Housing will be the new mega feature in World of Warcraft. However, a “small thing” is already bothering us. Not all characters will get a house.
Longtime fans of World of Warcraft have hardly awaited any feature as eagerly as the Player Housing. With Midnight, it is finally time for our WoW heroes to have their own home. Since it has been decided to take over the “WildStar Housing” practically 1:1, the system will likely make most players happy.
However, there was one major blow that is already dampening the housing experience. Each account can have a maximum of 2 houses.
Two houses per account leaves many characters homeless
In total, an account will be able to own only two houses (via icy-veins), one house on the Alliance side and one on the Horde side. From the perspective of players who enjoy roleplaying in World of Warcraft, this limitation is quite significant and leads to some uncomfortable decisions.
I can only take myself as an example. Over the years, I have played several characters in RP and many of them I still play repeatedly today. I have long imagined what kind of house the different characters would live in:
- My Night Elf mage would live in a semi-ruined wizard tower, reminiscent of the surroundings of Darkshore and adorned with various Azshara decorations.
- My Draenei should have a very small house consisting of only two rooms and barely equipped with the essentials. Perhaps a human house, since she lives in Stormwind.
- My Blood Elf warlock should own a larger estate in the Immersang Forest, of course with an extensive study, but also some occult spaces for summoning demons and exploring fel magic.
- And my demon hunter wants some kind of fel-corrupted place (perhaps an old Legion ship), where she can hang up the skulls of her slain demons.
The problem: Only exactly two of my characters will get their house. Since we can only have one house on the Horde side and one house on the Alliance side, it is simply not possible to implement all these ideas.
Honestly: This has already put a damper on my excitement. Especially it bothers me because so much from WildStar has been adopted in housing. There, if my memory doesn’t fail me completely – this limitation didn’t exist. Each character could have their own house.
I had hoped that this would also be the case for World of Warcraft. The reason for this is the server load, which is likely higher for WoW than for WildStar. But I believe that solutions could have been found here, such as “private” houses or the option to quickly switch between multiple saved houses. Something I still hope for.
Many characters will not have a house
With this decision, I also feel a bit betrayed by Blizzard. Because the developer preview articles repeatedly talk about how housing should be “for everyone” or how every hero should have a place in Azeroth.
But that is exactly not the case when only 2 characters per account can have a house or when they come up with an explanation out of thin air as to why all my Alliance characters live in one big shared house.
Instead of savoring my anticipation now and imagining how the individual houses of my beloved characters will look in detail, what secret passages I will build or what hidden ritual rooms I will hide, my thoughts primarily revolve around the question: Who will not get a house?
I don’t want you to misunderstand this: I am still very excited about housing and will certainly invest hundreds of hours into it. But before that can happen, I first have to think about which of my characters will actually get a house – and who will be left out. This is a disappointing setback for an absolute hype feature that, in my opinion, simply didn’t have to be, and it also dampens my desire to farm housing items now.
How do you see it?
