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Heroes of the Storm Live Patch Notes - May 15, 2025Player Housing Event - Gameplay and Interviews
Several influencers attended an event for Player Housing! We'll be recapping new information from the videos below, so check back later today.
MMORPG.com Interview
MMORPG talked to associate director of Midnight, Paul Kubit, and senior UI designer, Kat Dolan. It was one of the more interesting builds shown off:
- They were able to create a wrestling arena with a fiery entrance ramp flanked by giant Onyxia heads
- The stage was made with a semicircular Pandaran table, with pyretic accents using large torches phased into it
- Wooden platforms and a large circular emblem make up the base of the wrestling ring
- Squared circle with fence objects to make up the ropes
- Zandalari bookshelves were jammed into the side of the ring to approximate a decorative apron
- It also features floor mats, crowd guardrails, seating for fans, and an announcer desk
- It utilizes windows on the ceiling that are tilted towards the ring to create a spotlight effect
Preach and Dratnos Interview
Preach and Dratnos had the chance to talk to Toby Ragaini - Lead Designer on WoW and Design Lead on Housing: Neighborhoods and Jay Hwang - Principal Artist and Design Lead on Housing: Decorations.
- The team started playing with prototypes early on and using them informed what things that they needed to add or change. They also had played other games with housing such as Wildstar and FFXIV.
- Neighborhoods are zone sized social spaces. Some new tech was added to make neighborhoods unique, expressed by the players that live there.
- The team worked to accommodate all sorts of players with differing expectations of how their neighborhood would work.
- The team wanted to start with the core fantasy for players and expand from there.
- When new patches come out, the design team will look through the new assets and pick some to add to housing.
- Garrisons were an isolating experience and the team is determined to not recreate that. Neighborhoods exist to bring people together. There will be reasons to leave, come back, and repeat the cycle.
- It would be a disaster if players came in, decorated their house, and had no reason to come back to it.
- Housing won't be standalone, it needs to synergize with the rest of the game.
- The team talked about uprezing old 2004 assets, but decided against it, allowing players to lean in to the nostalgia if they want (Create a house with only Vanilla assets if you want!)
- Player shouldn't be forced to go and run old content for rewards and the team is thinking about how that will work. For example, if you have already done a dungeon, maybe there will be a vendor outside that sells the item you would have earned from running the dungeon the first time.
- The team talked about what would happen if they allowed PvP in the house and players could build their own arenas.
- The toolset that players will use to build the house is all new technology, it isn't Blizzard just releasing an internal toolset.
- The team did consider players that want to find a neighborhood with people that have a similar mindset and did work to accommodate that. They want to reach as many players as possible with this feature.
- The team is going to will have semi pre-fab rooms available for players that don't want to start with a blank slate. It'll have some of the cosmetic things already in place.
- The team has done a lot of work to make player housing possible, the engine couldn't have handled it a long time ago. Housing is a significant technical feat.
- The team is still working on finding the best balance when it comes to utility offered in a house. There is no power gain from houses, but there may be some utility gain. They don't want players to be 100% self sufficient in their house.
Buffed.de Article
Buffed has a great article (in German) along with some new pictures!
- Housing will be integrated into the entire game and almost all content.
- Your house will let you flex a little bit, displaying trophies.
- Getting your house involves paying a little bit of gold, doing an into quest, and getting some standard basic items.
- You can go to cities and buy different furniture for the house, such as Dwarven furniture from Ironforge.
- You'll be able to revisit old content for furnishings, such as Grizzly Hills for a bearskin rug or Karazhan for some flying books.
- Professions will craft items for your home and you can specialize in doing so. Special items can be crafted if you have certain achievements.
- Some professions may get utility items in their house, but the team wants to be careful to avoid giving players too much and ending up like garrisons.
- There is currently no room limit, but eventually there will be a house level that limits the amount of rooms you can have. Details about leveling your house weren't shared.
