Gaming: Ah yikes, World of Warcraft: Midnight's otherwise solid housing system is soured by its premium currency, which makes you 'minimize leftovers' even though Blizzard said it wouldn't
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I want to say something at the top of this—I still think World of Warcraft: Midnight's player housing system is very, very good. That's not just to soften the blow of the microtransaction analysis I'm about to hammer Blizzard with, if player housing sucked I'd say that. But the bones are really solid. You've got enough creative control to create Star Destroyers, you can clip things to your heart's content, and there's a generous amount of decor already in the game.
However, with the expansion's release comes Hearthsteel, a new premium currency (hurk) that lets you buy store-exclusive decor elements. In practice this isn't that big of a deal, since if you don't have an item, chances are you can rotate and clip five different pieces into each other to achieve a similar effect.
But in practice it's also kinda skeevy. I've got the store open right now, and Blizzard's doing that really goddamn annoying "you can only buy this premium currency in staggered amounts" bullcrap, which is especially frustrating because it said it wouldn't. Here's a blog post from November of last year where the studio wrote that one of its guiding principles for Hearthsteel would be the following:
"The costs of items are designed to align with Hearthsteel offer amounts in a player-friendly way. Buying Hearthsteel at the amount you want lets you purchase the items you want without requiring you to think about which packs should be added together to minimize leftovers."
You do, in fact, have to minimise leftovers. Hearthsteel is available in the following increments:
While a lot of the decor packs—priced at 2,500 Hearthsteel—are priced along these lines, the individual items are lab-designed to be super goddamn annoying. Alliance/Horde doormats are 200 Hearthsteel and the Spring Blossom Chair and Spring Blossom Tree are 250, slap bang in the middle of 100 and 500. The Spring Blossom Gazebo is
