Well, it only took them 22 years... er, will have taken them.
While the details are basically nothing beyond "yes, we're doing this," Blizzard released a little animated trailer yesterday announcing that yes, our characters would finally have a place to kick up their feet and call home.
Given how this is something players have been asking for throughout basically the entire existence of WoW, it's a pretty exciting moment. The question is: how will it be implemented?
While I've played it for nearly its entire lifespan (starting a few months before Burning Crusade came out, so while I played in vanilla, I never had at level 60 characters before the level cap went up to 70... at least until Shadowlands) I haven't played really any other MMOs beyond WoW. Frankly, while I have a real nostalgic bond with WoW, I don't know that I love the structure of an MMO, the way that it (intentionally or not) uses FOMO and a kind of "keeping up with the Joneses" impulse to keep you playing. But the point I mean to make here is simply that I don't have a great sense of how other MMOs implement player housing, so I'm sort of looking at this from a blank-slate perspective.
In Warlords of Draenor, the garrisons were initially (if I recall correctly) pitched as WoW's version of player housing. However, their implementation, so central to that expansion, had a number of huge problems that honestly left Warlords as what I would call WoW's worst expansion (that coupled with the fact that Blizzard was still trying to do one-year expansion cycles, which would never have been a good idea, and seemed an idea that would only please shareholders, not players).
Garrisons, thus, I think, are good examples of how not to do player housing:
First of all, most importantly: Player housing should be totally divorced from any aspect of player power.
In Warlords, Garrisons were a perfect example of "solutions in search of a problem." Not only did the mission table reward gear that was just as good as any piece you might get out of the raid difficulty you were playing (and even if you weren't doing LFR, I think you could still get that level of gear from it,) but in particular, Garrisons kind of ruined professions in Warlords. In order to make Garrisons relevant, one of the major things they had was professional buildings, which then needed to have a function - and that function wound up being creating time-gated professional materials that every recipe needed a bunch of.
The focus on garrison design was the make sure that it was a relevant game mechanic for the expansion. But this focus A: meant that the expansion felt like it was played primarily inside the garrison. and B: it meant that only later in the expansion did they add any really superficial cosmetic customizations for it.
Housing, should, I think, be entirely a cosmetic, just-for-fun reward (yes, the entire game is just-for-fun, but you know what I mean). In many ways, I think it should be an in-game reflection on your accomplishments and achievements. The trailer, for example, shows Onyxia's head mounted on the character's wall. I think having various trophies and awards on display for big accomplishments would be a great thing for this.
Furthermore, it has to be customizable. Garrisons in Warlords only came in one style, depending on your faction. The Alliance one had the white stone and crenelated walls of Stormwind, while the Horde one had the spiky iron and red roofs of Orgrimmar. For my human Paladin, that was fine, but it didn't really match the aesthetic of my Undead Rogue, for example.
Midnight will mark a return to old territories - we don't know the exact scope of the expansion. It's supposed to be in Quel'thalas, but whether a new landmass rises up around that area or if it will dip down into the rest of Lordaeron remains to be seen.
I would hope, though, that player housing is available in many of the "home" regions. Naturally, it would make sense for my Paladin to have a place in Elwynn Forest, but it'd also be cool if I could have my Draenei Death Knight be able to return to Azuremyst Isles (I'll understand if he can't settle back on Argus).
While I'd really push for player housing to really focus on the cosmetic, I do think some conveniences could potentially be earned - maybe a bank and a mailbox, profession tables. Still, I think one important thing should be that players will need to leave their house and go to the capital city of the expansion to really do the kind of daily activities you'll be doing as part of regular gameplay.
I do think it should be very easy to get to and from your housing - likely have a portal in capital cities, and possibly a "personal hearthstone" to return there from anywhere.
Naturally, we're not going to be getting much in the way of detail until summer of next year, but it's very exciting to think how they're going to implement this.
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