World of Warcraft's player housing won't lock out casual players: 'We're not gonna put a beautiful bookcase behind killing a raid boss'

When I heard player housing is coming to World of Warcraft, I immediately thought of the sheer amount of stuff in the game that could find its way into your home. Blizzard could reward housing items like they do rare mounts for achieving some of the most grindy or challenging things in the game. It could be a real time sink.

But thankfully that doesn't seem like that's the direction Blizzard wants to go in when it comes to collecting decorations. Speaking to IGN at Gamescom, game director Ion Hazzikostas said they won't be locked behind "content that is too hardcore."

"There may be distinct trophies or things that you can earn for being the best raider on your server or being one of the best dungeon players in the game," he said, "but we're not gonna put a beautiful bookcase behind killing a raid boss."

I for one am glad that Blizzard has drawn this line: You shouldn't have to be good at raiding at the highest levels to have a fancy pad. Limiting high-level rewards to trophies is a smart way to let players celebrate their achievements without forcing people to play the game in ways they might not enjoy.

This theme of unrestrained creativity with WoW's player housing is what has me and a lot of other people pretty excited for it to drop (in an early form) with the upcoming Midnight expansion. Decorations can be dyed, scaled up or down in size, rotated, and clipped into other objects in any way you want. You can take your entire house and save the blueprint to share with other players too. Other games with housing, like Final Fantasy 14, aren't nearly as customizable.

Blizzard has spent the last year hyping playing housing up and we'll finally get to try it with the launch of the final patch for the current expansion, The War Within. Anyone who buys Midnight will have access to it, and Blizzard says it will be updating it and adding new items to it for the foreseeable future.