before you pay.

There are likely to be plenty of codes being shared through a variety of sources for free. Don’t feel you have to pay for a code at all. And maybe if you do get a code from someone else, it will inspire you to try making your own designs. Happy building!