World of Warcraft Housing Early Access Review
From guest contributor, Tanner Goodman
Ambitious, long awaited, and wildly fun, even with sharp edges
Housing has finally arrived in World of Warcraft, and for a game that has spent over two decades keeping player homes just out of reach, it feels surreal to walk through my own front door. This early access rollout has already shifted how players move through Azeroth, how they think about old content, and how they interact with their guilds. It lands somewhere between a massive sandbox and a live social experiment, and depending on how far Blizzard is willing to improve the system, it could become one of the most meaningful additions WoW has seen in years.
As someone who spends a lot of time in the world, both in raids and in the quiet gaps between patches, I walked into housing with cautious optimism. What I found surprised me. The system is impressive, beautiful, overwhelming at first, and full of personality. It also comes with heavy friction points that Blizzard will need to address if they want this feature to thrive long term.
First Impressions
The first thing that hit me was scale. Neighborhoods are massive, full of plots that feel visually distinct rather than copy pasted. That sense of choice is exciting at first, then slowly melts into paralysis as you circle plot after plot thinking, “I could do something cool with this one.” Our guild approached it with a first come first served system, which largely worked and kept things orderly. When a neighborhood reaches roughly 80% capacity, the game generates a new subdivision, essentially a fresh phase layered on top of the original.
This solves some land availability issues, but it creates a different kind of friction. If your house ends up in subdivision two or three, you cannot freely teleport between phases, and there is no straightforward way to visit friends unless you select an unclaimed plot in their subdivision and use the travel option meant for scouting potential purchases. It is clunky, slow, and unintuitive.
Right now our guild has three subdivisions, with the first two feeling lively and populated while the third remains mostly empty. The magic hits hardest when you step outside and immediately cross paths with guildmates, and that is something players in later subdivisions simply do not experience as often. If a plot you wanted was already claimed, you may be stuck waiting for the next subdivision to unlock before you get another shot. Neighborhoods thrive on population density, and Blizzard will eventually need to give players cleaner ways to move between subdivisions so that communities do not feel fractured.
Housing’s Biggest Wins
The unexpected triumph of housing is how much freedom it gives players. I did not expect Blizzard to let me scale objects as large or as small as I wanted. I did not expect floating furniture to be possible. I did not expect clipping to be both allowed and useful. This system trusts players to experiment rather than forcing them into rigid prefab layouts, and the result is genuinely creative. You can design clean and realistic spaces, or build something physically impossible and equally charming. The tools (mostly) do not get in the way.
The social aspect is just as impressive. Seeing guildmates sprint through the neighborhood, stopping by each other’s homes, comparing layouts, laughing about mistakes, or sharing vendor locations feels incredibly alive. For the first time in years, people are out in the world gathering instead of idling in Dornogal. It has shifted the energy of the game in a way that does not feel temporary.
The environments and soundtrack elevate everything further. Each housing region contains multiple biomes and color palettes. Forest, meadow, shoreline, all distinct and visually rich. The music sits gently underneath everything, calm enough not to distract yet atmospheric enough to feel warm and personal.
Where Housing Struggles
For all the joy, there are problems that pull the experience down.
The first is item purchasing. Right now you can only buy decor one piece at a time. If you want 50 fences, you will right click 50 times at the vendor, then right click 50 times again to transfer them into storage. If you miscount, you must travel back and repeat the process. A direct buy system inside housing storage would solve this immediately.
Plot boundaries are another issue. Once you place your home, you lose all visual indication of where your land ends. You only find the border by pushing items into invisible walls. Advanced mode can also slingshot furniture across the zone with the slightest movement. Funny the first time, annoying every time after that.
Outdoor decor capacity is tight. The hard cap is 200 placement capacity outside, and some items take 5 capacity each. A yard, stable, fence, and outdoor seating area can easily consume that limit before advanced builds even begin. Blizzard wants to raise the limit, but hardware performance concerns hold them back for now.
