I am pretty sure the old Tabards, Mounts and Pets... in the CCG and
few dozen IN GAME items sold in the last 6 years used some resources too.
But you had no problem with it because they were made by Cryptozoic and even sold on ebay at ridiculous prices, but NOW that Blizzard introduces a few of these fluff things in their cash shop they are .. evil...
...
So to YOU it is a problem that Blizzard gets the money instead of Cryptozoic or just another 3rd party (in which you never saw anything negative early on).
Which
proves you are a simple Blizzard hater while not even playing their games ... (Fans couldn't care less about merchandised stuff, on the contrary).
BTW: designing, producing and distributing merchanised stuff takes resources too from a company. Blizzard is bigger than a bunch of digital encoders.
So making T shirts, mice, mats,
in game items sold by 3rd parties has been happening since the start of WOW. You simply are terrified Blizzard is now being paid by selling them on their website (instead of someone else getting rich by selling Spectral Tigers at 500 dollars each).