WoW's player housing will have no FOMO and private housing wards

Blizzard today announced some details of their upcoming player housing system that'll be made available to players in the next WoW expansion due to release in 2026.

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As a part of our focus on wide adoption, we wanted to ensure that Housing is available to everyone. If you want a house, you can have a house. No exorbitant requirements or high purchase costs, no lotteries, and no onerous upkeep (and if your subscription lapses, don’t worry, your house doesn’t get repossessed!).

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I sure wonder what game(s) they're referring to with this statement. ;)

That said, Square Enix should really be reworking their systems so everyone can have a house. Likewise, we shouldn't lose it if we decide to take a break.

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1. Public Neighborhoods, which the game servers are responsible for creating as needed and maintaining.
2. Private Neighborhoods created by groups of friends or guilds to inhabit, progress, and customize together.

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Private housing "wards" is a super cool idea, especially if it doesn't involve unsavoury tactics to actually get your guild (free company in XIV terms) and/or friends in the same "ward" together.

There's a few other details in the post including mentions that some housing items will be on the cash store plus the slow addition of new locations for neighbourhoods overtime. At first it'll just be two zones, one themed on the initial Human areas and the other on the Orc areas.

It otherwise reads like they're going to copy a lot of what FFXIV does for housing while also addressing some of the major sticking points that Square Enix are unlikely to address at this point. Although one would imagine the other major MMO indirectly calling out flawed game design is the catalyst to actually address the problem with tangible changes.

Source: https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com.../news/24176592

FFXIV housing system is one that works great on paper, but not so good in implementation, especially when the community is not really the most social ever.

Those digs gave me a good laugh though.

I saw that, shots fired directly at FFXIV lmao. They definitely know their audience.

This article gave me a good laugh.. Props to the WoW folks if they’re actually getting a proper housing system.

Sad for us, though, as CS3 refuses to work on their own housing...

Blizzard has almost always been good at taking ideas / systems in other games and improving upon them. This seems to be no different. I'm happy for them and we'll see if that gets some changes going here as well.

Housing is the only way SE can hold hostage subs. They're never going to give that up.

I can already taste the hysteria two or three years later when FF14 players all quit and become FF14 refugees in WoW LMAO

Going even further, and it may just be a theory but.

"The toolset should be easy enough for someone with no 3D experience to be comfortable with and use successfully, but it should also be powerful enough that players can surprise us with their creations or drill down to get the tiniest details just right."

This right here makes me think the furniture is gonna be controlled with the XYZ move tool found in most 3D programs *blender*. Also down to the tiniest detail makes me think there will even be XYZ values you can type in to put your stuff just where you want it.

Sounds a lot like Housing with Burn down the house as a baseline. Imagine if they have no limits in the house (floating is a feature and doesn't snap furniture to the ground). Could blow 14s housing out of the water (Probably won't have as much modern furniture though).

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

I saw that, shots fired directly at FFXIV lmao. They definitely know their audience.

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Literally my thought lol




Also *face desk* at ideas we've suggested years and years ago be implemented into WoW. I do think FFXIV is 'trying' to make their housing better, you can see that, but its so slow :/. If they don't fumble it we're going to go from "Garrisons, not really a house (better than our Islands unfortunately though), and also sadly abandoned, but still has some neat features" to "Housing, garrison, farms, we do everything FFXIV does but better" real quick.

I am really looking forward to WoW housing as it seems like its going to be a better system than XIV or ESO. I never played WoW until DT dropped and boy oh boy has it been an amazing experience. The players, even the randos I get in dungeon finder, who have such a bad rep have been amazing, helpful and not even close to the monsters I expected fron all the stories you read online. SE really needs to step up after TWW and what it looks like is coming down the pipeline.

As someone who has been very loyal to SE, from FFXI through FFXIV, I never even imagined myself playing WoW at all, and now I am on the brink of cancelling my XIV sub and full timing it. Even my spouse said they wanted to take my temp and make sure I was ok when I was talking about it over dinner lol.