What World Of Warcraft's New Apartments Reveal About WoW: Midnight's Housing
World of Warcrafthas given players their first look at expectations for housing with the upcoming apartment features, with some implications for gameplay. The first step of WoW's 2025 roadmap leads to the goblin city of Undermine, and this update is heavily focused on the Goblins, as players will get to choose one of four cartels to support as they progress through the quests. The update continues the content drops focused around The War Within, leading to the Midnight release set for summer 2025.
One of Midnight's most anticipated additions is player housing. This feature has been highly requested throughout WoW's 20-year existence and is one other MMOs have already added or had at launch. Unfortunately, little is known about how housing will work, but it does seem like players will be able to give their thoughts on the system before the official release.
How WoW's New Apartments Work
A Place To Call Home
There is currently limited information about how apartments work, though some features have been confirmed. First, to earn an apartment, players will have to complete a quest about a corrupt landlord. This quest line will reward the apartment for free, and there is no "rent" that needs to be paid. The one feature the apartment does have is the ability to link it to one's Hearthstone for easy teleportation access.
The one downside to this apartment is that it appears to lack customization options. This is a disheartening outcome, but understandable given the scale of both the update and the apartment. The likelihood is that an actual house will be on a larger scale, and since this update is meant to be a smaller holdover, it would take more effort than desired to add customization options.
Will Housing In WoW: Midnight Be Like This Too?
Limitations In WoW Pose A Problem
Understandably, these limitations and lack of information can cause worries about how housing will work on release, and whether Midnight's housing might be like this too. The answer to this is likely no, for two reasons. The first is that it would be a major insult to the community to release a feature as popular as housing in such a static state.
The argument could be made that it can be improved via future updates as time goes on, but that removes the incentive to engage in housing in the present, which could hurt the overall production of future housing content. The second reason goes back to the fact that Undermine is a small update, and likely not one that's set to offer major overhauls.
WoW's Apartments Feel Like A Trial Run For Housing
Working As Intended
In all likelihood, apartments are perhaps a test run to make sure the bare bones of Midnight's housing system will work in the game. If true, this is a smart idea to avoid problems arriving with the release. It's already been shown that the apartment is a place that can be reached in the main zone but puts players in their own special instance. As simple as this may seem, it is a system that could cause numerous issues, especially if there are tens of thousands of players trying to do so at once across multiple locations.
This could also be a trial for how apartments interact with other aspects of the world like teleportation. This is a system that could be a huge boon for navigation, especially if players have multiple homes. This possibility could mean that homes will have a separate teleportation system limited to the cities with housing. A second but smaller feature could be the instance is special in that it can still interact with the outside world. The clearest example of this is the Undermine apartment balcony, which could see players and NPCs running through the streets.
It's unfortunate that it seems Blizzard will not test any other features, as this is really a golden opportunity to make sure housing fixes the garrison mistakes while being as polished as possible. It would be unrealistic to expect the full experience for a small update, but a watered-down version would have made sense. Perhaps these restrictions are because the developers have other plans, but that will not be known until more housing announcements are made.
Regardless of the downsides, the Undermine apartment is a huge step in WoW's history. It shows the ability to innovate that has felt lacking in the hit MMO in recent years. The possibility also exists that more features will be unlocked for the apartment as Midnight's release gets closer, which could improve the system while testing more features. Whatever happens, the new Undermine apartments are the first look at how World of Warcraft's housing will work.
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