Blizzard Introduces $10 Tradable Pet
By maryvarn on October 10th, 2011Posted In: NPC Blog,Video Games,World of Warcraft
I like pets in WoW. They’re fun and cute and I even have a few from the store. I think they were all gifts.
I like that they don’t affect gameplay. You can take them or leave them and do just as well as anyone else in raids or heroics or pvp. Or the auction house game. They’re optional flavor.
Blizzard just announced they’ll soon be selling a $10 tradable Guardian Cub. It’ll be a one-use item, so unlike other pet store pets, you can only have it on one character. You can sell it on the auction house and trade it in game. For gold, services, gratitude – whatever you negotiate!
Guardian Cub us.battle.net
I’m guessing my reaction to this is a common one. I’m uneasy and unsure about it. I want to outright condemn it, but on the other hand maybe it won’t be that bad.
Blizzard has always taken a hard line against gold selling. I thought that was because they didn’t want real world wealth to equal in-game advantages. I was wrong! From their announcement:
Also, it’s important to note that we take a firm stance against buying gold from outside sources because in most cases, the gold these companies offer has been stolen from compromised accounts.
I found their lengthier stance against gold-selling here. Man, I feel dumb. These annoying exploits that gold-sellers use are great reasons to be against the practice, and I was aware of them. But I thought that a greater philosophy of economic equality was also part of it. Nope. If they can figure out how to bypass these exploits, there’s nothing stopping Blizzard from completely legalizing gold-selling in WoW. And this guardian cub may be the beginning of that.
And now this has me thinking. One aspect of WoW and other MMOs I’ve never cared for is that it often seems that they reward players for putting time in. And not putting time in to practice and improve a skill, but just PUTTING TIME IN. Farming for raid mats. Farming for gear in dungeons you’ve done so many times you could do them blindfolded. Leveling a character through a zone you’ve done countless times on other characters. Players vary widely how much time they can put in, just as they vary in their economic reality. Is there any difference between a player paying for an advantage and a player grinding away many hours for that same advantage? After all, time is money.
I guess I’m getting pretty jaded as I write this. What it comes down to is how much advantage can gold buy in World of Warcraft? You can buy raid mats, and dungeon runs, and some gear. What do you guys think about all this? What do you think a $10 pet will buy you?
Atlantica is an MMO that has many, many items for sale in the cash shop that people buy and then sell for in-game currency. It’s a huge part of the in-game economy, and real-life wealthy people have the best weapons, armor, etc. I quit that game after I spent $400 in one month, and found out some people spend more than that per week. Now I play Guild Wars, where cash shop items are not tradeable, and with a couple exceptions, cosmetic only.
The only real use I saw for buying gold and still didn’t risk it was for riding/flying training at the epic level. Farming just to not be slower than your friends/guildmates is such a colossal PITA and would tempt me to employ your feline characters just to avoid it. I’ve become a much more casual gamer these days, though, so my perspective may have changed over time.
Oh, this seems like a big exploit. The item is bought then auctioned in the AH for unreasonable prices. At least, initially they will be. As the market becomes flooded, the prices should drop to lower affordable levels. Yes, it is a way to buy WoW gold, but it isn’t the most fun way to acquire gold.
It is also a safer way to transact for gold and, honestly, I agree with the Blizzard FAQ that selling this pet through the auction house is a preferred way to pay for gold. Hacked accounts are never a good thing.
An interesting point of comparison is EVE Online. They take a very hard line against “Gold sellers” (although the in-game currency is called ISK). The game has subscriptions as normal, but you can also buy (with real money) items that redeem for subscription time in game, and are tradable. This creates the situation where (reasonably skilled) players with a lot of play time can essentially play for free, and players with more money than time can get in-game money through a trusted source without grinding. The skill system in EVE also levels the playing field so that everyone effectively levels up in real-time, playing the game or offline.