The Lumber Grind and Economy Shock
The lumber grind is the biggest pain point of all. Lumber is a brand new material, and every expansion has its own type. You cannot farm one wood for everything. Pandaria wood does not work as Legion wood, Legion does not replace Shadowlands, and so on. Nearly every craft across every profession needs lumber, and gathering it is brutally slow. You dismount, chop a tree, get 1 or 2 pieces, mount again, repeat. If you have a grand build in mind, prepare for hundreds or thousands of trees.
Druids currently dominate lumber farming, since instant shapeshift movement lets them clear trees at double or triple the speed of most classes. When one recipe requires 48 lumber, and a driveway needs six lampposts, that is 288 lumber for just one part of a larger concept. With no profession level tied to lumber gathering there is no way to increase the yield of your chopping. Allowing extra lumber to be gathered on a higher house level, or creating it as a separate secondary profession would fix this instantly.
The auction house reflects this scarcity. Lumber based items cost anywhere from 10,000 to 200,000 gold each, sometimes more. Builders who want symmetry or large outdoor detail either farm endlessly, drain their gold savings, or start including WoW Tokens in their monthly budget.
Storage Cap, Journal Clarity, and Reputation Walls
The storage limit for decor feels arbitrary. We can collect unlimited pets and unlimited mounts, yet housing restricts how much furniture and decor we can store. Right now many players will not hit the cap, but as collections grow, this will age very poorly. A system based on creativity should not restrict creativity through artificial storage ceilings.
The decor journal also lacks consistency. Some items list how to obtain them. Many do not. If a mount is locked behind an achievement, the journal tells you. If a housing item is locked behind an achievement, it often does not. The same inconsistency applies to vendor items and crafted pieces. Addons currently fill this gap, but they should not be required. The journal should clearly state unlock source, vendor location, currency, reputation level, and expansion.
Reputation locked decor is another sticking point. New or returning players get hit the hardest, since progression walls shut out huge pieces of decor behind weeks of grinding rather than exploration. Housing should feel like expression first, reward second. Right now it often feels reversed.
House leveling also deserves improvement. Leveling a home is incredibly slow at the moment, with only 10 experience per new item acquisition. The rewards are modest, mainly room slots and increased interior capacity. Endeavors are planned to smooth this out, but in early access, leveling progression feels thin and underwhelming.
Expectations vs Reality
I expected to like housing. All pain points aside I did not expect to spend entire evenings adjusting stair angles, resizing shrubbery, or hunting down the perfect lamp and still log off thinking about what I want to build next. The feature truly exceeded my expectations where it matters most. It is fun. It is creative. It is social in a way WoW has not been in a long time. The act of walking through a neighborhood and seeing other players decorating and building their homes makes the world feel alive in a way that simple quest content never could.
Even with its rough edges, the feature sparks something rare. It feels like a system that could evolve, one that sits beside raids and Mythic Plus as a permanent game pillar. If Blizzard continues to iterate and fix a lot of the issues, housing could grow into something lasting rather than a novelty. It could be a reason people stay subscribed between tiers. It could become a new form of endgame. Azeroth finally feels like a place we inhabit, not just a space we pass through, and that alone is massive.
Useful Websites and Addons
The WoW Housing Hub is already the best resource available. It includes decor listings, item sources, vendor locations, 3D previews, and player floor plans to spark inspiration.
Recommended addons:
HomeBound shows achievement based decor unlocks as well as vendor locations.
Decor Vendor shows vendor locations by expansion, integrates with TomTom, and massively reduces search time.
Final Verdict
Housing in World of Warcraft is creative, stylish, surprisingly deep, and genuinely social. It has real problems and real friction, but none that feel unsalvageable. If Blizzard smooths out the experience, housing could become one of the best features in the history of the game.
For now, I am home. And it finally feels like WoW is letting players live in a world they have spent decades exploring.
About the Author
I am Tanner, a 20 year veteran of World of Warcraft. I am the guild leader of CORE, the official guild of the CORE Podcast and Frogpants Network. If you are looking for a place to call home, you can join our community at discord.gg/coreguild.