- Placing items in your house pulls them out of a special box, and they really are items. Once you place a table it is no longer in the box, you'll have to go get another one or move the first one.
- Scaling items is capped to shrink down to 20% of original size or up to 200% of the original size.
- The team will look into if having portraits of your characters on the walls is technically feasible.
- Players at the demo built jumping puzzles, mazes with hidden doors, and a hallway of spinning windmill blades.
- The Dye Tool will let players change the color on assets that have been rebuilt to support it. An object can have multiple parts with different colors, like wood vs metal parts of a box.
- Buffed mentioned that transmog players would love a dye system as well, with the team giving them a smile and telling them they are aware.
- Neighborhoods are currently 50-55 houses.
- If you're unhappy with your neighborhood, you'll may have to abandon your house, move somewhere else, and build a new one.
- Neighborhoods may have quests, some kind of marketplace, and will have seasonal events for sure.
- Houses will also have a garden, with a screenshot from the event showing a mount inside a shed.
- There will be no housing items that you purchase in game and in the shop.
- Players will only have one house per faction.
Preach
- This wasn't a regular press event, it was small, about getting feedback, and people that mostly played other games with housing were also invited.
- The inside and outside sizes of your house aren't connected. You can have as many rooms as you want, as long as they are connected.
- The current item cap for your house is 10,000 items. In the giant house they built for marketing the feature, they haven't gone past 2,000 items.
- Huge items may take several item slots in the live version of the feature, but in general players shouldn't run into the item cap.
- The team will an action bar and favorites so if you are using one thing over and over you can bind it to a key.
- The team is also working on a history mode so you can go through the changes you made.
- Currently cloning something you built isn't possible.
- Spotlights to light things, music in different areas and lots of other things are still being worked on.
- There will be a progression system.
Dratnos
- There is a hidden buffer between rooms and floors so that if you shove something through the wall, it won't come right out on the other side.
- There is a limit of how far into the wall you could stick things, but it was pretty generous.
- Housing will release sometime between the Midnight pre-patch and launch date
SoulSoBreezy
- Dye are a finite resource and you'll have to get more if you want more.
- If you have a bunch of chairs and want to dye one of them blue, that chair will retain the blue when you put it back into your housing chest. If you later dye the blue chair red, the blue is gone and you won't get it back.
- When building, the camera is still tethered to where your character is
Esfand
- Scrolling through your bag and bank to see things from things you accomplished years ago is nice, but being able to display trophies in your house will be even cooler.
- There won't be bad and good neighborhoods (financially). The goal is for players to find all plots in a neighborhood desirable and something that appeals to the type of player you are.
- There might be some neighborhoods that want year round Halloween or Christmas.
- Your house progression can span years if you want it to.
- Housing could provide a nice on-ramp for players that aren't currently doing any kind of role-play to dip their toes in it
Taliesin & Evitel
- You can quickly swap between the racial styles for things like the floors, walls, ceilings, staircases, and more.
- Rooms are capped at three stories currently
- There is a Gilnean Problem Solver guillotine that you can click to drop the blade on.
- There is an interactive Dark Iron Mole Machine
- There are bookcase doors that you can click to open
- There are some interactive books that you can click to read
- There will be a loading screen when you go through your front door
- The light coming through the windows is static so that you can achieve your desired effects. It won't change with the time of day or weather.
- There are lots of biomes in a neighborhood. Horde players won't be stuck with just a dusty Durotar, there are some lush areas, coasts, rivers, ponds and more.
- There will be a variety of plots available. Some will let you be in a more central hub with close neighbors, but some will be further away from the action.
- There will potentially be a stable for mounts and the ability to place pets outside. There might even be a way to place alts around somewhere, but none of this is confirmed.
- There will be some kind of seasonal content for neighborhoods.
- The team is carefully considering how to handle RP servers and neighborhoods.
- There is a shop button on your house's chest.
- TBD how you'll enter your neighborhood, but it may be a loading screen. It isn't likely that you'll see your neighborhood from the open world.
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