Blizzard principal artist and lead designer Jay Huang used to make his living creating the “props” that make up World of Warcraft’s living spaces. Now he designs the systems that allow players to do the same thing with WoW’s new player housing feature.
The game’s recent patch 12.1, The Curse of Ula’tek, added a huge pile of new housing decor and features for players to create with. For example, it added the ability to use “blueprints,” saved rooms or house interiors or exteriors, to allow novices to copy the work of player designers to use in their own spaces.
But getting started as a new creator can be intimidating when people are making literal works of art in WoW housing. Below, Huang offers his best tips for getting started as a newbie.
1. Start by finding a reference image
“Even artists like to know what something looks like,” Huang says. “What exactly do you want to make? Find an example of it. Even spaceships have structures, and reasons why they’re built that way.” The image will help you figure out what pieces of decor you might be able to use to replicate what you see.
2. Don’t judge yourself based on others’ work
Blizzard’s housing team has an internal sharing channel where they pass around people’s amazing work, he says.
“Daily, minute-ly, people are just dropping, ‘Did you see this??’ We see tutorials. We see posts we can’t even read, because they’re in a different language. It’s just awesome, and we love it,” he says. It’s also sometimes intimidating.
“I see a lot of TikToks where it’s like, ‘I liked my own build, until I saw this build. Now I feel like I want to throw my build out.’ Or people are saying, ‘I don’t even know where to start.’ Just look at a building or something that you like the vibe of, then just start trying to copy, then add your own flair to it.”
Break up the space. Don’t just go, ‘It’s a square, thusly, I need to decorate it as a square.’ That’s not necessarily true.
Some of the rooms provided in housing are enormous, Huang says.
“Break up the space. Don’t just go, ‘It’s a square, thusly, I need to decorate it as a square.’ That’s not necessarily true,” he says. “Decorating an empty concept is harder than a room that’s already got all these nooks and crannies that you can just put something in. It doesn’t feel like you’re starting from square one, a blank slate.”
Some of the new artisan rooms for sale for neighborhood endeavor-task coupons in patch 12.1 help that problem by providing rooms with smaller niches to decorate. Creators have also been sharing blueprint codes usable by other players, which launched as a feature in 12.1, to create the bare bones of rooms that are already divided up or styled in a particular way.
(Image credit: Blizzard)
3. Pick smaller rooms to start, and break bigger ones into smaller spaces
“Use partitions and pillars and platforms,” he says. “It’s thinking like Lincoln Logs or Legos—how do I use these things to break up that open-concept space? There’s no wrong way to decorate, but I think sometimes it makes it harder if you go straight to the details right off the bat.”
Picking smaller rooms definitely helps. “It’s hard to slap in a big room and go, ‘It just feels empty.’ Well yeah, because you put in an auditorium, and you put one bed in there,” he says.
4. Look at your reference image and figure out proportions
“If you’re building a gnome house, things shouldn’t feel all crazy, bulky and huge, with large open spaces. It should feel like it fits a gnome.” Your image and those proportions can also help you figure out the right lighting, he says.
5. Add layers easily with repetition
“Repeating elements are a really quick way to add detail without overthinking,” Huang says. “When you think of cathedrals, is it a giant empty space? No, they have pillars, and those pillars repeat, and repeat, and repeat. Where are the patterns, what are the proportions, how is it lit to get that vibe, and then what are the general colors?”
6. Limit your color palette
…You’re probably using too many colors at first.
Speaking of colors, Huang recommends 2-4 colors maximum.
“It’s really easy to just rainbow vomit all over the place, and then be like, ‘Hey, why doesn’t it feel cohesive?’ It’s because you’re probably using too many colors at first. It’s better to get two or three or four colors working. Then you kind of sprinkle in some of the other rainbow colors to add in that variety.”
(Image credit: Blizzard)
7. Even as you limit the colors, don’t be scared of variety in style
“When you decorate your own house, you’re not buying all your furniture from Crate and Barrel. Something’s from IKEA, and it’s not all the same style,” he says. “They don’t need to be. When you’re building, they don’t need to be all of the same culture. When you’re decorating a Kobold space, throw a Naga thing in that Kobold thing.”
8. Turn your decor upside-down
One way advanced housing players create their masterworks is by kitbashing, or combining different pieces of decor together to make new things. In Advanced Mode, you can embed objects within objects to use just the bits you need. Huang uses a statue he once created as a prop designer, now available as decor, as an example. It’s a statue of a pandaren on a turtle, with a fountain.
Use the backs of things, the bottoms, flip things upside down
“Somebody might go, ‘Okay, this is what it is,’ and they’ll just slap it down as a statue,” he says. “But somebody might scale it or shrink it, flip it upside down to just use the water. Look at every prop for not what it is, but what it could be. You can clip things. We gave that to you on purpose. Something clipped into something else, looks like something else.”
The easiest way to start seeing what the possibilities might be are to turn decor items over and look at them from all angles.
Mikanikos’ Aerie, a Bastion-themed build by the author. (Image credit: Blizzard/Heather Newman)
“Use the backs of things, the bottoms, flip things upside down,” Huang says. Kitbashing gives player-creators more freedom than even the game’s own designers have. If designers smash things together, it’s considered an “art crime”—something that takes away from the intended vibe of an object, he says.
“But our players, they can do whatever they want, because honestly—I mean, just look at the stuff they’ve made! It speaks for itself,” Huang says.
Sneak peek: He says that developers have seen how often players like to use water effects in their creations, and they’re looking for ways to make that easier.
9. Use dyes
Using the dye system lets you change the color of objects, and as a bonus, they mostly work on cheaper neighborhood-vendor items.
“Dying adds an extra element to the props, changing how they look,” he says. “I’ve seen people take doors, mass dye them all the same color, and they turn them into wall panels or stoves.”
Sneak peek: Huang says developers are looking into a way for players to turn off the interactable qualities of items like doors, so that people can make them static for uses like these.
10. When you’re ready, think about turning housing into an art medium
I saw a Van Gogh. I saw the Mona Lisa. Very awesome.
Huang says he’s incredibly impressed by the mural work that creators have made, turning WoW housing into a literal canvas featuring everything from South Park to KPop Demon Hunters, Michael Jordan to villain Xal’atath’s feet.
“They’re literally using it to paint things. I saw a Van Gogh. I saw the Mona Lisa. Very awesome,” he says, and he encourages people to break things. Past bugs that players have exploited went on to become housing features. “We’re lucky enough that this feature is not player-power driven, so we don’t have to be the fun police. We’re trying to always remain open.”
One last sneak peek: More holiday decor is coming, he says. “We know that it is awesome to see you guys make the Christmas trees, but we have one. It’s coming.”
