World of Warcraft design lead says the upcoming housing feature is a "challenge" for performance and accessibility because it's not "anything like existing zones and the kinds of content that we've had before"

World of Warcraft house — (Image credit: Blizzard)

You might've heard World of Warcraft is finally getting its own housing system with the upcoming Midnight expansion, and it's been a "challenge" for Blizzard to balance accessibility with depth as well as tackle performance concerns implementing such a massive system.

In an interview with GamesRadar+ for Gamescom 2025, World of Warcraft design lead Toby Ragaini explained how there are "multiple sort of axes we need to be careful about" in designing and implementing housing.

Ragaini was seemingly referring to the two different modes that'll be available in WoW's housing system: basic and advanced. In short, basic affords you the sort of interior customization you'd expect from a life or farming sim like Animal Crossing, where there's a grid system with restrictions in place to avoid collision with other objects and janky placement. Advanced, on the other hand, is all about player freedom, removing many of those restrictions and adding a myriad of customization options. Blizzard has a full breakdown of how that all works right here.

"We get one shot at this to impress people," Ragaini said. "That one shot is precisely why the studio poured so much effort – and as a result, time – into implementing housing.

"The amount of investment that we put into this feature… It's launching with Midnight, but it is something that we're going to be supporting [with] every major patch, future expansions – it is going to be a core part of the game."

Be sure to follow the Gamescom 2025 schedule for more exciting announcements regarding new games, and check out our recap of the Future Games Show at Gamescom 2025, too.

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