World of Warcraft: Midnight is bringing a feature 20 years in the making: player housing. Since well before its reveal, any inkling of player housing coming to WoW has always been followed by quite high standards. Competing MMOs have already implemented this feature, and World of Warcraft’s past attempts went horribly wrong. Well, since patch 11.2.7, player housing is here.
And for the most part, it’s being received very well! Not only because it’s approachable for every retail player, but also because of its in-depth functionality and design. During Northrend Live, the World of Warcraft community event in Toronto, we got to sit down with Lead Game Designer, Toby Ragaini, one of the design leads who focused on Player Housing. We talked about housing’s reception to date and what’s next for this feature now that it’s in players’ hands.
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First, we talked about the challenges of shipping a feature that’s been requested for many, many years. Ragaini stated that there wasn’t just one challenge, but rather issues that had to be solved on both the client and the server side. “The way that we were structuring neighborhoods, the way that they’re essentially instances, required a fundamentally new sort of back end for how we would be managing and sort of separating players into sort of public and private neighborhoods. In addition, it required an entirely new interface. “We had to start essentially from the ground up to come up with what would be an intuitive way for players to manipulate all these decor items and everything.”
“Everything at World of Warcraft is a huge team effort.”
Toby continued by saying there wasn’t just one problem that was the most difficult to solve. “Everything at World of Warcraft is a huge team effort. The challenges that I was sort of personally involved in were the experience side. Just in terms of creating a way for players to enjoy their houses, and yet, I know that there were dozens of people working on other problems at the same time.”
Now that the tools and features are in the hands of players who’ve pre-ordered the Midnight expansion, we chatted about what’s shocked Toby and his team the most. For him, it was simply that the players were creating art. “Players are actually just making art. It’s not even in the pretense of, ‘Oh, this is repurposing decorations. Like, no, they’re literally reusing assets in a way that certainly we never intended. To create images of 2d art and things like that.”
With how near-limitless the player housing tools are in World of Warcraft, Ragaini was equally shocked that what players have created hasn’t been for malice. “We had to put a lot of effort into making sure that there was a way for players to report content that was inappropriate. Despite the awesome creative powers that players have, the vast majority of people have been totally awesome about not saying anything that would be insulting to other people. It’s been really wholesome.”
Players can create homes inspired by beloved existing IP in World of Warcraft.
He added, “The neighborhoods and housing were about community. We knew there was a chance that this could be weaponized, but it hasn’t been. And I think that speaks to the strength of the World of Warcraft community”. Alternatively, players have used the creative freedom to create houses based on existing IP. In games with similar output, they’ve faced copyright issues. But that’s not the case for WoW. For instance, one of the houses shown during the Toronto housing showcase event was based exclusively on the interior of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.
Toby mentioned that players can create whatever they want (within the Terms of Service), including homes inspired by beloved existing IP. “I think that was tested way back in the City of Heroes timeline, when people would make characters that looked like existing superheroes. What players do with the tools that we give them is not something that we represent as our content. Beyond adhering to the Terms of Service, what players make is entirely up to them.”
One glaring negative so far is furniture acquisition. To use 30 candles, one must acquire the candles they want to use 30 times. This is pretty antithetical to Blizzard’s current philosophy of respecting players’ time. Warband’s acquisition of transmogs, collectible items, and more, all being stockpiled and used limitlessly, has been great. So why is housing furniture different? Especially as certain items require unique currencies grinded from older content, or just hard-earned currency in general.
“We’ll always be paying attention to what the community is telling us.”
Ragaini mentioned this aspect, and others are still under consideration for appropriate balancing. “You’ve already seen us changing some of what the community felt was more onerous in terms of the requirements. And we’re still in the early stages for that. So I wouldn’t necessarily think that what you’re seeing is the final version of every piece of decor and what it’ll cost. We’ll always be paying attention to what the community is telling us.”
He continued, “Ultimately, there’s no power gain for decor. There’s not really a downside in the sense of making something too easy. So, the way game development works is that it’s much easier to make things less difficult than it is to make things too hard. And so, if we were overshooting on the too difficult side, we are going to be pulling back to make things, in some cases, easier.”
