Sneak Peek: Guardian Cub Tradable Pet

[Deepone]

There might be some undercutting in the beginning, but don't expect that to last. People will wise up and realize it's better to hold onto the pet, and then list it later for more, once the initial purchasing frenzy has died down. The $10 of "real" money they spent is a much bigger incentive to get a good value for the pet than you think.

And how many of these do you think people will BUY? That's the key thing. I doubt that you'll see enough buyers on a realm (that won't just buy it for $10) to make any reasonable return for anyone.

Either way, of course, it doesn't impact the economy, since the gold is coming from players. It's no different than adding a new weapon that drops in a holiday event. In both cases, players can get them and sell them, but the gold has to come from others.

---------- Post added 2011-10-11 at 08:12 PM ----------

A useful followup from Blizzard:

TCG Loot card mounts like the Spectral Tiger have been BoE for a long time now (since patch 3.2), and that was and continues to be well-received, and as far as we've been able to tell hasn't had any adverse impact to the game or economy - despite them selling for sometimes astronomical amounts of gold.It’s potentially worth noting that no new gold is being introduced into the game's economy with those mounts or the new Guardian Cub pet.Our goal with the Guardian Cub is to provide alternative ways for players who don't want to spend real money to add these pets to their collection. Even though this has been available a while now with the TCG mounts, this is obviously a new kind of way to deliver Pet Store pets, and we're definitely interested to hear your feedback and ultimately see how this will play out.

[Riffo]

[QUOTE=Deepone;13624320]Not really. Right now, everyone's assuming that you'll buy these pets and sell them on the AH with ease. I think you'll see that turn out to be untrue with dozens of other people thinking the same thing, and the pool of people willing to BUY them being fairly small, and probably limited at first to speculators who will rapidly realize they're not going to be able to re-sell. The pyramid will collapse quickly and the price of the pet will probably stabalize at a level that most players aren't willing to shell out $10 for (if it were high enough to be a reasonable price, the sellers would out-number buyers... supply requires demand).[/QUOT]

yes and how much gold would u buy for 10$? and there we have $>Gold that blizz told that they never would

[Freese]

Actually, this DOES allow people to indirectly buy epics with real cash. Thats what so bad about it.

You mean the outdated epics from trash drops that no one really cares about?

[Deepone]

yes and how much gold would u buy for 10$? and there we have $>Gold that blizz told that they never would

First off, screenshot or it didn't happen. I don't recall Blizzard saying this, so I want to see it. Second, you're wrong. If someone makes 100g selling a $10 pet, they've essentially just done a different kind of daily, and this one costs them real-world cash, doesn't guarantee a reward and takes the gold from some other player who is willing to pay. This impacts the economy not at all, and I invite you to be one of the suckers who buys these for $ and expects them to sell on the AH...

---------- Post added 2011-10-11 at 08:48 PM ----------

blizz told that they never would

Oh, and as Blue posters have pointed out, TCG pets have been for sale on the AH forever. This isn't even new, which makes the uproar really kind of funny.

[Jiggles]

Right, it's not like TF2 blasts you with Mann. Co Supply Crates and special items such as that, that scream HEY PURCHASE A KEY IT'LL BE AWESOME. As I said, two different business models. Saying Valve doesn't care about profits as much as the next company over is silly - they both have shareholders to please.

Both companies care about profits. Duh. I never said they didn't. Blizzard's behavior with WoW, however, demonstrates that they care more about profits than Valve. Valve went F2P with TF2, despite the fact that people were still buying the Orange Box / TF2. Valve could have kept the Mann store and not removed the purchase price. Valve removed it anyway.

If Blizzard does the same, then I'll be happy to be wrong. However, WoW is an older game than TF2, so what's the holdup? Oh, right, maximizing profits.

Your 2nd topic completely contradicts your first: Why wouldn't Blizzard go F2P? Valve still had new people buying Orange Box - why make it F2P if they have people still buying it?

You're missing my point yet again. Valve went F2P with TF2 despite people still buying TF2. All for-profit companies are greedy (that's the point), but not all companies are equally greedy.

You're assuming an awful lot about items that are absolute, 100% vanity and are not needed. At all. Blizzard doesn't throw these things in your face in-game, either. For someone that doesn't visit any WoW site, read, a vast amount of players, they never know about this stuff. I still see people asking on a daily basis where they get the Guardian mount.

I can't be the only person that reads the WoW launcher. That's close enough to in-game for me. And, in case you missed it, this thread was about how this "vanity" pet could be used to "buy" gold. Which it can. Whether there will be enough demand for the pet to make the "currency exchange" worthwhile is yet to be seen.

[bbr]

Amusing looking pet. I still think it's silly people buy these things, but as long as blizzard doesnt sell any actual items that "give a benefit", I say all the more power to them. Extract as much money from the fools interested in pixel crack and use that money to bring more content for all other players :P

[Yseraboy]

...there will be people who buy it to get an economic gain over their competitive raiders.

Imagine having a competitive guild, while everyone is gearing slowly through heroics, one person decides to sell this pet for say 20-30k gold. which in turn, helps them obtain a BoE BiS epic from the current tier off the AH.

