Kexman Talks Delves and Player Housing with Jay Hwang and Maria Hamilton

Posted 2026/02/13 at 4:39 PM by Archimtiros

Azeroth Homes event in LondonDiscussing Delves with Maria Hamilton

Delves were targeted for a particular type of player, those who can't set aside a big block of time or often get interrupted and need to step away for a moment. That's difficult to do in group content where other players can be kept waiting or a timer is ticking down, so the developers started looking for a less restrictive and more solo-friendly piece of content.

Once they started working on Delves, they started trying new things. Nemesis summons, K'aresh gates, traps that players or enemies could be lured into, and Midnight is adding mount-capable outdoor delves as well.

The developers have been looking at data on how players spend time inside delves, and they think there's room for a longer experience, leading them to Labyrinths. Somewhat inspired by Blackrock Mountain, which had several interconnected but separate activities, the idea is to allow groups to progress at their own pace, rather than requiring them to go through everything all at once.

A team is already working The Last Titan, and they've chosen locations for new delves and talked about what's happening in its zones at this point in the story, what kind of dungeons they should have, what kind of creatures should be there. With so many previous connections to Northrend, there's a lot of nostalgia and easter eggs to explore, but the team still want to make it fresh and exciting for players who never experienced those areas before.

The developers like to try to guess what players will do first when they arrive in a new piece of content and are very interested to see who is right or whether players surprise them.

Player Housing with Jay Hwang

Watching players engage with housing has been a dream come true. They couldn't be happier with the way players have engaged with the system, making their own tutorials and creating their own communities around the feature.

Housing is starting here. They still have a backlog of creations to release, but seeing players come up with new ideas they didn't even expect has led to even more ideas to support in the future. Developers try to prepare themselves for players to break the game in unexpected ways, but sometimes they become really cool features.

Because they decided not to include any kind of player power with housing, the developers have a lot more freedom to allow bugs and unexpected ways of engaging with the system, even deciding to adopt and support some of them as official features, like adding native support for floating houses.

More exciting than any one individual type of racial architecture coming to housing is seeing how players mix and match them together to create entirely new themes.

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Comment by tmptfateWTB

Native bottom textures for floating houses and custom "mounts" that houses can float on (Ex. a grassy island, rusty metal platform)

ways to hop levels inside the house if players dont want stairs (ex., telporters, a rope that can be droped from a room opening a floor up)

Ways to "fill" (like in MS paint) empty objects & walled off areas with liquad (Water, lava, molten gold

More grim items like skeletons, blood, body parts

Comment by TessellaWTB

Native bottom textures for floating houses and custom "mounts" that houses can float on (Ex. a grassy island, rusty metal platform)
ways to hop levels inside the house if players dont want stairs (ex., telporters, a rope that can be droped from a room opening a floor up)
Ways to "fill" (like in MS paint) empty objects & walled off areas with liquad (Water, lava, molten gold
More grim items like skeletons, blood, body parts

Comment by CoWmieThey need to change Brann. I loathe the stumpy little t**t and his constant pulling of NPCs in the Delves. He's essentially a Pet, just a whole lot worse, they figured out decades ago that pets shouldn't pull aggro. Why the heck is Brann pulling aggro all the freaking time? Can't even use items that are supposed to lower your aggro radius because Brann just pulls them anyways!Comment by OckravenHate housing,
Would rather collect all the battle pets than waste 1 min doig housing bull crap

Players are not as happy about this as you think they are, and ignoring us will not make us go away.

!@#$ your player housing bull @#$%Comment by Ovidiu30They need to change Brann. I loathe the stumpy little t**t and his constant pulling of NPCs in the Delves. He's essentially a Pet, just a whole lot worse, they figured out decades ago that pets shouldn't pull aggro. Why the heck is Brann pulling aggro all the freaking time? Can't even use items that are supposed to lower your aggro radius because Brann just pulls them anyways!Comment by fatgunnHate housing,
Would rather collect all the battle pets than waste 1 min doig housing bull crap

Players are not as happy about this as you think they are, and ignoring us will not make us go away.

