Taliesin & Evitel Interview with Laura Sardinha and Toby Ragaini
Be sure to check out the full interview on their video for the full context, but we've summarized the important points and new information below.
Interview Highlights
Exterior Design
The exteriors of the houses will be completely customizable.
At launch, there will be four exterior "kits, Human, Orc, Night Elf, and Blood Elf.
On top of the kits, you will be able to use decor for your yard.
Besides customizing the outside, you will also be able to pick different-shaped buildings. For instance, we saw a house shaped like a lighthouse in the demo.
In Horde neighborhoods, you will be able to have alliance-themed houses and vice versa.
At most, some of the locals may comment "hey, we don't see a lot of night elves in these parts," but there won't be any aggressiveness when building a night elf house in a horde neighborhood, for instance
Neighborhoods
Neighborhoods are zone-sized spaces with many different biomes and areas.
Neighborhoods evoke a lot of classic themes of Warcraft.
There will be a new UI HUD for neighborhoods that allows you to see what is going on in your neighborhoods and see the available plots, similar to realtor sites.
You reach your neighborhood through a portal; they are instanced.
Within the WoW fiction, neighborhoods exist and have a story behind them.
Over time, there will be story elements that develop in neighborhoods.
Blizzard wants neighborhoods to be expressions of a group and not something premade from the game.
While main conflicts won't happen in neighborhoods, there might be world events that have elements happening in neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods are sanctuaries, safe environments. "No Stitches wrecking havoc in neighborhoods".
Some plots are isolated, while others are packed closely together to give players more room for expression.
There will be a UI element that will teleport you to your home. The current plan is to have it port you to the front of your plot.
There will be portals back and forth from your neighborhood to capital cities.
Endeavors
Endeavors will allow neighborhoods to invite cultures of Azeroth to their space. You may choose to complete tasks for mechagnomes, which will cause them to appear more frequently and build gizmos in public areas.
Private or Guild neighborhoods can designate a "Neighborhood manager," and these individuals will decide which endeavor to pick each month.
Decor
"Decor will be available from any way that you can acquire loot in the game". This includes the Trading Post.
Midnight will launch with over 1000 different pieces of decor.
Transmog
The transmog UI is getting a full overhaul with Midnight, with more settings and more spacious than the current one designed in Cataclysm
Some outfit slots will be given for free, and players can buy more with gold
Future Development for Player Housing and Neighborhoods
Blizzard is eager to hear all the feedback for features that players have for housing. Their priority for Midnight was to establish a solid foundation that they could build upon.
Every major patch/expansion will feature new Housing updates and content.
Will there be ways to show off our mounts and/or pets? "Stay tuned"
There isn't a "undo" button right now for decorating, but that's the #1 priority for the next dev feature cycle.
There may be a system that moves inactive houses out of public neighborhoods.
There will be a minimum number of players to set up a charter neighborhood, but Blizzard hasn't decided yet on the number.
- However, nothing is lost. When inactive players come back, their house will be exactly as they left, just maybe in a new neighborhood
Copy/paste strings are on Blizzard's radar, but nothing to announce just yet.
Letting others decorate your house isn't a feature at launch for Midnight, but it is on Blizzard's radar.
