Blizzard are adding a new premium virtual currency to World Of Warcraft alongside player housing in the MMO’s forthcoming Midnight expansion. It’s called Hearthsteel, and is “purchased with real money using your Battle.net balance and used in turn to buy Housing items from the Battle.net shop and in-game shop,” as detailed in a blog post this week.
The post comments that the “vast majority” of housing items are and will continue to be earnable through play, with a “small fraction” sold for Hearthsteel. Even then, you’ll be able to buy items sold for Hearthsteel using WoW Tokens derived from in-game gold. Housing items “tied to core fantasies of a player’s race or class, or that already exist in Azeroth, won’t be sold in the shop”, and nor will “thematically important decor that players know and love”. Hearthsteel is strictly for homey boondoggles: there are “no plans to use it for the Trading Post, mounts, transmogs, or pets”.
All well and good. But Blizzard’s reasons for adding a new premium currency to a game that was rubbing along well enough without seem sketchy.
As the developers themselves put it in that blog post, “why bother when we already have a Battle.net balance?” They justify the introduction of Hearthsteel by noting firstly that “when dealing in transactions involving real money, a more deliberate and cautious process needs to be implemented to provide appropriate financial protections for both parties”. To which I can only say: show your working, Blizzard, because I have no idea what you’re referring to.
The developers add that buying things with real money “can be an inefficient, inconvenient, and often tedious process when a player wants to purchase multiple items”, giving the example of buying a full set of chairs, candles and a dining table for a banquet. They argue that “using an in-game currency can help make the process of obtaining many of these types of inexpensive items more efficient”.
I’m… not really seeing it, and neither are the Wowsers on Reddit (via PCGamer). As one user points out, why not just let players put multiple purchases into a shopping cart rather than rolling out some newfangly Azeroth doubloons?
It seems likely that the real rationale for Hearthsteel is the same rationale that informs purchaseable virtual currencies at large: they cloud how much you’re actually spending in real money terms, and often wangle you into spending too much by flogging the virtual currency in set amounts, rather than letting you buy exactly as much as you need. The addition of housing to WOW Midnight is sure to inspire a microtransaction boom – I guess this is just Blizzard adding a little more grease to the chute.
Late last year, a consumer advocacy group called upon the European parliament to end such predatory practices in videogames, but a huge number of publishers rely upon virtual currencies, especially in the realm of free-to-play. Time to bang that drum again, while you agonise over the interior of your Razorwind Shore chalet.
