Zepla Player Housing Preview - Bigger, Better, and More Expressive than Ever

Posted 2025/05/19 at 3:40 PM by Archimtiros

ZeplaUnlimited Creativity

The creative possibilities are endless. You can make a cozy traditional house, or fighting arenas, fancy ballrooms, jumping puzzles, dungeons, virtually anything you can think of.

Housing is meant to scale with player interest level, integrated but not mandatory. Players don't have to engage with it 24/7, but it is being built built as a core part of the game, not another tacked on system.

Housing may not be part of WoW's traditional gameplay, but the two are complimentary, part of the same ecosystem, and leading into one another.

As per the developers, housing shouldn't be "go to housing island, do some housing things, then go back to regular WoW."

The version we're seeing in previews now is "a lot earlier and a lot rougher," but they want to get community feedback sooner than normal. There are already new tasks being created as a result of this early preview.

A lot of their schedule is based around knowing they'll need to respond to players, carving out time in the dev cycle to react to post-launch feedback.

Furniture

Furniture is all stored in a collection tab, not in your bags.

There is a placement limit of "like 10,000 items" but developers said testing never got anywhere near that; most people go to around 2-3k.

Though non-functional at the moment, there are weapon racks which are classified as interactable.

Secret door bookcases have been confirmed!

Zeph personally requested plushies (Illidan plushies specifically), so maybe they'll show up in the game someday.

The team is pulling tons of assets from every class & race in the game. Blizzard even ran an internal staff survey to figure out what kind of class and race assets should be included.

Lighting is still a work in progress, though the dev's number one priority is to let players set their own vibe.

No music boxes planned right now, though the team is eager to expand housing features post-launch.

Neighborhoods

Currently, players get two houses each - one per faction - though Horde and Alliance can live next to each other. There are no guards or aggro from living in another faction's neighborhood.

Team isn't confirming any details yet, but the fact that Blizzard has lead developers of neighborhood content is telling.

If you want to go hard on housing or on neighborhoods and play in that space for hours a day, the team wants to support that.

The team did confirm that they're taking a seasonal approach to neighborhoods, and already working with the holiday events team, implying tie-ins with Winter Veil, etc.

Neighborhoods are more than a backdrop for houses and meant to feel alive, a social playground rather than just a yard: block parties, birthday parties, and weddings are all kinds of things they want to support. "If nobody visits, we failed."

Zeph suggested an LFG-type "Venue Finder" for neighborhood events, which was positively received, though the team is concrete in focusing on safety boundaries - players should have full control over who can enter their spaces: just friends, guildies, private only, etc.

Language barriers are also a concern, specifically for EU.

Alts and NPCs hanging out in houses/neighborhood. Developers were cagey on the NPC answer, which makes it sound like something may be planned, and their B-roll does seem to suggest NPC visitors.

If you decide to move neighborhoods, everything goes with you, basically drag and drop your house somewhere new.

Blizzard has been running internal playtests, asking people to pick their favorite plots, then sprucing up the ones that don't.

It's important that every race feels represented. What's best for one might not be best for another.

Monetization

Core class and race fantasy will never be paywalled.

Specifically, your in-game fantasy, race fantasy, your class fantasy all stays in game - earned rather than purchased.

The Housing Shop will be comparable to current WoW Shop transmog, mounts, and pets: less canon, extra decorations that are fun and "nice to have."

Completely non-functional. They don't want players to feel like they don't have access to cooking without buying it on the shop.

For the test build, there was a shop button visible in the furniture collections window, which nearly everyone felt was intrusive, but Blizzard does seem open to changing it.

Their stated goal is for housing to be player-first, not revenue-first.

Players won't be evicted if their game subscription lapses.

Collecting Decorations

Whatever kind of activity you're doing, you'll probably get housing stuff out of it.

The team doesn't want anything exclusive to housing that makes it feel mandatory.

Even if someone has zero interest in housing, they might still do a dungeon and get a cool rug to put down.

Anything earned on one character can be used in any of your houses.

Prestigious "flex" furniture and other "loud" pieces like Onyxia's head will be a thing, but there will also be quieter, more subtle rewards.

Completing a meta achievement might award a literal trophy to place in your house.

High M+ scores and Mythic raid clears are also likely to have some kind of associated housing reward.

It's meant to be like transmog, so players can always go back and clear old content to get the housing rewards.

A lot of ideas were thrown around during the roundtable, from KSM, AotC, or even spending gold cap on prestigious rewards, but nothing confirmed.

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Comment by Wolfwood67I really need to know, will we have taurens head wall mounts? I need an entire hidden room with those.Comment by runicpowerwho is zepla? ive never heard of this person before :(Comment by DranniYay! Zepla!Comment by ClinoclaseThere is a placement limit of "like 10,000 items" but developers said testing never got anywhere near that; most people go to around 2-3k.
Comment by AtanaeI like the energy that Blizzard is putting into player housing. And we all have to get comfortable tempering expectations - "1.0" releases always have rough edges.

