World Of Warcraft: The War Within is the first installment of the new Worldsoul Saga, an ambitious creative endeavor for the Warcraft universe.

In World Of Warcraft: The War Within, players will travel to the new continent of Khaz Algar as an ancient civilization rises to power deep beneath the surface of the planet.

Deep beneath the surface, an ancient nerubian civilization is rising to power, aided by Xal'atath, the Harbinger of the Void first introduced in the Legion expansion. Players will need to enlist the aid of the Earthen, a new allied race available to both Horde and Alliance players, as they make their way deeper and discover an entirely new world that has existed for centuries and whose denizens are preparing for conflicts that loom on the horizon.

World Of Warcraft's The Worldsoul Saga includes two expansions following The War Within—World Of Warcraft: Midnight and World Of Warcraft: The Last Titan.

With the next major content update for The War Within, Undermine(d), fast approaching and multiple WoW Classic experiences delighting players in tandem, World of Warcraft executive producer Holly Longdale shared her thoughts in a post today about what players can expect in 2025.

World of Warcraft executive producer Holly Longdale shares her and the team’s thoughts about the state of the game, looking toward the future for how the team is thinking about crafting experiences for all, and even teasing the first news about the new Midnight expansion feature, player housing, expected to be shared with the WoW community later this week.

Additionally, Holly shared gratitude on behalf the development team to the player community for their generous contributions to this year’s WoW Charity Pet program that benefits CureDuchenne. In a follow-up blog from the development team, players were informed their contributions raised $2M USD with their purchase of The Reven Pack, inspired by Mats Steen, a Norwegian WoW player who died of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and whose story is the subject of the Netflix documentary, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin.

Lastly, following up from the surprise announcement during the Warcraft 30 the Anniversary Direct last November, the World of Warcraft development team shared a first look at the design philosophy being applied to the development of the player housing feature coming in the next expansion, Midnight.

The development team covers the design pillars which will act as a blueprint for the direction of player housing. Next, the team shared the two areas in which players can expect to experience this new feature in Azeroth when it becomes available, as well as how the team is approaching the social aspects of housing, including Neighborhoods, cross-faction accessibility, and overall availability of space for players.

A Word on World of Warcraft for 2025

Greetings, citizens of Azeroth!

As many celebrate the Lunar New Year all around the world and in Azeroth, we want to take a moment to pause, reflect on 2024, and share more of what we have planned for 2025.

Another year has gone by, and we are so thankful for all of you who have joined us in Azeroth, no matter what flavor you prefer: whether you enjoy Classic Era, Season of Discovery, Cataclysm Classic, The War Within, or more recently, the World of Warcraft Classic 20th Anniversary Edition, we are thrilled that you are here with us.

We were also moved by your immense generosity when you came out in support of CureDuchenne by welcoming the Reven Pack into your collections and raising over USD $2 million! We saw you wearing your adorable backpacks and bringing this curious little companion with you throughout your adventures in Azeroth, and we are deeply grateful for your care and kindness!

Learning and Growing with You

2024 has provided us many opportunities to learn and grow this past year thanks to your steadfast support and feedback. This year, we plan to continue to build upon what we’ve learned, improve the game, and experiment with new ideas to invigorate and bring new twists to Azeroth.

We see you too, Classic WoW players! No matter what Classic game mode you enjoy, the development team is dedicated to continuing to listen to your feedback and adjusting—all with an endless passion for bringing you more great experiences ahead.

We remain committed to always being in conversation with you, listening, watching, and being as transparent as possible as we cook up new adventures for you wherever your journey takes you in Azeroth.

There’s No Place Like Home

The road ahead couldn’t be more exciting for us as we move ever closer to the next chapter in the Worldsoul Saga— World of Warcraft: Midnight. We have so much more to share with you as we continue to move through The War Within (and everything else we have planned!) as we progress through the year.

During Warcraft Direct in November we released a teaser for just one of the new features we’re looking forward to bringing to you: Housing. Believe me, we all found it so hard to keep it a secret! But seeing your excitement at the reveal made it all so worth it.

Housing is more than a feature to us. No matter what we create, it’s the community that will help to define how Housing gives everyone a place in Azeroth to truly make their own. Our passionate and dedicated Housing development team will be working alongside the community to bring you something truly special. Our eyes and ears are always open to you, as the journey home begins with you.

Check back on the official World of Warcraft news site to get an eye on the blueprint for Housing today—we can’t wait for you to get your first look!

Getting the Classic Experience

For those looking forward to World of Warcraft Classic: Mists of Pandaria, the Classic design team is setting the stage for your return to the isle of Pandaria and the monkey business we know you’ll get up to.

There’s also more to come in Season of Discovery now that Karazhan Crypts is here with Phase 7 and Naxxramas opening its doors soon. Cataclysm Classic continues to fire on all cylinders, alongside our fast-paced release cadence for the Classic 20th Anniversary realms.

