Shudders.
… Where’s the plot info?
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I’m obviously biased, so a Durotar/Aszhara themed area for the Horde is kinda lit. Do hope we eventually see zones related to other races though.
I need some Mulgore.
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Fingers crossed for Suramar, Azeroth’s Venice.
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I hope so, but if they’re going off of player numbers, I fear that there’s a fair few that’ll crop up first before the Nightborne get any love.
I just hope there will be locations in Pandaria and/or the Wandering Isle.
3 minutes duration, 12 hours cooldown.
Fun detected.
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Blizzard needs to let me build in Kul Tiras
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A neighborhood in Dawn’s blossom, the temple of the Jade Serpent or Halfhill seem to be ideal locations.
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I can’t wait for the Pandaren segregated neighbourhoods and burning celestial icons on lawns whenever anyone without fur moves in
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My brain has already packed its bags, signed the lease, and fully moved into the Housing Main lifestyle.
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I’ll be holding out,
I won’t move in aslong as I can’t build my Night Elven cottage underneath Nordrassil’s boughts, at the shores of the Second Well of Eternity, I wont budge!
Ofcourse Suramar/Suramar City/Aszuna/Nar’thalas will suffice for my Nightbornes!
Ashenvale and/or Feralas for my Highborne!
More realistically, I’d assume Darkshore or a regrown Teldrassil will probably end up being the Night Elven backdrop for housing
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Well, my curiosity sure is picked. The Elwyn/Durotar choice made me groan but if they do add more possible background, it’ll be interesting.
Damn I’d love playing housing in Suramar. Probably limit a bit the neighbouring part, unless it’s restricted to nightborne houses, but still.
Missed Wildstar housing
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The general excitement aside, I do think it’s a shame we only get these two zones at the start though I understand their reasoning for it. My slight worry is if they’ll bother creating new zones inspired by other old areas (such as the vibrant Ashenvale, the plains of Mulgore, the wintry Dun Morogh, etc.) or if they’ll focus the next housing zones around areas that will be relevant for the next expansions.
Though the current zones look big enough that you can possibly find a housing spot that could be ”somewhere in a generic forest anywhere in the world”, from the looks of the two environmental concept art pieces it seems there’ll also be some big structures like Stormwind city gates & gates to Orgrimmar in the backdrop.
A second and even bigger worry I have is how the Private Neighbourhood system is going to work. How many people are required to establish a private neighbourhood? Even if it was just a tiny guild/group, can they build several houses to fill up their private neighbourhood? What will the guest invite system look like?
I’m mostly excited about this feature because for a long time there hasn’t been really anything in WoW I’d be interested in doing besides roleplay. I don’t do raiding, Mythic, PvP, never been much of a collector. This could be the feature that’ll significantly increase my weekly/monthly playtime.
Even if house building and decorating is something I’d enjoy as solo content, just like on Ff14 my mind would constantly try find ways to make something fun out of it for the community. There, I’ve created inns, markets and shops, spooky mansions, wedding venues etc. for public events and for the community to use at their leisure.
So even if I couldn’t access elven aesthetic from the get-go, I’d probably still have fun building something to be utilized in events and whatnot. None of my characters are particularly in need of their own in-game home.
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One concern I have regarding Public Neighbourhoods is how easily other players can access your property. Given that you’ll unlikely have any say over who ends up as your neighbour, there are likely going to be a lot of OOCers in there. How easily can someone grief a neighbour, be it by spamming up the chat with /yells, or visiting? Can you have complete privacy as-needed without withdrawing into a Private Neighbourhood?
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I would expect, with the purported ALL THE ELF theme of midnight we are quite likely to get a Night Elfy Zone and a Blood Elfy Zone at least quite quickly, if elves are the theme of the expansion and housing is a big new feature it makes sense as something they’d focus on. I’d imagine if you’re waiting for say Goblins and Gnomes you might be waiting for a while though.
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Looking at the article again, we can get a few ideas about the system from it.
