If you’ve played World of Warcraft at any point during its modern era, after it crossed the threshold from Classic to the MMO monster that is ‘Retail WoW’, you’ll know it’s not the social experience it once was. Better raiding, new lands, vast new adventures, yes, but it’s also a game that has become less collaborative. Many players are an island, separated from their peers.
Enter the upcoming Midnight expansion and this may very well change. You can’t close Pandora’s box, of course, the days of summon stones and server-wide events are long gone. But through housing and neighbourhoods World of Warcraft might teach players how to be social again.
These neighbourhoods are large spaces filled with affordable plots of land where houses can be quickly bought and customised; perhaps World of Warcraft’s most fantastical addition in years. These neighbourhoods can be both private and public, allowing pre-existing Guilds and total strangers to form miniature communities together in a singular digital space.
“I think we always knew we wanted to have neighbourhoods, or at least from a very early point,” associate game director Paul Kubit told Eurogamer. “We didn’t want you to just be locked in your own house, doing your own stuff all the time. You can hang out there for a long time, for sure, but we wanted the game to nudge you like, ‘hey, if you want some cool rewards, step outside and interact with your neighbours’ and so on.