World of Warcraft’s newly unveiled housing system appears each bit as bold as you’d anticipate from a legacy MMO tackling participant housing for the primary time in its 21-year existence, with an in-depth residence decorator taking cues from The Sims 4 as a lot as contemporaries like Ultimate Fantasy 14 and Elder Scrolls On-line.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ at Gamescom 2025, WoW lead UX designer Laura Sardinha mentioned “80% of gamers” will most likely stick with the instruments obtainable within the in-game decorator’s Fundamental mode, which is greatest should you simply need a fast, seamless UX that snaps objects into place on a grid to keep away from collision with different objects and partitions. However if you would like extra freedom, together with the flexibility to resize and rotate objects, you will need to change over to Superior.
“It seems like a 3d software program the place you may resize and rotate stuff,” mentioned Sardinha. “In order that was one of many challenges, for positive, that we by no means had earlier than. So you are able to do that. You may simply go in that mode, after which you may edit it a bit of extra.”
Sardinha additionally shared that the complexity of Superior mode’s decorator culminated in a system that seemed a bit of too… systemy? Mainly, it was clashing with the WoW aesthetic, so the builders needed to run a fantasy filter over the UX to make the instruments align higher with the general recreation.
“It was humorous, as a result of once we made these, we have been like, ‘OK, we simply make, like, a 3d software program, and then you definitely do this,” mentioned Sardinha. “But it surely’s not like working, you understand, does it look an excessive amount of like a software program? Like, ‘how can we make this factor look extra WoW-like?’ It was a part of the sport, so we modified the artwork to really feel like magic. So if you end up manipulating these objects, it seems like magic for Warcraft.”
Sardinha and WoW design lead Toby Ragaini confused in the identical interview how a lot they need housing to really feel like an bold, but in addition “pure extension” of the enduring MMO. “We get one shot at this to impress folks,” Ragaini mentioned.
“The quantity of funding that we put into this function… It is launching with Midnight, however it’s one thing that we will be supporting [with] each main patch, future expansions – it will be a core a part of the sport.”
Discover out the place WoW ranked on our record of the greatest MMOs to play in 2025.
