World of Warcraft’s Housing Feature Is Now Live, and Horde Players Are Desperately Trying to Reinvent Their Spiky Huts
This week, World of Warcraft (WoW) unveiled its much-anticipated housing feature for players who pre-ordered the upcoming Midnight expansion. This new addition allows players to create and customize their own homes, leading to an explosion of creativity within the community. However, as players dive into this new feature, Horde faction players are facing a unique challenge: the aesthetics of their house exteriors. While orc players may appreciate the rugged charm of their homes, complete with spikes and metal plating, many other Horde players are left feeling dissatisfied with the grunge-heavy look. In contrast, Alliance players enjoy a more universally appealing cottage-style exterior, which, while basic, is generally considered more attractive.
Despite the limitations of the current housing options—where players can only customize roof colors and chimney styles—many are making the best of the situation. Players are finding inventive ways to enhance their homes, using the game’s precise decoration tools to mask the less appealing aspects of their orcish huts. For example, some players have transformed their homes into cozy caves or have reimagined the default Horde house into a more Blood Elf-inspired design. However, the creativity is somewhat hampered by a cap on outdoor decoration limits, which forces players to choose between covering their house or decorating their yard. Blizzard is aware of this limitation and is reportedly working on a solution, but for now, players are showcasing their ingenuity and resourcefulness in the face of these constraints.
As the housing feature continues to evolve, players are eagerly anticipating the full launch of Midnight on March 2, 2026, which promises additional exterior options, including Night Elf and Blood Elf designs. For those who want to explore the housing feature ahead of the official release, pre-ordering any version of the expansion is required. The excitement surrounding this new feature highlights the community’s passion for creativity and customization in WoW, and it will be interesting to see how players adapt and innovate as more options become available. With the potential for even greater customization on the horizon, the future of WoW housing looks bright, and players are ready to embrace it.
World of Warcraft’s housing feature launched this week for everyone who purchased the upcoming Midnight expansion early. Though the feature is still in its early stages, players (including yours truly) are already losing hours upon hours creating elaborate homes with the decor available. But Horde players in particular are really struggling to contend with one major issue: their house exteriors are ugly.
Okay, that’s a little mean. If you play an orc, or are into the orc aesthetics of spikes, flames, haphazard metal plates, and slapdash wooden boards nailed on, the Horde exteriors are fine. The issue is that a lot of the Horde – namely, everyone who doesn’t play an orc – generally prefers a less…grungey aesthetic. Alliance players also only get one exterior housing option, but their homes are fairly standard, inoffensive cottages that most people will find tolerable at worst.
Horde: best we can do is cylinders and cuboids and pointless wood; Alliance: Of course the tower has a fence and windows!
by
u/Atosl
in
wow
Unfortunately for anyone unhappy with what’s on offer, until Midnight fully launches, this is it. You can customize your exterior in various ways by changing up roof colors and chimney styles, but it’s all in your faction’s default aesthetic. Blizzard has
promised that Night Elf and Blood Elf exteriors will arrive on Midnight’s release
, with more options planned for later on. But for now you’re stuck with either a cottage or a spike shack one way or another.
Some players, like myself, are just trying to make the best of it with outdoor decorations. Here’s my modest hut. You’d never know that inside is a cozy Shaman retreat, complete with a small magical library, a snug kitchen, and a stone altar dedicated in honor of the elements.
But a lot of players are getting far, far more creative in their attempts to subvert the shabby exterior design. You see, Blizzard’s decoration tools are very, very precise if you want them to be, and can ignore collision if you want them to. Which has led to Horde players trying to mask the orc-ness of their huts by covering them with…well, all sorts of other things.
For instance, this person turned their house into a nice cave:
No Orc hut here, only a nice cozy den
by
u/Chubscout37
in
wow
This person took a crack at a more Blood Elf-looking style:
My try on default horde house remake
by
u/dazvolt
in
wow
This person made something simple yet effective:
Posts from the
wow
community on Reddit
I think this one is pretty cool:
Gazebos can be used to cover the orcish house
by
u/Some_Deer_2650
in
wow
Unfortunately, in doing this, one issue players are running up against is that there
is
a limit to how much decor you can put outside, and many of the objects people are using to cover up the orc turrets use up a significant portion of that limit. As a result, if you want to cover your house in rocks, you can’t do much else with your yard. It seems like
everyone is begging Blizzard
to
raise the exterior decor cap
, an issue they
told us they’re well aware of and working on
.
Realistically, this is not a massive issue at the moment: we knew going in that this was effectively an early access feature and some functionality would be limited. More than anything, it’s funny to see the lengths players will go to in order to get creative with the tools they have available to them. Just imagine what they’ll be capable of once they don’t have to waste all their outdoor decor space on big wooden platforms.
World of Warcraft: Midnight
launches on March 2, 2026
. If you want to get your hands on housing before then, you’ve got to pre-order the expansion – any version of it will do. We
recently spoke with
Jesse Kurlancheek, housing lead and principal game designer, and Joanna Giannullis, senior UX designer, about the housing feature, including how its gone in the beta so far, and what to expect in Midnight.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
