We have a big one today as Blizzard talked to PC Gamer and shared a lot of details on Housing! Five Blizzard lead devs, including Ion Hazzikostas, were interviewed, and there are many planned features coming, with some highly anticipated by the community, so let’s take a look!
The Big Ones
The first batch is the most interesting one, but the timeline on their addition is unclear. Some may come with the expansion launch, while others may be much farther away. Here are some of the closer ones:
- Co-developing houses.
- “Exterior rooms”, with daylight and exterior scenes in houses.
- “Medium” home exteriors, which are apparently generously-sized.
- Interactive objects like holdable books, glasses, and playable games like the Diablo 4 chess item.
And, of course, the really interesting ones are a bit further ahead:
- Our mounts and pets will be able to roam our homes! Hunter pets and alts are harder, so no promises there.
- Build sharing via exporting and importing both individual rooms and items.
- The limits on exterior lighting will drop.
- New culture decor items, snow mentioned specifically.
- Flavor animations for some decor items (like bubbling cauldrons).
And finally, there’s the stuff that’s way in the future:
- Basements!
- Granular guild permissions. For example, leaders might be able to determine who can actually build a house in the guild neighborhood.
- Expanded or even new neighborhood areas! Grizzly Hills mentioned specifically (but not guaranteed)!
The Rest
These ones should be coming sooner rather than later, with some obvious timings and some less so.
- New Midnight raid decor items from bosses, with the drop count scaling with raid size.
- New Housing Renown levels.
- More visible plot boundaries.
- More communal spaces and event support, like lap tracks, stages for plays, and large-scale roleplaying events.
Coming Very Soon
Blizzard also spoke about the pre-patch additions coming next week, with some teasing related to Neighbourhood-level systems going on as well. We’ve known about some of these for a while, but some are new.
- Neighborhood event quest Endeavor system added to the game.
- Neighborhood perks.
- More housing experience.
- A “bunch” of new decor items. We know Blood and Night Elf exteriors, so they are at least part of this.
- “Neighborhood-level systems” will be added, but we didn’t get any additional information on what they are.
We’re also getting a housing roadmap before the pre-patch launches! It will cover the features coming over the next year.
At the end of the interview, Blizzard commented on the individual nature of housing decor. It is very much intended that each is an individual purchase and an individual edit (although that will change with the import/export feature). However, they also emphasize that housing is being built and expanded with players very much driving development. “”There’s very little that we would say, ‘You’re not going to get it at all”, commented Hazzikostas.
Definitely head on over and check out the full PC Gamer interview for more details and developer quotes!