In the specific case of furniture acquisition, Toby added, “I won’t say that [making furniture be permanently acquired is] impossible. We’re considering all kinds of things right now, but I can’t give you like a yes or no answer to that question, other than it’s something that we’re thinking about.”
With the launch of World of Warcraft: Midnight, the housing feature will be available for everyone.
However, going back to his comment about power not being tied to decor, a new housing-focused weekly quest was discovered that did offer power-based rewards. Those are the crest rewards for completing the quest. If housing has no power associated with it, then why do housing-associated quests give power-related items?
According to Ragaini, some of the weeklies are meant to bring people into housing they wouldn’t normally interact with. ” I think the housing weeklies were to simply provide an attractive way for players to engage with the neighborhoods. Specifically, we want everyone to at least check a neighborhood out, even if they’re not interested in housing. That’s not going to be an ongoing, constant kind of expectation for the rewards we’re going to be offering. I think it’s more of a limited-time kind of thing.”
We then discussed what’s next for housing. With the launch of World of Warcraft: Midnight, the feature will be available for everyone. Per Toby, the team isn’t changing much and is already hard at work improving the experience. “Retail release of Midnight isn’t a huge event as far as housing is concerned. But subsequently, you’re going to see a lot of additions, especially in the 12.1 and 12.2 time frame.”
“There’s never a ‘we’re done’ moment. If something’s successful, we can keep adding to that.”
Ragaini continued, elaborating on cut content and already-announced features, such as placeable pets and mounts, as revealed during the State of Azeroth video. “There’s an audience who wants more advanced editing tools, like copy and paste and import/export. And then there are those who just want more content. And those who want their pets, mounts, and mannequins to show off gear. The challenge is sort of prioritizing all those things. I think after Midnight, there’ll be more commitment to dead dates for future housing releases.”
For items that had to be left out of the base housing release, Toby revealed that many player-requested features had to be cut. “The things that the players are asking for are things that we knew that they would want. And there’s the tension between wanting to get something in front of players and start learning from how they’re playing the game, versus wanting to get everything that we think the game needs. Both things on the functional side, as well as the content side, that I wish we’d been able to launch with.”
Toby concluded that future updates are possible given the success of housing to date. “The good news is that housing has been successful enough that we’ve been given the runway to create those things and add them into the game. And that’s the exciting thing about a live game like World of Warcraft. There’s never a ‘we’re done’ moment. If something’s successful, we can keep adding to that. And housing has been successful enough that we’re definitely making a long-term commitment to additions.”
Neighborhoods in World of Warcraft are a living, ever-changing environment.
Finally, we discussed how housing and neighborhoods may evolve in the game’s world. Housing isn’t going to be static like other zones introduced in past expansions. According to Toby, neighborhoods are a living, ever-changing environment. “In particular, neighborhoods are going to represent a new way for players to encounter content. So historically, a player consumes a zone and then moves on. Players are in their neighborhoods for potentially years and years.”
Toby continued, “We’re going to be mixing up the content, and the endeavors are the first wave of this. The neighborhood changes, new content becomes available, and then something happens, and the neighborhood changes again. So I can’t get too much into this, but there’s going to be some cool tech coming out that’s going to really demonstrate the interesting ways that we can author content.”
To conclude our interview, Toby ended with a great quote about the WoW team’s view on housing and neighborhoods. “Ultimately, we want neighborhoods to be an expression of the community in the same way that the house is the expression of the individual.” Even after several months, the community has found amazing ways to create their houses as a major extension of themselves.
Especially as some of the ways players have influenced housing have already led to rapid changes from Blizzard to make the entire feature more expressive, such as floating houses and increased item limits for interior and exterior decorating. Midnight is just the beginning, and as you think of more that you want to come to housing, please let the team know. Blizzard is listening, and after talking to Toby, it’s clear they don’t want to make housing the way they originally planned, but to make housing an ever-growing feature for everyone.
World of Warcraft: Midnight is available on PC.