As always, the Classic development team is dedicated to delivering experiences for everyone who wants to dive into the nostalgia of World of Warcraft.

Where WoW is and Where it’s Going

The development team has embraced a lot of the feedback we’ve received from the community, and we have spent a lot of time reflecting on where the game is today. There are a few areas we want to improve on over time, and we have already begun taking our first steps toward setting the foundations for those improvements.

First, we want to make World of Warcraft more approachable for anyone who wants to join the adventures we have available to them. In introducing the New Player Experience with Exile’s Reach, we wanted to create an easy way for new players to begin their first journeys into Azeroth, or bring back returning players in a way that would help get them up to speed. We know the experience can be better and are working toward new improvements to the feature to streamline the experience in the near term and expand upon what it can be in the future.

We know that being truly welcoming requires a lot of work around our new and returning player experiences in modern WoW. We are committed to that work, and we will be making some improvements in Midnight and The Last Titan. I’ll be honest—this will be a long-term, ongoing journey, as the game evolves and changes with each expansion. There is no quick fix, but we are here for it.

We are also looking at how World of Warcraft is played by different kinds of players so we can make improvements for everyone. Our UI/UX has been going through steady changes and improvements since Dragonflight, and that will continue as we learn, research, and evolve. New features like Delves, Warbands, Follower Dungeons, and even Housing naturally teaches us a lot. More to come on this soon! ™

An area we want to double-down on in a big way is our community. You are what brings Azeroth to life, and you make our game truly unique. To properly commit to this fundamental aspect of World of Warcraft, we now have a dedicated Social initiative within our development team. Social stands alongside our other initiatives (like Expansions or Housing) to provide solutions and features—like, for example, rewards for positive behavior, easier ways to connect with like-minded players, roleplaying <gasp!>, and more. As an even more specific example, we’re looking at improvements to how we connect in-game Friends,  Group Finder, and better integration to common external social platforms that we know the community uses regularly. The team is working on Social projects now that we hope to be able to share more about over the next year.

It’s been 20 years of World of Warcraft and while time may have flown by, the memories we all continue to make together are priceless. We want to continue to help create and share these memories, and we can’t wait to share more with you in the year ahead as we build the foundations for the next 20 years— and beyond!

With sincere gratitude and a hopeful eye to the future,

Holly Longdale

Building in Azeroth: A First Look at Housing

The construction of the new Housing system in Azeroth is underway, and we’re taking you behind the scenes to give you an early look at what the Housing development team has been working on. Watch your step, and don’t mind the dust. Hard hats are not required.

Welcome home, adventurers!

We’re excited to kick off our first look at Housing in World of Warcraft and share some of our philosophies and plans for this new feature with you. First up, we’re focusing on our high-level design pillars for Housing as well as talking about a few key areas of Housing as we lay the foundation for future discussions. We have lots to cover, so let’s jump in!

Fortifying Housing with Pillars

When developing such a large new feature, it’s useful to start by first defining its pillars. They help the development team get on the same page before we start building, as well as providing a guiding light when making decisions and identifying priorities. It’s important to note that while these pillars are broad in scope by their nature, they aren’t all-encompassing. Just because something isn’t mentioned in a pillar doesn’t mean it’s not important or isn’t part of the feature.

Our Three Pillars for Housing

• Boundless Self-Expression: Our highest priority is to allow players to build a house that shows off their own personal tastes or their Warband’s, acts as a desired backdrop for roleplaying, or just allows players to create something in a flight of fancy. The toolset should be easy enough for someone with no 3D experience to be comfortable with and use successfully, but it should also be powerful enough that players can surprise us with their creations or drill down to get the tiniest details just right. The gamut of decor options spans not just the cultures of Azeroth but the many expansions of World of Warcraft as well.
• Deeply Social: World of Warcraft is more fun with other players, and Housing should be no different. While players can enjoy housing purely on their own, its systems are designed at a fundamental level to encourage interacting, playing, and progressing with friends, neighbors, guilds, and the wider community in a meaningful way.
• Long-Lasting Journey: Housing is being built as an evergreen addition to the game, with its own roadmap, reaching across multiple patches and into future expansions. Housing isn’t something players should expect to “finish”, but instead continually look forward to the next housing release, be it new content or systems. This is a long-term commitment for us as developers and offers players rewards all along the way.

One more important note: even though it’s not an explicit pillar, wide adoption is a primary consideration for us as well. Most players should want a house in Azeroth, and if a player wants a house in Azeroth, they can have a house in Azeroth. Furthermore, Housing is being designed to scale with the player’s interest. If someone wants to spend dozens of hours a week on their house, that’s great! If they’re only interested in coming and going once or twice a month, that’s great, too!

