Yes, there is.
Buy gold directly from Blizzard = Gold has been created from nowhere. More gold has entered the economy and none has been taken out.
Buy a pet which you then sell on the AH = no gold has been created. The gold has merely been transferred from one player to the next.
It gives players a chance to make some gold without heavily disrupting the economy. It's a very significant difference and is important to take note of.
What's the most gold you can get from a gold seller for $10?
There's your maximum price for the pet.
I, er... What? What do you mean? My point is that there are some people who play the AH and make millions, and then there are people who log on for a couple hours a day, do some dailies, and have a couple thousand gold (if that). The people who have millions of gold will buy the pet for gold, thus transferring their gold to another player. The people who don't will buy the pet with their real money, sell it on the AH, and gain much more gold than they would have otherwise. It spreads out the in-game wealth without heavily disrupting the economy.
Please feel free to clarify your point, but right now I have no idea what relevance your quote has.
And again, as has been said multiple times: if you don't like it and don't accept it, then don't play the game. Everyone has different 'break' points I suppose. You've met yours, so off you go. I haven't, far from it. I'll continue to play and adapt to the game and enjoy myself.
It's not like I'm bending over and taking it up the ass. I actually, honestly agree with what Blizzard are doing, and think it's a brilliant new game mechanic. I'm happy to play WoW, I'm not just rolling over and accepting whatever they throw at me because I'm a mindless sheep. Far from it.
The funny thing is, this wont have an impact in economoy as big as people soloing trash in firelands had, those were thousands of NEW gold introduced in the economy, and many of thoe sgainst this did that without remorse.
well i would be ok with it if it was BOA on use and not 1 needed per char
Sort of. That was pretty much exactly the same as what this pet is doing: transferring the wealth between players. It didn't create new gold then, and it won't with the pet.
New gold is created from quests and looting mobs/containers. That's all. All other forms of making gold are simply the transfer of gold from one player to the next. This is why buying gold directly from Blizzard would pretty much destroy the economy: it would create a new, highly effective method of creating new gold.
I mean, think about it. If there are players who are able to amass millions of gold when the only sources of gold creation are looting mobs and quests... Think about how ridiculous the economy would get if you could buy 10k gold directly from Blizzard. Overnight the entire economy would crash and gold would become utterly worthless.
So this is the closest we'll get to buying gold from Blizzard. Hopefully it will also combat gold sellers, but who knows on that regard.
The better question is name me a game with a cash shop that does provide a round about way to make in game gold for real cash or to advance my toon with better gear and weapons with real cash?
WOW and D3 are those games.
However, an even better question is will I support a gaming company that thinks that's the right thing to do.
That answer is no.
Rich kids now guaranteed to be rich in game.
Blizzard know this is not a good idea but they want to see if they can *get away with it*. They will do so under the guise of it banishing the gold sellers, or at least dimishing their presence/powers but that's just not really true. This seems pretty innocuous but is a pretty major experiment they are launching here. It's the start of a whole new model. Those saying this is the same as TCG trading are seemingly not aware that TCG sales rely on luck and this is a sale that relies on one thing, the buyer having the 10 bucks or whatever.
I don't really care. I hate pets. If you want to spend $10 on a pet in a game that does sweet FA then I find that hilarious. Of course, this is about gold. There is too much gold in the game, much too much but this is not the answer. Strippers in cages is.
Well... I looked through this entire thread. Found no posts by Anjerik, and only 2 posts by Shise. One of which I replied to, and the other was replying to me. His argument boils down to this 'slippery slope' theory, while also ignoring stuff that is actually in game already. He stated that mounts and pets are only random drops or from the pet store now. I gave several examples of where you can get mounts and pets from other sources, thus disputing his claim.
I've already talked about the 'slippery slope' theory (it's essentially wild conjecture and conspiracy theories at this point, where people are trying to connect the dots but only connecting the dots that support their claims), so what else is there? You really aren't being as clear as you seem to think, so I'd appreciate some clarification.
This is a great idea. My troll would totally spend gold on Draenei strippers. Also I would pay quite a hefty sum for a vanity item that lets me summon an actual puntable gnome. Screw Vial of Sands, you want my 10k give me a puntgnome. You could even use the code for the leather balls, and let other players "go long" for a gnome reception.
For serious Blizz, make this happen.
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It isn't new. It's been possible to purchase gold for real cash in wow for a long time, just because it's not an official service sanctioned by blizzard it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Also blizzard probably doesn't care about it remotely as much as they say, but they have to keep an official "gold selling is BAAAAAD" stance to avoid upsetting their naive playerbase.
blizz shld make 2 versions of this item (nt re-color, bt selling methods) if this were to happen. 1 being the tradable, and the other being the BoA type. tht way, ppl can choose to:
1) buy with cash, use them (1 pet per char)
2) buy with cash, sell for gold (1 pet)
3) buy with gold, use it (1 pet)
i'd probably be the 3rd kind of person thou
its all marketing,the previous pets and mounts experienced high sells at the beginning but logically after a while the sales dropped drastically because most people still aren't ready to spend money on a virtual item for a game they're already paying each month to.
So there comes the bright idea,introduce again a new pet but this time make it tradable so that people's interest in the pet won't drop as much since now you're not only buying the pet but you're also buying potential gold.
Of course there must have been one dude that used his brain for a moment and went ''oh wait,aren't we slowly selling gold here'' but quickly realised his superiors didn't give a rat's ass how screwed up their game gets as long as the money flows in.
This problem is a non issue because a) gold is completely available to anyone and everyone on equal footing, as it's only 'created' through in-game effort.. all you have to do is put in said effort, and b) at end game, you need enough gold to cover your repair bills to fully enjoy this game. Get a profession that generates enough cash to offset your enchanting / jc needs, or simply take those up yourself. Or get in a guild where everyone contributes.
Gold and the 'need' for it in-game is easily one of the most overblown mindsets in this community.
---------- Post added 2011-10-11 at 12:00 PM ----------
Gold only gets introduced in this game via quests / dailies and mob drops. That's it. No matter how much something costs on the AH, if someone purchases it, the gold for it was generated at some point via one of those two ways.
Having said that, overall the MF dailies chain probably are a significant cause of inflation. (on top of the amount of gold one gets from 80-85)
Last edited by melodramocracy; 2011-10-11 at 04:01 PM.