Sneak Peek: Guardian Cub Tradable Pet

[Jiggles]

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.

I think it's a pretty narrow view that it's only "unacceptable" if people can use "real" money to buy tier gear. BoEs and craftables cover a large chunk of your gear slots. Also, of course, you can always use gold to pay for runs/drops.

[runeb1980@hotmail.com]

Um. Illegal gold sellers don't actually put any new gold into the game either. They either farm or steal it from other people. The WoW economy broke a long time ago, back in WOTLK, when I first reached goldcap from just reselling stuff on AH. Which basically means there was too much gold floating around.

[Shmiles]

[2. Trade] LFM Firelands - pst ilvl and ownership of Guardian Cub pet to be eligible for raid

You are the definition of moronic.

---------- Post added 2011-10-12 at 06:56 AM ----------

I think it's a pretty narrow view that it's only "unacceptable" if people can use "real" money to buy tier gear. BoEs and craftables cover a large chunk of your gear slots. Also, of course, you can always use gold to pay for runs/drops.

In what tier has the majority of my slots been filled with BoEs? Oh wait, never has that happened. BoEs and craftables cover the majority of your gear slots if you don't raid or its the first few weeks after a content patch is released. People that sit in BoEs longer than this are people that sit on the AH all day to just sit in Org/SW looking pretty in BoEs (or raiders that are INCREDIBLY unlucky).

[Youko]

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.

thats never gonna happen, they'll just sell it cheaper than blizz, as stupid as some of the ppl are out there, they will fall for it. not to mention theres gonna be fake email and all saying theres special promo or what not lol. blizz is fully aware of that, they just want a piece of the pie now lolol.

[Idoru]

Blizzard doesn't directly sell TCG loot cards to the player base through the Blizzard Store.

Blizzard doesn't directly sell gold to the player base through the Blizzard Store.

See how this works both ways?

[Neuromancer]

$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

Wait, you're kidding right? $10 is chump change, if someone is willing to pay $10 then it's worth $10, whether or not the goods are intangible. I fail to see how you think someone's "wealth" would go into a game. Besides, the whole game is intangible so why buy gametime each month? I mean, when you're old how are you going to explain being poor because you wanted to play WoW each month ?!

You know what's ridiculous? Thinking the kind of money you as an individual put into WoW, or gaming at all, is much. If it is then you should probably rethink how you're making money.

[Gilian]

yeah just that. The other pets from the shop were cool because you got them on every char on the account when you added the code to it. This one is just super stupid You buy a pet for the same amount as the others and get it only on ONE of your chars ofc you can send it to alts or so but you have actually buy one for each alt (or buy from ah gg) stupid move blizz

Edit: BTW don´t see the ah prices above 1k or so maybe 100-500g after a few weeks.

There is no way that someone will buy a pet for $10 and sell it for less than 1k gold. I would rather keep it myself then or just wait till I can sell it for a normal price.

---------- Post added 2011-10-12 at 07:46 AM ----------

I dont see anything wrong with this at all. People obviously have the need for this sort of crap ingame and Blizzard is providing those who need.
For a "small" fee that is. Now personally I would never spend 10 bucks on a silly looking pet or mount of any visual aspect in a video game that has no value at all, but thats just me.

If they actually are so many people willing to spend money on something dumb as a companion pet or ingame gold, or even epic gear then why should Blizzard not provide? As long as the same items are obtainable through playing the game, and earning them i simply dont care much about it.

A simple model like this is made in only a few hours time. The huge amount of provit comming from this could be spend in improving the actual game, or spend on new titles. Gz to Blizzard on some good marketing. Wish I was smart enough to come up with this kind of money income.

Yeah dream on. You apparently never played a F2P MMO with an ingame item store. If you didn't buy the items from the store you would be so far behind on everyone else that it was far less enjoyable to play the game. Imagine more items like this pet that people can sell for gold. People who are willing to spend money on it will have tons of gold and you will have barely any gold or you would have to spend hours and hours of your time to get it. Prices would be really high because more people have more gold while you barely have gold and need to spend a lot of time and efford to get it. It doesn't matter where the gold comes from.

Yes, it's good marketing and I doubt they will spend it on improving the game.

Love it that people think this isn't a big deal. Just like that ugly ass mount. It's good marketing as you said so there is no reason at all for Blizzard not to do this more often (the community proved it by buying that spectral mount, which no one uses anymore btw, and making 2.5 mil for blizzard in only 2 hours time). After a few years the online store will be full with pets and mounts you can sell ingame. Selling gear for real money is also very good marketing, as long as you can obtain it by playing the game right? It's also very casual friendly because it is far better to spend $10 on a piece of gear than raid for hours with a chance of not getting it.
If you don't see how this can impact on the game and the players you are very naive.

