Well, it's been over twenty years, but when servers come up today (assuming they do, of course,) World of Warcraft will finally have true, official player housing.
This is a feature found in some other MMOs. But while players have been clamoring for this as a feature for basically the entire lifespan of WoW, I'm actually really happy that it's now that we're getting it.
WoW's developers adopted a pretty significant philosophical shift in the wake of Shadowlands, which started to manifest in that expansion's final patch but really has been the defining north star of design through Dragonflight and The War Within, which is basically: listen to the players and give them the stuff they want, not the stuff you think is best for them.
WoW first experimented with a housing-like system in Warlords of Draenor (which I still consider the worst expansion - Shadowlands had its flaws but its gameplay wasn't broken like BFA's and I loved the idea of going to these truly alien planes of existence, if only the Jailer had been a better bad guy). In Warlords, we were given Garrisons, which when first announced at Blizzcon in 2013 were presented not precisely as "Player Housing" but as "WoW's Take on Player Housing."
The problem was this "WoW's take" aspect: the developers decided that in order to make Housing an interesting system, it needed to tie into the power progression of the game, and that it should be a system that felt impactful to interact with.
The result, though, was a solution in search of a problem. Professions became infuriatingly time-gated, because they built each profession in Warlords around each recipe requiring a special crafted reagent that you could only make so many of per day in order to make the presence of profession facilities in your Garrison appealing - while you could only make like, three of that special gem that everything needed on your Jewelcrafter, if you had the Jewelcrafting station in your garrison, you'd be able to get, like, six a day.
Whoopee.
Notably, the folks at Blizzard were surprised when Transmog became such a huge success in the last patch of Cataclysm, because they assumed people didn't care too much about how their characters looked, because that didn't have in impact on player power.
This felt like a similar misunderstanding. And given how players had gotten into Transmog through the end of Cataclysm and through Mists, one might have been able to figure out that cosmetic customization was, in fact, quite a popular thing.
But with the Garrisons, they basically all looked the same - the Horde one being a kind of "New Orgrimmar" and the Alliance one being a kind of "New Stormwind" in architectural style. And while certain profession buildings could bring a little more varied aesthetic, it wasn't much, and it wasn't your choice.
In the Legion-through-Shadowlands era, secondary power progression systems were introduced, starting with artifact weapons. But I think that a lot of the gameplay systems in those expansions, like Torghast or the Island Expeditions, were presented as these fun new game modes - but they weren't alternatives, they were additive. In Shadowlands, not only did you need to progress your Covenant's renown to empower your character, but you also had to grind Torghast to get the legendary items you wanted. And you were expected to do both of these things.
I think the transformation of the Great Vault did a lot to really demonstrate a new philosophy, which reached a new level of inclusiveness in War Within. The philosophy is no longer "you need to do all of these things to progress" and now "you can do all of these things to progress."
I've actually done very little raiding in War Within - I haven't finished the Liberation of Undermine (which I honestly feel bad about because I freaking love everything about Undermine as a location) and I haven't even set foot in the K'aeresh raid aside from the story-mode version of Dimensius.
It's not that I don't like raiding, but I really enjoy the ability to play solo, doing my Delves. And even after all this time, I find myself doing delve scenarios that I haven't seen before (I did an Expedition 9 where you had to slice up tentacles with a buzzsaw and collect the meat, which I had never seen before - and I also got the Infinite Delver achievement for doing 1000 delves, so...).
The point of all this, though, is that I think WoW is now working to meet players where they're at, and my sense of their approach to housing is that it's truly what it always should have been: a big opportunity for individual expression through cosmetic customization, with no gameplay punishment for failing to engage with it.
I suspect I'll have some fun building out my house, and I think I'll also probably enjoy collecting new decor to add to it. Like my mounts and my titles, I'll have far more decor than I will ever probably use, but it'll still be fun to grab new stuff as it's added.
I'm also eager to see how much stuff I'll just find I already have when the servers go live today. I've been playing since before Achievements were even a thing in WoW, so I'm sure that I have a lot of the achievements that grant decor. Some will be pretty obvious, like having completed Blackrock Foundry or the Well of Eternity dungeon. (I'm pretty sure that I did the old Zul'Gurub before it was replaced with the dungeon in 3.1, but I don't recall if I ever did Zul'Aman before that.)
Anyway, I've heard great things about the housing system, but I actually don't yet really know what it will be like, mechanically. I'm eager to find out.
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