World of Warcraft: Midnight - Dev Interviews

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Dev Interview - Player Housing
Taliesin & Evitel interviewed Toby Ragaini and Laura Sadinha about Player Housing!


Outside

• Barbershop style UI to design the outside of your house. Pick different towers, windows, facades.
• Use decor to decorate your plot/yard.

Neighborhoods

• Neighborhoods aren't faction exclusive. Your Night Elf can go to a Horde Neighborhood or build an Alliance style house in a Horde Neighborhood.
• The team is trying to put very few hard limits on what you can do in your Neighborhood.
• Neighborhoods are zone sized spaces with lots of different biomes. If players wanted to live in a specific style place in Azeroth, hopefully they'll find it.
• You can open the housing UI from anywhere, it will be like a Warcraft real estate site, allowing you to see what plots are available.
• Neighborhoods are instanced, you get there through a portal.
• Over time you'll see some story elements specific to Neighborhoods.
• Neighborhoods will hopefully be an expression of individual communities.
• Neighborhoods may see elements of threats that are going on in the outside world, but the Neighborhood is a sanctuary. Players should feel safe, you won't be doing a boss battle in the Neighborhood.

Endeavors

• Endeavors are neighborhood-specific, month-long tasks that combine elements of world quests, the Traveler's Log, and the trade post
• Endeavors may involve inviting another culture from Azeroth to your neighborhood. You might invite the Gnomes from Mechagon, with elements of that culture appearing in your neighborhood. More will appear as you make more progress.
• For private neighborhoods, the neighborhood manager will choose one of three or four Endeavours for the neighborhood each month.
• There may be an occasional Priority Endeavours, where everyone will do the same one.

Decor, Design, and Location

• There will be Housing Decor from basically any way you currently acquire loot in the game.
• Launching with over 1000 pieces of decor.
• Some people may treat their home as an extended trophy room. Some people may want to build out a class fantasy.
• Some house plots are way off by themselves, in a distant corner, on a hillside, not close to other houses.
• Some houses are closer together, letting people have more of an urban social feel.
• There will be a UI button to teleport to just outside of your house. There will also be portals to the capital cities.
• When you are in decor mode, you have a different UI, but when you are just hanging out in your house, you should be able to queue for things.

Moving Your House

• If a player's account isn't active for a long time, the team may start removing houses when they aren't coming back.
• It's easy and low friction to move to a new neighborhood. You pack up your house and put it down where you want it.

Future Updates

• Adding an undo button is a top priority for the next update.
• Stay tuned for more information about music or environmental effects in your house. Nothing to announce yet.
• Stay tuned for more information about potential stables or other similar features.
• Giving someone permissions to decorate in your house is a great idea, won't be ready at launch, but is on the shortlist for future additions.
• The team will be actively listening housing feedback and making changes. There is time set in the schedule to working on housing changes in response to feedback.

Transmog

• Players will get some number of outfit slots for free. After that, you'll need to purchase more slots, but it won't be expensive.

Dev Interview - Endeavors and Elves
Destructoid talked to Maria Hamilton and Gabriel Gonzalez. We highlighted some of the major new points below.

• Endeavor rewards could be unlocking visitors who can come and see you, who may have interesting things to sell or interesting little activities. You might also unlock some decor for all of the neighborhood.
• Endeavors will scale based on neighborhood size.
• There is a severe threat, so the Elven tribes will work together. Players will learn some of the backstory, such as why the Blood Elves were banished. This is an opportunity to educate players that don't know some of the lore about that part of the story, but also reveal them coming together against a common enemy.

Dev Interview - Endeavors and Elves
wccftech Paul Kubit and Jade Martin. We highlighted some of the major new points below.

• Hard and Nightmore mode final encounters will be 1v1, so nearby players cannot help.
• Training Grounds will have some kind of rewards.
• There is a vendor in Mudsprocket that sells Onyxia heads to players that have at least 1 Onyxia kill.
• Valeera will have access to cool tank mechanics around evasion to keep her alive for a while when she is in a Tank role.

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