World of Warcraft's next expansion will introduce player housing and it's coming with WoW's first ever premium currency. Wowhead recently dug up something called "Hearthsteel" in the files of the Midnight alpha and now Blizzard has made a blog post confirming that it's real and on its way with the expansion.
It clarified a few basic things, like being able to buy Hearthsteel with your Battle.net balance (and therefore with in-game gold via WoW tokens) and that it intends to keep the catalog small compared to what you can earn by playing the game.
Then it went on to explain why it's adding a premium currency in the first place, especially when it already sells mounts and cosmetics for real money values. In addition to providing "appropriate financial protections for both parties"—whatever that means—Blizzard says it's to help players purchase multiple items at once.
Blizzard - I personally don’t mind buying decor items individually on the shop with real money. It’s this what I’m afraid of by needing an unnecessarily new currency. from r/wow
Reddit user d1eselx made a mockup image of the problem everyone is worried about: In their example, a decoration might cost 1,100 Hearthsteel, but you can only buy 1,000 or 2,000 Hearthsteel at a time, forcing you to pay more than the exact price.
Blizzard says a premium currency makes it easier to buy multiple items, but, as Reddit user Pariah points out, "so does a shopping cart."
The same comment also has players worried that every housing item will require buying or earning multiple copies. Part of this I can understand from Blizzard's perspective. It would be kind of weird to have 30 copies of a dragon head mounted on your wall from a single boss kill. Some items should be limited to preserve their importance. But at the same time, you should let people place as many chairs and tables as they want in their home.
Blizzard has made it clear that player housing is a work in progress and still will be even when Midnight launches sometime next year. It just so happens that when you try to introduce a premium currency into a game that was doing fine without one, people will have quite a lot of feedback to give about it. I only hope that Blizzard takes the reactions seriously and doesn't nickel and dime people for a feature they've been looking forward to for years.
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