Q: Why did you decide to make the Guardian Cub tradable?Since the introduction of the Pet Store, many players have been asking for ways to get the companions we offer there without having to spend real-world cash.

See they know they are wrong so they give these bullshit answers. If they wanted people to get pets without spending real money they could have just put them ingame instead of in the store.

And ofcourse you will have guaranteed that you will make a certain amount of money. People know what $10 is worth, it doesn't matter how ugly the pet is. Sane people don't buy 100-500 gold for $10 and sane people know that when they spend 10k-15k gold on something that is worth $10 that they made a good deal.

And this:

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.

Those spectral tigers are rare and based on luck and I think mostly sold for real money on e-bay or something. You can't compare the two things. It's a very bad argument for what they are doing here.

[Idoru]

$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

People are paying a lot more to pollute their body with tobacco and alcohol .... Pathetic.

And by the way, how long have you been playing games ? How much money have you been spending on games ? In 50 years how ridiculous will you look ?

[Poinen]

i dont get why people are always complaining about stuff like this.
It won't make you stronger in the game.
If you want it buy it.
If you want it to earn money buy it.
If you dont want it dont buy it.
Problems solved.
Blizzard is a company and guess what, company's wanna make money.
And this is a way to make money without directly harming the game. So whats the problem

So... you don't get that it will have an effect on the gold market. People will get super rich and prices on all things will go up , things already costs a ridiculous amount of money so new players won't even be able to buy 1 x Peacebloom or some oldschool blue item of off the AH because of that.

---------- Post added 2011-10-12 at 09:06 AM ----------

---

The difference often is, WoW has a subscription fee. Other games are often free to play, so the only way they make their money is with these "fashion" items etc. you can buy. It's more of another subject though. For instance, switching servers in WoW costs reallife money (10 euro's or so), while you already pay 13 euro's or so a month and while the whole service is 99.9% automated. That's disgraceful. There's where the anger of players starts. You can feel it's not justifiable for a game that already costs you money. These "fun" pets however, I don't give a sht. They can cost 5, 10, 20 euro's and still be tradable ingame, I don't care much. I don't see how it hurts me. I just don't buy the pet.

Maybe try seeing it as a whole instead of the ego way.... it might not hurt you, but will overall hurt the game, which in the end will bite you in the ass. I'm guessing you don't vote either when a new goverment is elected.

---------- Post added 2011-10-12 at 09:13 AM ----------

I think people are over estimating how much these things are going to sell for in game. There's going to be a lot of supply and not enough demand. Maybe not right away and some people might get rich off these things in the beginning but it's going to pass.

That may be, but it's still crossing a dangerous line... so what will be the next item available to this kind of ingame trading?

[Idoru]

That may be, but it's still crossing a dangerous line... so what will be the next item available to this kind of ingame trading?

They are crossing that line every time they add a new premium feature. How many lines do they have to cross before the sky actually falls ?

[Poinen]

I can't take another one of these days. If you despise it, hate blizz, feel this one thing will ruin the game.....Quit! Just quit! Leave the rest of us alone and please stop the madness. Just save us the trouble. Some of these posts can be compared to what you see on political forums and the US economy. Its just a game! If your mad or not having fun dont play. If you loved the game and hate the changes complain outside these forums. A blue isnt going to walk right up to you. -.-

Don't you understand that those QQ'ing about it are actualy those who love the game... those that support this move from blizzard does not care about the game and only about getting an advantage, a short cut to glory and riches! Stupidest move from Blizzactivision, where will it end? The open'd up Pandora's box...

[Idoru]

Don't you understand that those QQ'ing about it are actualy those who love the game... those that support this move from blizzard does not care about the game and only about getting an advantage, a short cut to glory and riches! Stupidest move from Blizzactivision, where will it end? The open'd up Pandora's box...

Really? Advantage? Glory and riches?

I'm a pet collector, exactly what advantage does this pet give me? What glory?

[ssviolett]

You can't just magically hack wow and create 100k gold in your account out of thin air.

ol good trust in truth ye ? ThereIsNoHackInWow. And have you ever heard about account stealing ?
Gold selling = you pay real money ---> get solid gold.
Blizzard selling = you pay real money ----(trying to sell item on AH for days, due to colossal amount of people trying to sell it)---> get solid gold. Quite different ye ?

