World of Warcraft ends 21-year drought and adds housing with MMO's new Midnight expansion – but Blizzard has a good reason it took so long: "We couldn't just check off a box and do the minimum"

We're almost there, folks – World of Warcraft is set to receive its new housing system around the time its upcoming expansion, Midnight, releases, but Blizzard states there's a good reason the MMO has been without the feature for over two decades.

Design lead Toby Ragaini explains why housing took so long to make its way into World of Warcraft during a new interview with GamesRadar+ at the Gamescom 2025 event. According to the developer, Blizzard "knew the anticipation was there" for player homes in-game, but the company wanted to ensure it was implemented properly – and that's no easy feat. "We knew that we couldn't just sort of check off a box and do the minimum," he says.

Blizzard didn't want to simply go "yep, World of Warcraft housing checked." Devs needed to not only add player homes to the MMO, but make it as seamless an experience as possible for fans who've now been waiting 21 years to get their hands on an in-game house.

"We get one shot at this to impress people," as Ragaini puts it. 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," describes Ragaini. "So we wanted to make sure that we did justice to it. We wanted to make sure that the initial version was more than just meeting expectations, but exceeding them."

Lead UX designer Laura Sardinha chimes in, detailing how Blizzard had to create technology to fit the new housing feature – and "it was a lot of work that we did incrementally."

Later on, Ragaini refers back to his and Sardinha's words here, reiterating that devs wanted housing "to feel like a natural extension of the game, and not something that was tacked on." As an MMO player myself, this all makes a lot of sense. After all, housing isn't easy to implement.

Final Fantasy 14 is proof of that – it seems like controversies about its instanced nature, lack of homes, and limited decorating options are constantly arising, among other issues. Here's hoping World of Warcraft nails it.

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.