World of Warcraft’s housing characteristic launched this week for everybody who bought the upcoming Midnight enlargement early. Although the characteristic remains to be in its early levels, gamers (together with yours actually) are already shedding hours upon hours creating elaborate houses with the decor accessible. However Horde gamers particularly are actually struggling to take care of one main challenge: their home exteriors are ugly.
Okay, that is a bit imply. In case you play an orc, or are into the orc aesthetics of spikes, flames, haphazard steel plates, and slapdash wood boards nailed on, the Horde exteriors are effective. The difficulty is that a whole lot of the Horde – specifically, everybody who would not play an orc – usually prefers a much less…grungey aesthetic. Alliance gamers additionally solely get one exterior housing choice, however their houses are pretty commonplace, inoffensive cottages that most individuals will discover tolerable at worst.
Sadly for anybody sad with what’s on supply, till Midnight absolutely launches, that is it. You possibly can customise your exterior in numerous methods by altering up roof colours and chimney types, however it’s all in your faction’s default aesthetic. Blizzard has promised that Night time Elf and Blood Elf exteriors will arrive on Midnight’s launch, with extra choices deliberate for afterward. However for now you are caught with both a cottage or a spike shack a method or one other.
Some gamers, like myself, are simply making an attempt to make the perfect of it with outside decorations. Here is my modest hut. You’d by no means know that inside is a comfy Shaman retreat, full with a small magical library, a comfortable kitchen, and a stone altar devoted in honor of the weather.
However a whole lot of gamers are getting far, way more inventive of their makes an attempt to subvert the shabby exterior design. You see, Blizzard’s ornament instruments are very, very exact if you’d like them to be, and may ignore collision if you’d like them to. Which has led to Horde gamers making an attempt to masks the orc-ness of their huts by protecting them with…properly, all kinds of different issues.
As an illustration, this particular person turned their home into a pleasant cave:
This particular person took a crack at a extra Blood Elf-looking type:
This particular person made one thing easy but efficient:
I feel this one is fairly cool:
Sadly, in doing this, one challenge gamers are operating up towards is that there is a restrict to how a lot decor you possibly can put exterior, and lots of the objects individuals are utilizing to cowl up the orc turrets dissipate a good portion of that restrict. Because of this, if you wish to cowl your own home in rocks, you possibly can’t do a lot else along with your yard. It looks like everyone seems to be begging Blizzard to elevate the outside decor cap, a difficulty they instructed us they’re properly conscious of and dealing on.
Realistically, this isn’t a large challenge in the meanwhile: we knew stepping into that this was successfully an early entry characteristic and a few performance can be restricted. Greater than something, it is humorous to see the lengths gamers will go to to be able to get inventive with the instruments they’ve accessible to them. Simply think about what they will be able to as soon as they do not need to waste all their outside decor area on massive wood platforms.
World of Warcraft: Midnight launches on March 2, 2026. If you wish to get your arms on housing earlier than then, you have to pre-order the enlargement – any model of it’ll do. We not too long ago spoke with Jesse Kurlancheek, housing lead and principal recreation designer, and Joanna Giannullis, senior UX designer, in regards to the housing characteristic, together with how its gone within the beta to this point, and what to anticipate in Midnight.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Bought a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.
