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.
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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:
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This person took a crack at a more Blood Elf-looking style:
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This person made something simple yet effective:
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I think this one is pretty cool:
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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.
