Last week, after two decades of waiting, Blizzard finally added player housing to its popular MMORPG World of Warcraft. And pretty quickly after it was added, players figured out how to make houses float in the air. Instead of patching out this unintended feature, Blizzard is making it official, but with some warnings.
On Wednesday, World of Warcraft community manager Randy Jordan aka Kaivax explained in a post that shortly after WoW update 11.2.7 went live on December 2, crafty players discovered unlisted hotkeys that allowed them to move their homes up into the air. The community is still debating whether this was a bug or not, but regardless, levitating homes weren’t an intended feature. Still, Blizzard isn’t patching out the hotkeys and grounding player creativity. Instead, it’s making the feature official and adding UI elements to allow everyone to easily move their homes into the sky.
Kaivax did include two warnings for those looking to live in the clouds: “The underside of houses isn’t modeled or textured. Players who lift their houses may decide to hide that part behind other things,” explained the community manager. And also, “If you lift your house up, clicking on the door could become difficult. You might want to consider building a ramp or a jumping puzzle, or a mount landing spot, etc.”
It’s cool to see Blizzard recognize that people are having fun with floating houses–crafting all sorts of stuff like flying ships and magical hovering towers–and deciding to not only leave the feature in, but make it an official part of the game that anyone can use.
And to help people decorate these flying homes more elaborately, Blizzard has also upped the number of items players can place on the exterior of their domicile from 200 to 250. These changes are now live in World of Warcraft following a scheduled bit of maintenance.