While I know that players don't want too much convenience (i.e. Auction House) I could make the case for some limited bank functionality - void bank, for instance, and having a closet that acts as transmog would be nice. I'd also like a functioning desk. I collect all the letters and non-book lore tidbits, and it would be nice to store them someplace that isn't taking up bag or bank space.

I also hope that any books we collected becomes an on-use item that creates (or populates) a book in our house. My main's bank is 80% books and papers (and 20% memorabilia). I'd hate to lose those books - some have been removed from the game! But I could also use the bank space. Even my war band bank is largely filled with books and letters.

In fact, it would be great to have chests that could house our trivial memorabilia - all those quest rewards that are 1-use only items you never used because you wanted a trophy of doing the quest. Or stray items that never cleared your bags that were needed for some quest or collectable pursuit (looking at you, Ardenweald dreamcatcher). All sorts of little things it would be great to get out of my bank but still have available (though I completely understand the logistical nightmare of storage).

I am still on my campaign to have the toy makers convert some of those summoning trinkets to become toys.Comment by Lunae067"High M+ scores and Mythic raid clears are also likely to have some kind of associated housing reward."

I really hope there will be housing rewards that come from PvP too. Like a severed head of an enemy race as a trophy on the wall, bloody coin pile, an armor stand with a complete pvp set, Wanted poster with knives sticking out of it... etcComment by janinI really need to know, will we have taurens head wall mounts? I need an entire hidden room with those.Comment by TwiztedGWHY Blizzard! Lets talk to people who dont play Retail complete TRASH. Why on gods green earth are you talking to people who do NOT or barely play RETAIL this is pathetic, how bout you listen to the real player base for a change!

Live from her twitch feed: "Bun Enthusiast • Twitch Partner • FFXIV Content Creator"Comment by SinRThe more I look at this the more it seems like Blizzard is holding a 100 dollar bill on a fishing pole telling streamers "BRO WE NEED MORE HYPE FOR THIS, RECORD IT AGAIN"

Like, seriously. has there been a streamer that's said "Its kinda.... OK Whatever" yet?Comment by XernathPlease blizz, keep houses non mandatory but make something outside of decorative furnitures otherwise it's pretty pointless :/ maybe chests that are account wide ( separate to warbank where you can only put mats for proffesions etc. stations that have skills of your other characters so you don't need to relog, mannequins with saved gear preset and when you click on them you change gear instantly, option to sleep in bed that gives +5% rep buff for hour and stacks with Darkmoon faire buff, so many options please don't fail us and don't make this system being one thing fun decor that everyone forgets about in half yearComment by SomanychickensThe more I look at this the more it seems like Blizzard is holding a 100 dollar bill on a fishing pole telling streamers "BRO WE NEED MORE HYPE FOR THIS, RECORD IT AGAIN"

Like, seriously. has there been a streamer that's said "Its kinda.... OK Whatever" yet?Comment by saiadarI don't care if I've heard of them or not, I just want more juicy housing info.

The more I look at this the more it seems like Blizzard is holding a 100 dollar bill on a fishing pole telling streamers "BRO WE NEED MORE HYPE FOR THIS, RECORD IT AGAIN"

Like, seriously. has there been a streamer that's said "Its kinda.... OK Whatever" yet?Comment by Lockhart667WHY Blizzard! Lets talk to people who dont play Retail complete TRASH. Why on gods green earth are you talking to people who do NOT or barely play RETAIL this is pathetic, how bout you listen to the real player base for a change!

Live from her twitch feed: "Bun Enthusiast • Twitch Partner • FFXIV Content Creator"Comment by SouledkWHY Blizzard! Lets talk to people who dont play Retail complete TRASH. Why on gods green earth are you talking to people who do NOT or barely play RETAIL this is pathetic, how bout you listen to the real player base for a change!

Live from her twitch feed: "Bun Enthusiast • Twitch Partner • FFXIV Content Creator"Comment by ScaryfoxIt's awesome to know that Blizzard is trying to flesh their housing system. However, you can place training dummies in ESO, and let's not pretend they didn't get the idea of forced jumping puzzles in Zereth Mortis from GW2. So, I'm not sure why part of this article pretends those games don't exist.Comment by ArchieAngelBlizz PLEASE let us save and load layoutsComment by cheiniiYep, they and through Wowhead are trying to push this content hard. And it's just a resounding.....meh. Folks are gonna love it for a week, and 99% of the playerbase wont touch it again.Comment by avatarofshadowif i can't lure in raiders and feed them to deathclaws, it'll never be the best housing experience I've had.Comment by avatarofshadowJoking aside, I'd very much like to have my pets and mounts wandering around. Honestly, I wish they'd made this a giant upgrade to the garrison instead of insisting that it won't be garrisons 2.0. Some of us quite liked garrisons, and wish they'd kept them advancing over the years. I also have that garden buried in Mists.Comment by SoeroahThe main thing I want right now is to be able to set customisable Venthyr mirrors so I can make teleport puzzles and hidden rooms you can only access via mirror screen transition

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