-snip-

While it is a heavily exaggerated scenario, don't lie to yourself and say this cant happen.

Heavily exaggerated scenario? You got that right...

Who is going to be buying a pet like this for 20-30k gold?

Are the people buying them for 20-30k gold also going to be stupid enough to buy multiples - at that absurd price - for their alts???

Because unless there are a lot of stupid people with multiple alts, I don't see how these pets are going to be any kind of "money-maker", let alone "game-changer" for WoW.

Please, dumb it down for me, and explain how the paltry amount of gold these things will sell for in-game will have any significant effect on the economy on my server.

I must just be too dense to see what is blatantly obvious to so many others here...

[Kaneiac]

Both companies care about profits. Duh. I never said they didn't. Blizzard's behavior with WoW, however, demonstrates that they care more about profits than Valve. Valve went F2P with TF2, despite the fact that people were still buying the Orange Box / TF2. Valve could have kept the Mann store and not removed the purchase price. Valve removed it anyway.

If Blizzard does the same, then I'll be happy to be wrong. However, WoW is an older game than TF2, so what's the holdup? Oh, right, maximizing profits.

You're missing my point yet again. Valve went F2P with TF2 despite people still buying TF2. All for-profit companies are greedy (that's the point), but not all companies are equally greedy.

I can't be the only person that reads the WoW launcher. That's close enough to in-game for me. And, in case you missed it, this thread was about how this "vanity" pet could be used to "buy" gold. Which it can. Whether there will be enough demand for the pet to make the "currency exchange" worthwhile is yet to be seen.

I never said you claimed they didn't care about profits. But saying that one company "cares about profits more than another" is ignorant. They don't just tell their shareholders "We COULD make more money, but we don't want to." That's not how a corporation works. Until you understand this, I'm not saying anymore.

[Yseraboy]

wow, i actually want this to go live just so people can be all in arms like a medieval angry mob (angry and stupid at the same time)

Agreed.

I can only hope that when they rage-quit WoW over this, they also rage-quit from MMO champion so can do something constructive/enjoyable with their time, rather than posting yet-another rant to 34+ pages of rants about Blizz pushing WoW down the slippery-slope towards F2P/Pay-to-Win.

I'll quit when it -actually- gets to that mythical "bad place", not before.

And not just because someone says " its inevitable..."

[Deleted]

Not really. Right now, everyone's assuming that you'll buy these pets and sell them on the AH with ease. I think you'll see that turn out to be untrue with dozens of other people thinking the same thing, and the pool of people willing to BUY them being fairly small, and probably limited at first to speculators who will rapidly realize they're not going to be able to re-sell. The pyramid will collapse quickly and the price of the pet will probably stabalize at a level that most players aren't willing to shell out $10 for (if it were high enough to be a reasonable price, the sellers would out-number buyers... supply requires demand).

Yes and when that happens they will release another pet or a mount, and the cycle continues. If Blizzard didnt think they will sell on the AH why on earth are they doing it?

---------- Post added 2011-10-11 at 11:16 PM ----------

And how many of these do you think people will BUY? That's the key thing. I doubt that you'll see enough buyers on a realm (that won't just buy it for $10) to make any reasonable return for anyone.

Either way, of course, it doesn't impact the economy, since the gold is coming from players. It's no different than adding a new weapon that drops in a holiday event. In both cases, players can get them and sell them, but the gold has to come from others.

---------- Post added 2011-10-11 at 08:12 PM ----------


A useful followup from Blizzard:

You dont actually belive that blue post do you?

"Our goal with the Guardian Cub is to provide alternative ways for players who don't want to spend real money to add these pets to their collection."

Priceless....

[khh]

Saying Valve doesn't care about profits as much as the next company over is silly - they both have shareholders to please..

technically, valve is private company

[Kaneiac]

technically, valve is private company

It still has shareholders. Private just means it isn't publicly traded.

[Jiggles]

I never said you claimed they didn't care about profits. But saying that one company "cares about profits more than another" is ignorant. They don't just tell their shareholders "We COULD make more money, but we don't want to." That's not how a corporation works. Until you understand this, I'm not saying anymore.

Of course they don't tell their shareholders that. But, being a privately-held corporation, there is a lot less pressure on Valve to show record profits each quarter. They are more free to consider "softer" factors like customer good-will, and to take a longer view on success. They don't have public shareholders breathing down their neck, demanding an ever-higher stock price. Also, private shareholders are usually much closer to the management (or are the management/board) than public shareholders. They actually could decide that some other factor is more important than making more short-term profits.

In any event, Valve could have kept TF2 pay-to-play, but Valve didn't. You did your best to tear down my example, but you failed. Also, you conveniently neglected my other example of ArenaNet. I didn't forget.

Until you understand this, I'm not saying anymore.

Ditto. Later!

[Nycon]

Yeah.... this is Blizzard selling gold, knew it would happen eventually.