As a part of our focus on wide adoption, we wanted to ensure that Housing is available to everyone. If you want a house, you can have a house. No exorbitant requirements or high purchase costs, no lotteries, and no onerous upkeep (and if your subscription lapses, don’t worry, your house doesn’t get repossessed!).
So, this makes it clear that there will not be a limited number of houses or neighbourhoods, if the focus is on availability to everyone.
Neighborhoods are instanced but crucially also persistent so your neighbors can be your neighbors for years to come (or until one of you moves).
So the Horde and Alliance neighbourhoods will each be split into countless shards, each of which houses roughly fifty people. Based on our current experience with sharding in WoW, shards cannot be selected and even if they could, having to scroll through hundreds of shards when choosing a public neighbourhood that you want to live in or want to visit sounds like a nightmare.
So my guess is that there will be a “base neighbourhood” where you can buy any of the roughly fifty houses, and then you will be moved to a random public neighbourhood where that house is available. Alternatively, if a friend invites you to their public neighbourhood where they already own property, you will be able to purchase one of any of the remaining houses in that neighbourhood.
There’s also the private neighbourhoods. I imagine that when buying a house, there will be a “start a private neighbourhood” option that will cost a premium. From there, you will be able to invite people to visit your neighbourhood and if they are on your friends list or if they are guild members, they will be able to buy plots. I can’t imagine a private neighbourhood option which is entirely communal, there will have to be someone who serves as the president or owner of the plot.
As for the privacy of individual plots, I think that will depend on whether the interior of each home is a separate instance or not. If it is, then I imagine there will be settings that prevent people from going into the interior if they aren’t friends, guild members or party members. If it isn’t, then maybe Blizzard will allow the implementation of invisible walls to bar unwanted entry, or maybe they will just allow people to run wild and it’s up to you to ignore people who annoy you.
I think the main concern is that unless they revolutionise the sharding system, visiting other players who aren’t in the same neighbourhood will probably require a group invitation from them and selecting a “visit home” option that will allow you to jump to their neighbourhood shard, sort of like visiting garrisons. It might be clunky, it might not be available to raid groups, and it will prevent the organic exploration of neighbourhoods that you don’t own a plot in.
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Do you think they’ve mastered doors yet, chat? 
I believe the Alliance has it easy. Aside from night elves, draenei and pandaren, all races have a level of homogenization.
A gnome house could easily be similar to a human one after all, and still work well for RP.
That being said, I think a winter-based Dun Morogh phase would be absolutely epic! Recently we have not seen enough snowy areas…
The Horde risks getting the short end of the stick. My hope is that, if houses can be customized, one could hypothetically create a culturally mixed neighborhood.
At this stage Orgrimmar should be more than an orc city, and I believe it would be cool to see it with elven, trolls, tauren buildings all mixing together in a diverse cultural cacophony. Heck, even orcs could use a step-up with Iron Horde tech. Orgrimmar won’t go through a (very much needed) updated anytime soon, so maybe it is up to the players!
Not necessarily. While the architecture seems the same throughout, we see that the proposed Horde neighbourhood has a reasonable bit of geographical diversity.
https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/content_entry_media/NK7XAPMQLHOU1738635463975.png
From the sound of it, the Alliance will have similar diversity:
The Alliance zone takes inspiration from Elwynn Forest with touches of Westfall and Duskwood, and the Horde’s is inspired by Durotar, its coastline, and Azshara.
So, there will likely be more wooded and gloomy sections of the Alliance neighbourhood for people who don’t want a pure Stormwind experience. There’s also a close look at the ‘folk decor’ and ‘rugged decor,’ with the folk decor featuring lots of blues and purples that allows for a more night elven aesthetic, while the rugged decor seems to work for most of the Kalimdor Horde races.
But it’s not a perfect match and if people want a pure night elven home, or pure blood elven home, or pure gnomish home, or pure undead home, it’s going to be a long time before we get all of that.
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