Housing in World of Warcraft? Game Director Says “The Dream Is Still Alive”
World of Warcraft fans long for housing. But that is missing in the new addon Dragonflight. But there is hope, as the WoW boss explains.
The announcement of World of Warcraft Dragonflight was pretty well received by many players. A slightly calmer setting, dragons as a focus and a lot of small improvements as well as a completely new class. But during the announcement, it quickly became clear that one feature will probably remain wishful thinking even with Dragonflight: player housing.
The longing for a home in Azeroth is no small wish of a splinter group. In a survey a few days ago, “player housing” even came in second among the most desired features.
In an interview with game director Ion Hazzikostas, YouTuber and streamer Hazel (“Hazelnuttygames”) then asked a question about exactly this topic. The desire for player housing is great. How exactly is it decided whether such a feature will be included in an expansion or not?
Hazzikostas took the time to answer in detail and also offer a few insights:
Player housing is a topic that comes up very often in the team. There is a lot of support for the topic in the community and also in our team. It’s something many of us would love to do ourselves.
When we put together the features for an expansion, it’s a mix of “what fits the expansion thematically”, “what will appeal to different types of players”, but also “what would be necessary to be able to create this feature at the level that players expect and deserve?” And: “What would we have to give up to make that possible?“
Exactly this “giving up” seems to be the big factor here, because a housing feature would probably consume thousands of hours of work that could not then flow into other features. Housing would tie up a lot of resources – not just pure development work, but also many employees from the “art team” who would have to create textures and models for countless objects.
Hazzikostas further says:
Player housing is a big deal. It’s one of those things, if we want to get it right…it’s a big project, a big undertaking. I would say if we do it it would span multiple expansions. It’s such a big feature…
Then Hazzikostas interrupts and refers to an earlier feature – the garrisons. In the eyes of some players, they were something like “Housing Light”, but not everyone was happy.
During the garrisons, back in Warlords of Draenor. Honestly, due to resource limitations, we were limited and limited to being able to say “This is the Alliance Garrison” and “This is the Horde Garrison”.
And people were like, “Well, I’m a blood elf. I want cool Silvermoon architecture in my garrison. Why can’t I have this?”
And the answer to that was, I mean, that was the original “it’ll cost you a raid tier” joke – but honestly, that was true. It would just take so many thousands of hours to do that.
That’s what player housing needs to be if and when we do it. The dream is still alive. It’s something we want to do. But it’s not something we’re going to do with Dragonflight.
Even if it is of course disappointing that there is still no housing in the World of Warcraft with Dragonflight – the developers regularly discuss this topic and the desire in the community is growing all the time. Perhaps one of the upcoming expansions will finally bring a place where our heroes can return after the work is done.
It is well known that hope dies last.
Reference-mein-mmo.de