[VXBlade]

I am a crazy pet collector who has bought all the previous pets. I am not planning to buy this one. At least with the previous pets, I could sorta justify the money by rationalizing that the pet was account bound. All my toons, now and in the future, got the purchased pet. Not the case here. One time, one toon for $10? Nope.

$10 for anything intangible is kinda ridiculous. But since fake junk is all the rage with game players, its probably not going anywhere. I hope the market never goes dry, or a lot of 30 something's estates are going to look pretty ridiculous in 50 years.
"Grandma, where is all grandpa's wealth?", "oh honey, it's all in virtual crap hun!", "Virtual crap grandma?" "Yes honey, Grandpa gave his money to people to have them give him UN-unique pieces of propriety art that you can't view anymore, it was part of a game 40 years ago that doesn't work on Windows 15."

.... pathetic

[Halicia]

Its about time, imo. As the blue post said "Its worth noting that this creates no gold in the economy".

So like the D3 auction house, it provides a legitimate alternative to illegal sales/trades.

The damage is already out there, providing legitimate avenues only makes it less profitable for goldsellers... which means less bots and less hacking... which is good for everyone.

Personally, I have trouble seeing who this is BAD for... except maybe those few ppl that would rather drop $100-200 to be a special snowflake but can't put in the minimal effort needed to rake in gold.

[muto]

LOLOLOLOLOLOL OMG. Legal GOLD selling? Blizzard my boy, you've done it this time. Have fun with declining subs.

Nah this is good. They ought to just make it so you can buy gold off their site, it would put all those gold selling sites out of business, and we would never see them in the game.

[Kaeleena]

I'm amazed at how many people on this forum don't understand how gold selling works. You buy the gold from a third party, but you have no idea where the gold comes from. The reputable gold sellers get their gold by buying it from other players. They pay the other player cash for their gold and then sell it to you at a markup. Most of them don't even have the teams of chinese farmers working for them that you always hear about; they're simply middle men in the process of gold selling.

Now, this is exactly like that with 2 differences. 1)Instead of any portion of the money you play going to the other player it goes directly to Blizzard and doesn't change hands after that. 2)Instead of putting a worthless item up on the AH, you're putting what's going to be a rare pet on the AH.

Finally, the price of this pet will plummet quickly on the AH due to mass sales, especially on heavily populated servers. This will be the best time to buy this pet. After the initial influx of pets on the AH, interest will peter off and you'll be left with a handful of players buying and selling the pet on the AH, probably with tons of price manipulation because people will see the real world value of the pet as the value of gold. Consequentially, after the first wave of pets onto the AH the price of the pets will stabilize around the price of gold. You'll be able to purchase the pet from the pet store and sell it for the relative value of gold minus ~5% or so counting AH cut and undercutting.

From the buyers end, this is one of the methods gold selling uses. You pay money to a third party(Blizz), you post an item on the AH(a pet), and a 3rd party buys it. Only difference is the other player doesn't get a portion of the profits, all they get is a worthless item.

---------- Post added 2011-10-12 at 03:41 AM ----------

Like many other people in this thread, it's only unacceptable when you can buy PVP or PVE gear. Now I'm not talking BoEs, which can technically be bought for RL money (gold sites > spend gold on AH), but tier/heroic tier.
Also, like others have said, TCG has been "legal" in-game for a long time. I have personally sold a TCG item from ebay for more than what it was worth for gold ingame.

Blizzard doesn't directly sell TCG loot cards to the player base through the Blizzard Store. The item is directly tied to the rarity of the card in the card game and only a limited number of them are produced in the entire world. The value of the TCG cards is tied to that rarity. Unless Blizzard decides to do reprints, once the limited pool of codes are used up, there will be no new TCG loot created.

---------- Post added 2011-10-12 at 03:45 AM ----------

Never seen so many people complain about something they do not have to buy and would have absolutely no impact on them in any way whatsoever.

Gold selling has already destroyed the economies of most servers and we already have hyper inflation and this is Blizzard saying, not only are they not going to do anything about it, they're going to contribute to it as well. That impacts everyone's gameplay.

[Deleted]

Sorry but to me this screams massively of desperation on Blizzards part to get into the gold selling before they lose all their subs (I'm not for one second saying "AMG WOW IS DYING, X IS BETTARRR!" because I don't believe that myself, but they are losing subs hand over fist). We all kinda saw this coming though after the D3 Real life money AH thing a few weeks back. Personally I find this fairly sickening and I've bought two of their pets (both for 50% to charity) but as someone said, damage is done, probably has been for a very long time.. Blizzard are just getting in on the act.

[Kaeleena]

But what will really change? Gold wont be created from thin air and inflation wont rise because of that. So only difference is that guy who don't have time to farm enough gold can just legally buy it for RL money.. is that really bad? It's happening all the time. Now there is legal way to do it.As long as best pieces are still BoP, I see no reason to rage.

You don't seem to understand that it doesn't matter where the gold comes from, whether you buy it from nobody and it's created from thin air or you buy it from 50 people, it gives you access to a sum of purchasing power that wasn't available to you before, thereby driving the prices of anything anyone with deep enough pockets wants into the stratosphere.