Full MMORPG.com InterviewPlayer Housing Overview
MMORPG.com Housing Developer Interview
Neighborhood Layouts
Plot numbers for housing neighborhoods may be a bit confusing with adjoining plots having seemingly random number assigned.
There was more of a system during initial design, but as development progressed reorganizing plot numbers would have caused major issues. The current plot numbers are a charming artifact of the design process, but should be relatively inobtrusive overall.
Early drafts of housing looked to carve out space in the faction capitals, but proved difficult without completely redesigning those zones.
Development shifted to the surrounding zones of the Barrens and Elwynn Forest, but again progressed to sorta mini-biomes and offering different flavors for plots in the same area. Spooky, tropical, rugged, forested plots are all part of the same neighborhood.
Want the choice of plot to somewhat reflect what buying real estate is like in real life minus all the bidding wars, mortgages, etc. Do you want more land or less? Live in the outskirts or central social area? Many neighbors or serene quiet hermit life?
First two neighborhoods are just the beginning as they're looking to continue to iterate based on feedback and offer as much variety as possible.
Endeavor System
The pacing of neighborhood endeavor progression has caused some friction with PTR players as these perks allow more more items, rooms, and more. Blizzard intends for the system to scale with the number of active players in a neighborhood.
They don't want there to be a magical number of active players in order to progress faster. They'll be carefully monitoring scaling and feedback.
Activities done during early access will progress endeavor completion once Midnight launches. They expect hardcore housing players might hit rank 5.
Additional ranks will be coming in future patches.
Decor
After outdoor lighting was disabled due to game crashing issues, Blizzard is making it a top priority for that feature to return though they did not have an exact time frame.
A lot of the design decisions have been made to retain as much creative player functionality as possible.
Sitting on large chair causes you to sit inside instead of on the chair which has been reported as a bug. However players have been creatively using tiny chairs inside benches in order to create multiple seating areas on a bench instead of being forced to sit in the center as the default action.
