World of Warcraft throws shade at Final Fantasy 14 in its player housing plans

Blizzard has given the first high-level look at how player housing will work in World of Warcraft — and it’s espousing a “Home for Everyone” philosophy that takes direct aim at the expensive and chancy process of acquiring property in other MMOs, including WoW’s chief rival Final Fantasy 14.

Player housing has been on WoW fans’ wishlist pretty much since the game launch 20 years ago, but Blizzard has long resisted it — barring the rather fussy and undercooked Garrison system that formed part of 2014’s Warlords of Draenor. Last November, Blizzard revealed that housing will finally become a reality as part of the game’s next expansion, Midnight.

Blizzard is keen to stress that there’ll be no scarcity to housing in WoW; it doesn’t seem to be interested in creating the kind of virtual real-estate market common in other games like FF14, where the number of housing plots available is limited on a per-server basis.

“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,” Blizzard said. “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!).”

In FF14’s housing system, there are only 9,00o plots per server, and players need to enter a lottery to win a chance at purchasing one of these plots. The cost of the plots is very high, with even the smallest costing millions of gil, and houses are automatically demolished if they’re not used regularly. Blizzard’s philosophy seems aimed directly at players’ frustrations with this rapacious, FOMO-fueled market.

In WoW, there will be just two housing zones: one for the Alliance and one for the Horde, based on their respective popular starting zones, Elwynn Forest and Durotar. Houses are organized into neighborhoods of roughly 50 plots each, but these are instanced, and it seems there will be no numerical limit on them. You can either join a public neighborhood and take a chance on who your neighbors will be, perhaps making friends in the process, or create a private neighborhood with your guild or group of friends. “While an individual player can have a house, a community can have a Neighborhood!” Blizzard said.

A WoW house will be shared across the player’s Warband (Blizzard’s new term for each player’s roster of characters), meaning your Alliance character can hang out in your Horde character’s house, and housing items and rewards will be Warband-wide.

Blizzard promised that obtaining new housing upgrades and decor will not be overly focused on real-money transactions via the game’s shop, although some pieces would be available there. “We’ve been very aligned in our internal conversations that Housing is designed to be primarily player-first and not revenue-first. Housing will offer hundreds and hundreds of decorations and house customizations via in-game rewards but will also offer a smaller number of items in the cash shop as well. This is comparable to how transmogs and pets are currently handled in game versus the shop,” Blizzard said.

Blizzard also stressed that it sees WoW housing as an “evergreen addition to the game, with its own roadmap, reaching across multiple patches and into future expansions” — perhaps a veiled reference to the swiftly abandoned Garrisons and other features that have only lasted as long as the expansions they were introduced in.