World of Warcraft: Midnight is around the corner, and I’m starting to feel that familiar hype set in.
World of Warcraft entered its third decade of operation recently, crossing the 20-year milestone few service games can boast. It’s arguably one of the best PC games of all time, and it remains the apex of subscription-based MMORPGs. Furthermore, Blizzard is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, now that it’s part of Xbox and Microsoft, it’s arguably shown greater acceleration than we saw under the old Activision regime.
On player housing and its future
On February 28, 2026, WoW: Midnight goes into early access, with a general launch hitting on March 3. A big part of the overall package is the game’s new player housing system, which is currently live for those who have pre-ordered the expansion.
Some of us (old people, like me) have been waiting 20 years for this feature. It’s basically a full-blown level designer baked into the game, allowing you to customize a space cosmetically that you can call your own. Furnishings can be acquired in all sorts of ways, with trophies celebrating your in-game achievements and the like.
But, some racial architectures are better represented than others. I was a bit dismayed as a goblin player to find that there are only four racial exterior housing styles so far. I also brought up the fact that many quite basic goblin pieces require a ton of rep grinding in Undermine, whereas other races can just buy their basics with gold. Blizzard says it plans to add more styles and optimize the economy over time.
“We have 100% thought about this,” principal artist Jay Hwang says. I asked if it would be a slow, painfully-long roll out like Heritage Armor quests. Jay said no. “We don’t want you to be waiting years to get your goblin house, or gnome house, and so on. We are working on a solution already.”
I asked if one day housing and its systems could integrate into the main game. Could we see in-game quests or community efforts that use these tools to alter the game world, as seen in persistent games like Fallout 76 and Death Stranding? Jay Hwang confirms that the housing mechanics can function in the main world of Azeroth, too.
“We’re only just beginning with how it works right now. We’re building the strong bones of the system. As you guys use it, play with it, we will try to support things that you guys want to see,” Jay Hwang says.
“I would be lying if I didn’t first thing about how this could be used to make interesting content. Can I use this to build quests, activities, and events – how do we build that out?” Maria chimes in. “But, our first priority is getting the basics and optimization right. We don’t want to melt the servers down, and the focus is on giving players the ability to express themselves. I know players have already tried their hand at simple user generated content, like jumping puzzles, and traps. The way people use the system helps us prioritize.”
On boosting character customization, glyphs, and even animations
One thing I wanted to really mention was player customization. Putting the emphasis on expression with player housing has led to even stronger calls to boost the ways players have to express their characters. I mentioned to Maria and Jay that, as an avowed goblin player, I was taken aback by how much customization other races have by comparison. The new race being added in Midnight, the Haranir, also has a mountain of customization options. I asked if the team plans to add more and what players can expect.
“I would say yes,” Maria affirms, “but we don’t have a roadmap just yet. We’ve taken runs at it from time to time, and we know players love it. But now we’re looking at it as a sort of larger project, rather than drops here and there like we did with Heritage Armor. We’ve even discussed improving character animations and things like that — what sorts of improvements we can make there. It’s down the road, though, it’s not soon.”
“You can see even now with the remake of the transmog system that we understand the need,” Jay Hwang explains. “We’re starting to move down that road. That’s why we’ve been investing in things like housing which aren’t player power related, and focused more on avenues of expression. So, in the future, maybe goblins will get more ears and noses for you. These are things we’re definitely interested in for ourselves too.”
After promising the team I wasn’t just there to spread goblin propaganda, I asked once again about the glyphs system. Added years ago, Glyphs are a system that allows players some mild cosmetic customization for spells and abilities, but the feature has been a bit neglected. I asked if Glyphs were something that could also eventually end up integrated into the new transmog system.
“That is the path we would take for glyphs, and that kind of customization,” Maria explained. “On the longer term agenda, we may want to look and rethink how we offer some of those sorts of customizations. We’re collecting a lot of information on how that’s being used. We have abilities and toys in the game that can change the way something looks, we can attach audio and visual effects. There’s, over the years, been an astonishing bunch of different things overlapping, and none of it is part of a consolidated system. There’s an untangling that needs to happen, and then a look at the pros and cons.”
Maria reiterated that these ideas represent further-out possibilities and that they could all encompass some sort of new customization system that not only allows you to customize spells, but also animations too.
“It’s a fairly thorny question,” she explained, “what does it look like when we pull all of this together? what if we wanted to improve customization across the board. Adding and improving animations have come up more than you might imagine. People want animations that are appropriate to the role they’re playing. How could we integrate that? It’s all part of a larger project for the future.”
Express yourself
World of Warcraft is in uncharted waters to some degree. The game has survived and seen off all sorts of industry instability and challenges, from free-to-play mobile games to big-budget imitators and even issues of its own making. There’s not exactly a blueprint for operating a game on this scale, while simultaneously appealing to new younger players and an aging legacy player base (me, it’s me.)
World of Warcraft still has a fair few flaws, I’d argue. The game’s open-world levelling experience and new player onboarding systems are still quite poor, despite various attempts to put band-aids on them. The dizzying array of overlapping endgame systems, timelines, and features can immediately put off newcomers — I’ve seen it happen firsthand, trying to induct family and friends. Blizzard should seriously consider investing in creating a neutral new-player experience closer to the vanilla or Cataclysm levelling experience in my view, but it would be a pretty hefty undertaking I imagine.
Indeed, the player base has increasingly split between “Classic” and “Retail” players, with many Classic players opting away from Retail simply to experience that old world levelling experience. They’re often nostalgic for a more immersive, less telemetry-driven “hyper-optimized” experience, as opposed to the more “modern” hyper-fast season-driven endgame experience.
Blizzard has done a fairly good job catering to both player bases so far, although the rise of private servers shows that there’s still a big audience for the old WoW, yearning for a slower-paced experience that perhaps doesn’t hold their hand as much.
Player Housing and player expression features definitely lean into the Gen-Z cohort to some degree, where skins and in-game flair drive player spending and retention. Sometimes I worry that WoW is leaning a little too hard towards being cozy, however, to the point where it becomes a little disengaging — particularly in the open world. Although, new systems like Prey in Midnight, coupled with Legion Remix’s world tier difficulty experiments could help solve that gap down the line.
World of Warcraft will have another big info blowout towards BlizzCon 2026 at the tail end of the summer, and we’ll likely learn even more about what’s next for this most legendary franchise in the coming months.
World of Warcraft: Midnight is up now to preorder for $49.99 on Windows PC.
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