The Haunted Manor by Spiritlit Graves

Hello Readers! @... here coming at you with the Housing Herald's very first Q&A, with my best boy, @....

Imor has been playing WoW since The Burning Crusade, playing on and off for many years. He is a druid main at heart, but likes to dip his toe into a plethora of alt characters. He mainly enjoys PvE content, occasionally raiding and doing Mythic Plus dungeons. When he's not doing group content, he also enjoys farming apperances then spending time making funky transmogs - and now of course, grinding for all the decor!

Imor and I joined a Voice Call to discuss his amazing Alliance Property!

Overall Thoughts on WoW Housing

@...: So, how are you liking the new housing feature so far? Considering you were able to access its pre-release?

@...: I love it. Being creative and messing around/testing things has always been a big enjoyment for me. I've always leaned toward games where you can gather and build. It's also super fun to go around snooping on neighbours to see what they are doing, as everyone thinks so differently or pulls inspiration from different places!

Imor comments on our other editors Alliance properties: It was amazing seeing how @... and his neighbour @... made their houses – it’s like how you would see a home in real life. They did some things I wouldn't even consider and it's just super cool to see how different people make their properties.

@...: Yeah I agree, their homes are so cute and I was just "squee-ing" the whole time we were snooping on their property! I can't wait to interview them and get some photos!

Inspiration

@...: Was there anything that inspired you when you started building?

@...: I definitely took inspiration from different zones around World of Warcraft, such as Duskwood, Teldrassil and Suramar. Flying around different cities, towns and settlements within Azeroth and checking out all the different architecture also gave me some ideas. I also found that discussing ideas with my partner and with my friends/neighbours helped expand, improve or adjust visions I had!

Creative Resources

@...: Did you use any resources, either online or offline for your build? For example - Social Media or taking walks around your neighbourhood in real life?

@...: I didn't to start with. When the pre-release first launched, I mainly played around with what was possible or not. I brought everything from the neighbourhood vendor, chose a random plot and began to mess around. As my build developed, I definitely used sources like Reddit for example, and Instagram. If there was something I specifically had in mind, like a kitchen, I would search for things online such as “WoW Housing Kitchens” and have a look around at all the various sites available and see what people were doing to pull inspiration from. YouTubers like Building Mouse and websites like WoW Housing Hub were great to watch and browse.

Also, whenever I felt I was hitting my head against a wall during building, my partner and I would go snooping. It was always a rush, when we were in public shards, and we could actually go inside someone’s house!

Changes

@...: Is there anything you would change or do differently? With what you know now?

@...: Hmm, I did discover some limitations within the early access of housing - such as not being able to change your first placed room once you start attaching other rooms. I wish I had known this sooner (before building so much) so I could have planned how I wanted my first room to be. But all in all I’m pretty happy with what I have done so far, not sure there is much I would change, but I definitely want to keep adding, I just need to wait for more room and decor budget!

Building Plans

@...: Do you have any more plans for your Alliance house, or do you feel it's complete?

@...: There's definitely more I want to do but have reached the room and placed decor limit. I also recently encountered a bug – I’m at 4600 items in my decor catalog, but it is acting as if I have reached the cap of 5000 items, meaning I can't learn more.

@...: Oh no! That sucks! Did you write a ticket to Blizzard regarding the limit? And ha, yeah, I think so many of us are all waiting for more room and decor budget!

@...: Yes I made a ticket, but unfortunately the Blizzard GMs weren't very helpful - rather than focusing on my issue they kept talking about other things that didn't really relate to me much, it was quite frustrating, like storage being tied to house levels, and then outright telling me they don't know what is happening with housing.

@...: Yeah I hope so too! What more were you hoping to do?

@...: Definitely change the first room as I mentioned before. I also want to do a "Darniassian themed temple" day-room with pillars and moonwells, very akin to the temple in Darnassus. I also really want to play around with more “vertical” builds, so stacking lots of stairwell rooms on top of each other. But definitely need more room budget for that.

Future Implementations

@...: What features are you hoping that Blizzard will add moving forward?

@...: I definitely wanted a boundary line for our exteriors, and for the rotate/move axis to be different colours – luckily they have added those things now.

@...: Oh yeah! I remember at the very start, not having a boundary line made decorating the outside of the property a bit of a nightmare! And I could never tell properly which axis I had selected due to them all being the same colour! I’m glad they’ve fixed those things now!

@...: As for other future developments, I’m really looking forward to the ability to be able to save whole room layouts which I believe will come later in Midnight, I hope. My partner and I worked so hard on making our first rooms very Christmas themed – but not being able to save this at the moment is kind of stressful! I don’t think either of us have taken our Christmas trees down despite it nearly being March, as they took us so much time to do! So having the ability to save rooms – and save Holiday themed rooms (such as Christmas, Halloween) will be so much nicer! And means we won’t be stuck with our Christmas trees all year, ha!

@...: Yes I agree! Being able to save rooms and make holiday themed rooms that we can swap between will be super helpful!

Decorating Costs

@...: So the big question, how much gold do you think you spent just on your Alliance Property?

@...: Hmm, good question! I actually don’t think I spent that much? Maybe around 300,000-400,000 total? If we consider the average price of decor that I bought a lot of (walls, beams etc) being 75, and as I used a lot of them I guess I spent around 150,000 on just those items alone. Then with the more pricey ones and profession stuff, I imagine the house cost me around 300,000-400,000. I feel if I brought the decor items straight off the Auction House (rather than farm a lot of the materials myself), I imagine the price would be way over 400,000. *

* Imor is discussing his out of pocket costs. Our Estimated Value is based on if you were to buy everything he has from the Auction House and without having reputation reductions! Essentially, a market value!

Advice and Tips

@...: Okay, last question! Do you have any advice or tips for our readers who may get inspired by your build?

@...: Steal everything you see, haha! There shouldn’t be any shame around recreating something you’ve seen that you like the look of, for now, you’re still taking the time and effort in trying to re-create it. And as you re-create, you may add your own flair or ideas. So definitely browse the internet, visit your neighbours and get inspired! Try and recreate! Place items wildly that you like the look of and see what ideas come to you.

Imor then mentions some more ideas that might be helpful:

• Stick to simple colour schemes – try to limit the colour palette you will be using, the more colours you add the harder it will be to balance them
• Always use references – either creations of others or “in-real” designs, check how a kitchen would look and what the layout usually is, where would the sink be, where would the counters be etc
• Real life examples – try to think about how you would use up a space in real life, if you are making a bedroom what would you like to have in one, a night stand, a wardrobe etc. Basically place yourself in the room you're making and ask yourself “what would I want to have available here”
• Don’t aim for perfect – houses will feel more “cozy” and lived in, if things aren’t perfectly straight and aligned
• Don’t make rooms to bright – I feel like it is easy to “over stack” on too many lights, which then feels a bit artificial or not very cohesive

Well there we have it dear readers! Our Q&A with Imor Brighthand. We hope you found viewing and reading about Imor's Alliance property as fun as we did!

Take care and have fun out there in Azeroth!