Blizzard moved fast on the Springblossom Tree pricing controversy, cutting the price after player backlash and adjusting the related decor pack. But the conversation clearly isn’t over. A fresh GamesRadar follow-up says many players still see Midnight’s housing cash-shop items as too expensive overall, even after the discounts.
The short version: Blizzard solved the “$7.50 tree” headline, but not the broader “why is this stuff priced like this?” argument.
The backlash shifted from one item to the whole store
GamesRadar’s follow-up frames the issue pretty clearly: the original outrage centered on a single tree price, but the wider debate is now about the full cost of housing decor in general. The article notes that some players calculated the total cost of buying all the launch housing shop content at around $180, and many are still calling that “comically overpriced.”
That matters because this is no longer just a “Blizzard made one bad pricing call” story. It has turned into a bigger argument about how World of Warcraft should monetize a feature that many players see as a long-term, evergreen system.
Why players are still upset
There are really three layers to the backlash now:
1) The discounts did not feel big enough
GamesRadar reports that while Blizzard lowered some prices after the initial uproar, a chunk of the community still feels the revised prices are too high.
2) Housing is supposed to be a major Midnight feature
Housing is not being sold as a throwaway side activity. Blizzard has positioned it as a major, ongoing system for Midnight and beyond, which makes aggressive monetization more sensitive.
3) Players compare it to what housing should be
GamesRadar previously reported that some players already felt Midnight’s housing launched with missing “basic functionality,” so store pricing hits harder when parts of the feature still feel unfinished to parts of the player base.
The bigger problem for Blizzard
This is where the story gets interesting.
If housing is meant to be a long-term pillar of modern WoW, Blizzard needs players to see it as exciting, creative, and worth investing time in. But if the store conversation dominates every housing headline, that can start to redefine the feature in the worst possible way: not as “WoW finally got housing,” but as “WoW finally got housing, and the cash shop showed up immediately.” That’s an inference from the community reaction and the coverage pattern, not a direct Blizzard statement.
This story probably isn’t done yet
The current state of the backlash suggests this won’t be the last housing-pricing conversation Blizzard has to deal with. GamesRadar’s wording makes clear the community response is still active even after the price changes, and Blizzard has already shown it is willing to react quickly when the pushback gets loud enough.
So even though the tree-price panic is technically “fixed,” the real story now is simpler:
players still think WoW housing decor is overpriced, and Blizzard hasn’t fully won that argument yet.
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