---------- Post added 2011-10-12 at 10:17 AM ----------

So... you don't get that it will have an effect on the gold market. People will get super rich and prices on all things will go up , things already costs a ridiculous amount of money so new players won't even be able to buy 1 x Peacebloom or some oldschool blue item of off the AH because of that

... this guy is mad for sure.

[Gruffertus]

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

Valve are almost unique in big private companies in that they have never sought outside funding - the majority shareholder is Gabe Newell, and the other shareholders work for.. Gabe Newell. This allows them to take a longer-term view on things, which to be honest is probably a good thing.

[Groalarbear]

Love all the QQ on "Blizzard ok's gold selling" ... So the pets/mounts you get from TCG which can be sold on the AH are the same as this pet, except you do not have to buy X packs of cards to get it ...

People who think Blizzard is allowing the gold farmers in, need to read up on blue posts before bitching....

I do agree $10 for a "one use pet" is high

[Gilian]

How is this "buying gold" when no gold is GENERATED? =)
Funny people.

Items are generated that can be sold for gold. Works exactly the same.

It's like getting expensive items for 10 gold or none at all and selling them for 10k gold. How does this not equal buying gold? There is only one step put between, like that makes everything fine...

[Deepone]

Items are generated that can be sold for gold. Works exactly the same.

It's like getting expensive items for 10 gold or none at all and selling them for 10k gold. How does this not equal buying gold? There is only one step put between, like that makes everything fine...

No, it's not the same at all. When you buy a cub, you're buying a worthless token. You might be able to get some sucker to pay you gold for the token, but you might also be able to get them to pay you gold for a grey item you got as a drop at level 1 (yep, I've done that). In both cases, no gold is added to the economy, and that's the real problem. If Blizzard sold gold, the economy would change (inflation, specifically, and probably a need to buy gold because farming it would no longer be effective enough, given the inflation).

[Gilian]

Love all the QQ on "Blizzard ok's gold selling" ... So the pets/mounts you get from TCG which can be sold on the AH are the same as this pet, except you do not have to buy X packs of cards to get it ...

People who think Blizzard is allowing the gold farmers in, need to read up on blue posts before bitching....

I do agree $10 for a "one use pet" is high

Those mounts they are talking about are very rare and mostly sold for real money. Besides it depends on luck to get them. You also did not pay for the mounts, you payed for the cards. You have no guarantee that you can get gold when you buy the cards.

These pets are always available. You will always have the guarantee that you will get gold untill there is no more demand.

This also has nothing to do with goldfarmers. It's about Blizzard giving the players to get a pretty steady income by paying real money. If they add more of these things you will see what will happen. If you ever played a F2P MMO with an online store and all that crap you know what can happen.

Players who have money to spend on it will have an advantage over players who don't. When someone puts in efford and time into the game so he/she can have better gear or other things it's not okay and things have to get nerfed because EVERYONE needs to be able to see content and have those items. But when Blizzard can make money on it it doesn't matter if someone else has an advantage over the others.
Yes, it's only one pet now. Not for long.

[Deepone]

Love all the QQ on "Blizzard ok's gold selling" ... So the pets/mounts you get from TCG which can be sold on the AH are the same as this pet, except you do not have to buy X packs of cards to get it ...

An no one even buys the packs, they just buy the card on ebay from a hobby store that has bought lots of cases and sold off singles.

[Gilian]

No, it's not the same at all. When you buy a cub, you're buying a worthless token. You might be able to get some sucker to pay you gold for the token, but you might also be able to get them to pay you gold for a grey item you got as a drop at level 1 (yep, I've done that). In both cases, no gold is added to the economy, and that's the real problem. If Blizzard sold gold, the economy would change (inflation, specifically, and probably a need to buy gold because farming it would no longer be effective enough, given the inflation).

Because you really have to be a sucker to pay 10k gold for an item that's worth $10. People pay $10 for 10k gold already so why not pay it for an item that's worth $10?
Also comparing it to a grey item you sold to some poor noob...

You haven't heard have you? Many people are already at gold cap, it doesn't matter anymore if there would be added more gold in the wow economy or not. The problem is that people who have $10 to spend on cubs have an advantage just like people can and want to pay $10 for 10k gold.

---------- Post added 2011-10-12 at 02:08 PM ----------

An no one even buys the packs, they just buy the card on ebay from a hobby store that has bought lots of cases and sold off singles.

The problem is that you never know what will sell and what won't sell. You can guess but you never know. Especially with these kind of items.

One pet is also not a problem but it's the start of a trend that can become a problem.