Those who want to spend real money sprucing up their virtual World of Warcraft home can now do so, with Blizzard now offering premium-housing decor on WoW’s in-game shop.
The first premium-decor items for sale are two plushies: a lion representing the Alliance and a direwolf representing the Horde. Each plushie individually costs 100 Hearthsteel, WoW’s new premium housing currency. Buying exactly 100 Hearthsteel in the shop costs $1.
Housing decor items are single-use items, so those who want to stuff their house with plushies may instead want to buy the bundle pack that comes with four of each plushie instead. The bundle costs 500 Hearthsteel ($5).
Now that it’s officially live, Hearthsteel is actually WoW’s first real premium currency (if you don’t count the WoW Token, an item that can be sold for gold or used to pay for a WoW subscription). Hearthsteel raised concerns among WoW’s playerbase last year when Blizzard first announced its intentions, largely because players weren’t a fan of a paid game with a monthly subscription adding a premium currency as if it were a free-to-play mobile game.
Blizzard for its part stated it aimed for Hearthsteel to be “player-friendly” and said it was needed in order to make purchasing multiple, inexpensive items more “efficient” than simply selling them for real money.
In an interview with GameSpot, WoW housing principal game designer Jesse Kurlancheek said using Hearthsteel is also due to the Battle.net shop not having a shopping cart feature to batch together smaller purchases and because Blizzard needs to be mindful of “regulatory hurdles” when it comes to real-money purchases. He said using Hearthsteel also makes it easier for Blizzard to offer refunds.
With the two plushies, Blizzard is, so far, keeping true to its promise of offering inexpensive items and selling Hearthsteel at fixed, easy-to-understand prices. Players can easily buy just 100 Hearthsteel needed to make the purchase without having leftover currency, and there is no “bonus” Hearthsteel on offer for those who spend more money on larger currency packs. What you see is, thankfully, what you get.
Player housing in WoW is available now for those who preorder WoW’s upcoming Midnight expansion, releasing on March 2. Many of Midnight’s new features, like housing, an additional Demon Hunter specialization, user-interface additions, and its crackdown on player-made mods that aid in combat, are live now as part of Midnight’s pre-patch. Blizzard laid out its 2026 WoW plans last month, giving fans a glimpse at what’s coming in Midnight and beyond.
WoW VP and executive producer Holly Longdale recently said in an interview she believes the Warcraft IP is “underutilized,” and that Blizzard has a “bigger vision” for WoW than “simply being an MMORPG.”