This is not exactly gold selling because the seller is not receiving real money but pet – which is completely useless in a long term.
Having gold was WAY more powerful in the past than it is now. Blizzard has changed the game so that gold itself is only useful for flight training, professions and cosmetic items. Nothing that can give you any real benefit over another player in raids, arenas, or battlegrounds, and it’s largely the same outlook that many western F2P games have on their cash shop currency.
That being said, I still think people who buy gold from third parties are stupid for putting their accounts at risk, rewarding the gold sellers for their unscrupulous practices, and spending real money on something that’s so easy to get that I find myself with several thousand gold per week without even thinking about it. The last one will still be the same with legitimate goldbuying through this new method.
I can’t see wasting the insane amount of time grinding out the gold these things will cost to save myself $10 spent on a pet if I really wanted it. In that sense, I have trouble believing this will lead toward a massive downfall in game. I do however see this being a great in game gift for all the pet collector friends
$10 for a pet has always seemed like a poor trade to me. My partner got me the Panda monk when half of that went to charity, and I got her the other half for charity pet, figuring that $5 for a pet was a reasonable price (we bought 3 of the cenarion hatchlings, giving 1 to a friend). And that’s $10 for a pet for EVERY CHARACTER on your account. This is $10 for a pet for one character? Bleh. I feel like they’re overpricing this one and sales won’t be as good as on the other ones.
As far as the mechanics, meh. Like they’ve mentioned, there are pets/mounts available through the TCG that are tradable for gold already, and there isn’t much outcry on those. I don’t think this matters in that way.
Like someone said, it’s similar to EVE, except, CCP doesn’t beat around the bush about it. You can essentially buy ISK via ETC (EVE Time Cards (which turn into PLEXes)), and they feel this is a great way to beat the ‘gold sellers’, and I completely agree … but at least there it’s done in a useful way … players with lots of ISK can play for free, and players who want ISK for their nice new shiny ship can exchange real world money for it which it turn becomes someone else’s game time … if Blizz wasn’t beating around the bush with all this, tip toing in the way they are, and would just lay all their cards on the table, I’d be more willing to support them on it, and they community backlash would be minimized …
Okay, so really, I agree with Phil. Frankly, all this going on with the pet being $10 vs the charity pets is really kind of sad. (Not to mention the pet’s not even that great looking…kinda borderline ugly imo) I agree that this could definately cause issues with ingame economy and think about it, it’s an easy way to farm gold. $10 for the pet, sell it on the ah quick for about 50k gold, turn around charge $20 or more for that 50k (IT’S ON SALE!
) and you got a $10+ dollar profit per pet. I know on Tanaris server, everything’s inflated all to hell, so you can imagine what this pet is going to be worth there. Anyways. End of Story, Blizz should have stuck with the charity basis, they would have made more and their player base would feel better about buying it.
In a word?
GDKP.
Gold can get you whatever you want.
Knowing how these kind of things work, I’ve always been rather puzzled why Blizzard never just puts a ATM in game or whatever. They can create gold out of thin air, no need to hack any accounts or farm endlessly for stuff to sell. Having been a wizard back in LPMud days (early 90′s equivalent to a WoW GM, just on a MUCH smaller scale), currency is just an item. It would be childs play for Blizzard to undercut every single gold seller out there. However, I have no idea what the communities response to that would be. Personally, I wouldn’t care.
However, having gold does give you an edge in game. There are lots of armor/weapons I’d love to get off the AH to give to various alts, but don’t have the gold to spare. With that time is money creed, is there really a difference between farming the mats for something you want crafted, and just buying it with cold hard cash?
I think whatever direction Blizzard takes is probably going to determine the path other developers take with their online transactions. It’s been interesting seeing where this free to play model is going, and Diablo III’s real currency AH will be an interesting experiment.
Kojak,
Actually, one important point that Blizzard mentioned is that this item creates no new gold. It only redistributes it.