!@#$ your player housing bull @#$%Comment by rlloyd3Hate housing,
Would rather collect all the battle pets than waste 1 min doig housing bull crap

Players are not as happy about this as you think they are, and ignoring us will not make us go away.

!@#$ your player housing bull @#$%Comment by KerathrasCan someone please ask the devs how tf Mages are supposed to do delves now that they’ve stripped us of virtually all our kiting tools, removed most of our defenses, and nerfed our damage on top of all that? Or is Valeria just going to solo them for us because she feels so bad for us?Comment by George14I wish we could have a way to have both a prefix and a suffix for titles, instead of just either one.Comment by Tuckiiship the ^&*!ing CEComment by TyneicWTB

Native bottom textures for floating houses and custom "mounts" that houses can float on (Ex. a grassy island, rusty metal platform)
ways to hop levels inside the house if players dont want stairs (ex., telporters, a rope that can be droped from a room opening a floor up)
Ways to "fill" (like in MS paint) empty objects & walled off areas with liquad (Water, lava, molten gold
More grim items like skeletons, blood, body parts

Comment by MsLauranaI have been enjoying both Housing and Delves, so I am excited to see the bigger delves and to get a different companion! My only gripe about these two interview vids is ...Who the Eff thought it was a good idea to have tavern chatter in the background while they are talking!Comment by KathelyMardWTB

Native bottom textures for floating houses and custom "mounts" that houses can float on (Ex. a grassy island, rusty metal platform)
ways to hop levels inside the house if players dont want stairs (ex., telporters, a rope that can be droped from a room opening a floor up)
Ways to "fill" (like in MS paint) empty objects & walled off areas with liquad (Water, lava, molten gold
More grim items like skeletons, blood, body parts

Comment by apedosmilCan someone please ask the devs how tf Mages are supposed to do delves now that they’ve stripped us of virtually all our kiting tools, removed most of our defenses, and nerfed our damage on top of all that? Or is Valeria just going to solo them for us because she feels so bad for us?Comment by Cross1776Just here to say I don't care about housing at all. I know it is risky to post. it makes it look like housing has interaction. But i could not resist saying it. Housing is the lamest crap ever.

Also, someone above mentioned mages. Please revert every single mage change, except Arcane. For Arcane, make it work the way it did a week ago. Thanks!Comment by EndormiWTB

Native bottom textures for floating houses and custom "mounts" that houses can float on (Ex. a grassy island, rusty metal platform)
ways to hop levels inside the house if players dont want stairs (ex., telporters, a rope that can be droped from a room opening a floor up)
Ways to "fill" (like in MS paint) empty objects & walled off areas with liquad (Water, lava, molten gold
More grim items like skeletons, blood, body parts

Comment by GnomesRuleJust here to say I don't care about housing at all. I know it is risky to post. it makes it look like housing has interaction. But i could not resist saying it. Housing is the lamest crap ever.Comment by saiadarJust here to say I don't care about housing at all. I know it is risky to post. it makes it look like housing has interaction. But i could not resist saying it. Housing is the lamest crap ever.

Also, someone above mentioned mages. Please revert every single mage change, except Arcane. For Arcane, make it work the way it did a week ago. Thanks!Comment by AlustrielThey need to change Brann. I loathe the stumpy little t**t and his constant pulling of NPCs in the Delves. He's essentially a Pet, just a whole lot worse, they figured out decades ago that pets shouldn't pull aggro. Why the heck is Brann pulling aggro all the freaking time? Can't even use items that are supposed to lower your aggro radius because Brann just pulls them anyways!Comment by AlustrielCan someone please ask the devs how tf Mages are supposed to do delves now that they’ve stripped us of virtually all our kiting tools, removed most of our defenses, and nerfed our damage on top of all that? Or is Valeria just going to solo them for us because she feels so bad for us?

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