Zoning in on Home

We’ve seen a lot of discussion and speculation from the community on WHERE players will be able to have houses. We decided early on that there would be two Housing zones available at launch, one for Alliance and one for Horde, with more possible places to live in the future. The Alliance zone takes inspiration from Elwynn Forest with touches of Westfall and Duskwood, and the Horde’s is inspired by Durotar, its coastline, and Azshara. There are two main reasons for this decision:

1. Having many housing zones conflicts with the second pillar of designing a feature that is “Deeply Social.” In a world where players can live in many different zones, they become increasingly spread out and even with aggressive sharding, the chance of seeing other players, much less interacting with them, drops quickly.
2. Putting it bluntly, zones are a lot of work. We’d much rather do a great job with a small number of zones than do a passable job on a large number (or come up with solutions that take the player out of the world into their own personal instance of a zone). We chose these as our starting points because of how iconic they are for their respective factions and how much they feel like home to so many players already.

We’re excited for what we’ll be able to accomplish with the two zones, and we’ll be sharing more of what this means in future updates.

Outfitting Your Home

Similarly, there have been discussions in the community on whether Housing will be pay to play/win or not, along with other conversations around real-world money. We’ve been very aligned in our internal conversations that Housing is designed to be primarily player-first and not revenue-first. Housing will offer hundreds and hundreds of decorations and house customizations via in-game rewards but will also offer a smaller number of items in the cash shop as well. This is comparable to how transmogs and pets are currently handled in game versus the shop. We want to allow players to have as many options as possible for creating their perfect home in Azeroth.

A Home for Everyone

As a part of our focus on wide adoption, we wanted to ensure that Housing is available to everyone. If you want a house, you can have a house. No exorbitant requirements or high purchase costs, no lotteries, and no onerous upkeep (and if your subscription lapses, don’t worry, your house doesn’t get repossessed!). Your houses are also shared amongst your Warband with your different characters being able to come and go as you see fit (so your Orc character can hang out in your Alliance house without a problem). Housing rewards are also shared across your Warband, so you’ll be able to use your décor collection no matter which character earns it.

Furthermore, it’s not just Warbands that cross factional lines but friendships as well, so you’ll be able to live in or visit your friends’ or guildmates’ houses and their neighborhoods with minimal restrictions regarding faction. For example, while it’s not possible for your Human character to buy a house in the Horde zone, your Troll character in the same Warband can, and then your Human can use it as if it were their own.

Will You Be My Neighbor?

Inspirational concept art for what the new Horde Neighborhood could be.

Before we go, we want to mention the concept of Neighborhoods as a small tease… Houses are organized into roughly fifty plot Neighborhoods, letting players live next to each other, work together, and share in the rewards of being part of the Neighborhood. Neighborhoods are instanced but crucially also persistent so your neighbors can be your neighbors for years to come (or until one of you moves). Neighborhoods also come in two flavors:

1. Public Neighborhoods, which the game servers are responsible for creating as needed and maintaining.
2. Private Neighborhoods created by groups of friends or guilds to inhabit, progress, and customize together.

So, while an individual player can have a house, a community can have a Neighborhood!

This is just an initial look at the blueprint we’ve been working on for Housing. There’s a lot more ground to cover and details to get into, and we look forward to your thoughts and feedback as we share more articles in the future.

Key Features:

• DESCEND INTO THE DEPTHS OF AZEROTH ITSELF–Journey to a new level cap of 80 as you explore the vast empires beneath the surface of Azeroth and discover ancient civilizations, both friendly and adversarial, in four new zones: the surface-level Isle of Dorn, the industrial Ringing Deeps, the unexpectedly bright and lush Hallowfall, and Azj-kahet, a pinnacle of nerubian society.
• FORGE NEW BONDS WITH THE DENIZENS OF THE DEEP – As players progress through the main campaign, they’ll meet the Earthen that have made the Isle of Dorn and the zones beneath it their home. The Earthen will be a new allied race available to both Alliance and Horde players.  
• NEW ENDGAME PILLAR FOR WORLD CONTENT PLAYERS – Opportunities abound for adventurers looking to explore the secrets below the surface in search of great treasure. Delves are scalable world instances for 1-5 players which provide meaningful gear progression that will contribute to a new reward track in the Great Vault for world content players.
• LIVE OUT YOUR CLASS FANTASY– New Hero Talents for each class specialization will provide players a way to progress their characters with evergreen self-contained talent trees that also infuse class fantasy flavor inspired by iconic Warcraft universe archetypes such as a Mountain Thane for Warriors or a Dark Ranger for Hunters.
• EXPAND THE POTENTIAL OF YOUR ALTS – With Warbands, players can enjoy account-wide progression with all characters in their Battle.net® account, regardless of faction, that includes shared War Within renown, a warband bank, achievements, and more! Additionally, a new change to transmog collection will let players learn the appearance of any gear type, even if they cannot equip it!

World Of Warcraft: The War Within is now available with the World Of Warcraft: Midnight expansion currently in development.