House Tour
Housing has finally arrived in World of Warcraft, and with it comes a brand-new social activity: the house tour. Gathering your guild or raid group to admire each other's creations is a fantastic way to spend an evening, but coordinating the order, timing, and communication can quickly turn into chaos. Enter House Tour, a purpose-built addon that transforms this chaotic scramble into a smooth, organized event. It is not a teleportation tool or a travel aid; it is a comprehensive control panel designed to keep your tour running on schedule and everyone in the loop.
What Does House Tour Do?
At its core, House Tour is an organization and timing tool. The raid leader, or tour guide, creates a tour, sets the parameters, and then drives the entire event from a sleek, intuitive panel. The addon handles the running order, manages a per-stop countdown timer, collects house submissions from guests, and posts progress updates directly to the raid chat. This ensures everyone knows where they need to be and when, without the need for constant manual announcements.
One of the most appealing aspects is its low barrier to entry. Only the tour guide needs to have the addon installed to run a successful tour. Guests can simply whisper their addresses or type them into chat, and the guide can manually add them. However, guests who also install the addon get a significantly smoother experience, seeing the queue, the live countdown, and having the ability to submit their own houses directly. Crucially, nothing about the tour's core functionality depends on the guests having it installed.
Setting Up Your First Tour
To begin, the raid leader or a promoted assist clicks the "Create House Tour" button. A setup window appears, allowing you to configure the essential rules. You can set the number of minutes per house, toggle auto-advance to the next stop, decide if submissions require your approval, allow multiple submissions per person, and grant raid assists the ability to run the tour. Once configured, the tour opens in a lobby where submissions fill the queue while you wait. When the line-up looks good, simply click "Start Tour." There is also a "Cancel Tour" button to scrap a lobby you might have opened by mistake.
The guide's client acts as the single source of truth. It broadcasts the entire tour state to the raid on every change, supplemented by a regular heartbeat, ensuring that everyone with the addon stays perfectly in sync. This architecture is robust and reliable, even during hectic moments.
Submitting and Managing Houses
For guests, the process is simple. By clicking "Submit My House," they can enter their address (which is conveniently prefilled based on their current location), add a public note that everyone can see on hover, and a private note visible only to the guide and privileged assists. If a guest changes their mind, they can click the "x" on their own row to withdraw their submission, provided the tour isn't currently visiting that house. The guide retains full control, with the ability to reorder the queue, remove entries, randomize the order of not-yet-visited houses, manually add houses for players without the addon, and toggle whether new submissions are accepted.
Running the Tour Smoothly
Once the tour is underway, the panel displays a large countdown and a drain bar showing the time left on the current stop. The "Next" button jumps to the following house and resets the timer, while "Pause" freezes the clock. The "End" button finishes the tour, and "Restart" on the ended screen picks it back up where it left off. For precise control, the "-1:00" and "+1:00" buttons trim or add a minute to the current stop on the fly, and "Wrap Up" cuts the timer down to just one minute. Every guest's countdown updates in real-time. The guide can also use the "Announce" button to post the current status to chat or "Post List" to send the entire running order. An "Auto-announce" option fires the status update at the start of every house, keeping everyone informed automatically.
Roles, Permissions, and Advanced Features
Next to the tour title, you will see your role: Tour Guide, Assist, or Tourist. A color on the header's left edge matches your role, and hovering over the tag explains your permissions. With "Raid assists can run the tour" enabled, any raid assistant gets the full control set, including access to the pending queue and private notes, and can approve or reject submissions. Their actions are routed to the host for verification, maintaining a single source of truth. If raid leadership changes, the new leader's client automatically takes over hosting, carrying over the queue, timer, and notes. If the new leader doesn't have the addon, the old host retains control.
For tours where the line-up is meant to be a surprise, the guide can toggle "Hide Queue." This keeps the house list and the "next" house secret from all non-guides. They will see a message stating "Tour queue currently hidden" along with the house count, and submitters can still see and manage their own row. Guides always see the full list.
Customization and Settings
The addon's settings, accessible via the header gear or the /ht settings command, are saved between sessions. You can rewrite the three automatic announcements (lobby, in-progress, wrap-up) using tokens like %o for owner, %a for address, %t for total, and %r for time left, with a live preview and character count for each field. You can also select the announce channel, from Raid Warning to Say, or turn it off entirely. Window settings allow you to adjust panel size and reset the window position. Miscellaneous options include toggling the walkthrough button, hover tips, and a chime that plays when the tour reaches a house you submitted.
Staying in Sync and Getting Help
If the guide reloads or relogs, their tour is saved and restored for up to 15 minutes and re-broadcast, so a simple /reload won't wipe the event. If the guide is gone longer, the tour shows "(disconnected)" and any raid leader or assist gets a "Take over tour" button. The main window is draggable and can be minimized to a thin status bar or hidden entirely, with /ht bringing it back. A guided walkthrough, opened via the "?" button, provides a practice tour with a floating coach that steps through the guide and guest views, highlighting each control without broadcasting anything.
For players looking to streamline their entire addon experience, the foxygame.net launcher offers a one-click install for House Tour, ensuring you always have the latest version without manual updates. Its built-in addon catalog makes discovering and managing your World of Warcraft addons effortless, and the auto-update feature guarantees compatibility with the latest game patches.
Compatibility and Final Thoughts
House Tour is designed to work seamlessly across all supported versions of World of Warcraft, including Retail, Classic, TBC, WotLK, Cataclysm, and MoP. The addon is group-scoped, using the raid or party addon channel, so it only reaches people in your group. The address is free text, and an owned-houses dropdown is planned for when the housing API reliably returns that list. While the pending list and private notes travel in the broadcast tour state, they are private by interface, not by encryption, so avoid putting anything in a private note you wouldn't want a determined person to see.
In conclusion, House Tour is an indispensable tool for any World of Warcraft player looking to host or participate in organized housing events. It removes the administrative burden, allowing everyone to focus on what really matters: exploring the incredible creativity of your friends and guildmates. Whether you are a seasoned raid leader or a first-time host, this addon is easy to install and even easier to use. It is the perfect companion for the new housing system, turning a potentially stressful logistical puzzle into a delightful and memorable social gathering.
--- **Update Sep 14, 2026:** Added 1 file for version 12.1.5.