What if games were set up so that a given player’s perception of *other* players is adjusted to match their own level? So a level 70 paladin fighting alongside a level 1 rogue would actually see a level 70 rogue. Where the level 70 character’s player is slaying dragons, the n00b with the level 1 rogue would see himself fighting alongside a level 1 paladin, bumping off evil bunnies.
That would even things out, right?
Of course, from the perspective of the game company, that’s a terrible idea. If they can convince people to spend more money, that’s a Good Thing. The only reason why they object to gold farming is because they don’t get a cut of the action.
I play on a role play server, so the economy is a bit crazy. Difficult to find/craft items that may be of little use go for hundreds or thousands of gold because they have a unique look. Whatever in game price you see this pet for on a normal server auction house you can add one or two more zeros to the end for the price on a role play server.
I agree that this is Blizzard’s way of easing into the gold business. Maybe we’ll be able to add pretty collars to our mounts or let hunters dye their pets’ fur/feathers/whatever with one time use scrolls. I’m all for it. I don’t think we’ll ever see Blizzard openly sell gold or give us many more items like this pet. It’s one thing to spread out the gold that’s already in the game. If the game gets flooded with gold then the prices will jump. Or maybe they won’t. I’m sure Blizzard has it under control. On a side note, the pet looks cute.
This is an easy opportunity to make lots of gold for basically no work. I wouldn’t, however, compare this completely to the usual gold farming. Blizzard doesn’t want other non-official sites to make money off of their product, but Blizzard can do whatever. That being said, this may actually discourage those annoying gold farming whispers by allowing Blizzard to control the “gold farming market.” Another thing to consider is that the game has been getting easier since the good ol days. Raids are far easier, making gold in game is waaaay easier with daily quests, leveling is easier (both with the amount of experience for each level being nerfed and with BOA gear). This is just another way to make the game easier.
Cool pet though
I quit playing a month ago because of gold farmers. I have been playing since about a month or two after TBC came out and it has just been going downhill since. All the old raiders and pvpers that I used to know, the ones that played the game for fun and didn’t nerd rage when we wiped on a boss, have all quit or are hiding. Now the trade chat is mostly made up of trolls and gold spammers, least on the server(s) I was on, a pvp and pve(non-rp) server. On the note about the pets, ya, complete waste of money. I can understand if the money is going to a good cause and the pet is sent to each toon, but $10 per toon? that is complete bull, especially considering I have five 85s, a couple random lvls and a bank toon.
I think the biggest issue is that Blizzard has been trying to fight gold selling since day 1, yet it’s still a huge problem, and the theft of accounts is much worse than having players run around and actually collect gold.
Having decided that they can’t stop it directly, this is an experiment to see if they can attack the problem another way. I’d be happier if the proceeds went to charity, but that might skew the result by encouraging people to buy more than they might otherwise.
It’s an interesting experiment, and I’m curious to see how it turns out.
The issue of MMOs rewarding pure time is one I think is being interesting explored by the upcoming Guild Wars 2.
From reading what they have about gameplay out, it is more of an RPG where your choices as your character effect how you play the game to broaden the experience on of well… the game experience on multiple toons. Effectiveness of armor has a hard cap easily reachable after max level, and any stats from one gear piece and be removed and place on another, giving choice based on solely looks.
The combat itself places importance on positioning (if an elementalist puts a wall of fire on the ground, you probably want to stand behind it to light all your projectile attacks on fire before they reach their targets!) and dodging. The MMO trilogy of tank, healer, dps is gone, you can chose dps in 8 different flavors and you get out of the way and heal yourself (or even use abilities that spread to your allies for a diminished effect on yourself if you are the kind of person that doesn’t… you know, normally play a for yourself only rogue-type like me
).
I’m a hard core WoW lover for a very long time (my first and only tattoo is a horde symbol hehe), but the grind of the MMO is one of many reasons I’m excited about Guild Wars 2′s take on a RPGMMO.