OMGMUSTREADGOLDCAPPED

I can't wait to see what you think this prices on this are going be, especially given all the types of people who will be selling it for oh so many different reasons.

Yeah, there are some really interesting ramifications here.

First off, it really is selling gold under another name. (Blizzard pretty much cops to that in the FAQ.) However, it means that the real dollar price of gold would fluctuate, based on whatever people want to pay for these.

More interestingly, it puts the final verdict on gold selling in the hands of the players on a realm. If enough people on a realm didn't like the idea and refused to spend gold for the pet, the price would invariably have to fall and the amount of gold you get for $10 would decrease.

One good thing about this is that it gets around one of the biggest problems people have had with the idea of Blizzard selling gold: rampant inflation. It was pretty reasonable to assume that if Bliz let people buy gold directly, that massive infusion of gold to the economy would cause prices on everything to go up. However, this method adds no new gold; by giving the player a commodity that can be traded for gold instead, Blizzard can allow real money to wind up as gold without having to add additional gold into the equation.

I'm interested to see your take on it, Basil.

This seems like it might be a way for Blizz to introduce another gold sink without it seeming like one.

They have to know many players will post it at exorbitant prices, but since it will be the players setting the price with no baseline set from Blizz (i.e. vendor mats at several k), they won't have to deal with players complaining about it not being available to everyone. After all, they can just say if you don't want to pay 50k, you can purchase it with money like any other Blizzard store pet.

Yeah, I'd like to see both the Goldcapped and the Lawbringer takes on this. Seems like they managed to avoid the concern of taxes and the value of gold as real money by doing this indirectly -- but not having a law background I might be wrong here.

@Umbralwrath:

This may be a lot of things, but a gold sink, it isn't.

For it to be a gold sink, it would need to be taking gold out of the economy; in this case, it's just getting passed around from one player to another.

If it's sold on the auction house, there's the cut to act as a little of a sink, but no more so than it does for anything else on the AH, and I don't see this being a really bulk item; there's likely to only be a handful on the AH at a time; not enough to really take any significant amount out.

In lieu of writing the most massivest wall of econ-flavored text this site has ever seen, I'll just send you an email, Basil :P

Another consideration: Doesn't this mean that every realm (and perhaps even faction) will have their own exchange rate? As it stands, prices on in-game items can vary widely from realm to realm and even between horde and alliance; that means that a $10 pet will get you a different amount of gold, depending on where you want it.

I wonder what that will mean, overall... Will you get more or less gold for your $10 on a PvE or PvP realm? How about RP and not? Will low population servers or high population servers give you more for your money?

Man, there's a lot to consider here. I have a feeling you're going to be writing more than one column on this before it's over, Basil.

The most recent gold ads I've seen in-game have been something like $16 for 10k gold. But this is, of course, against the ToS...

Personally, I'd drop 10k for this $10 pet in a heartbeat - which is a great deal compared to the gold sellers.

But... Current in-game BoE pets are already on the AH for 10-20k. (Oozeling, whelps and hatchlings). I think this sets it up for those buying the pet for resale to expect (and demand) 15-20k for the new pet. And... I'd probably bite just cause there's no other legal way to ditch my gold.

However, I'd really hate to see the value of gold devalued to this. Mainly because I'm still in the market for several TCG mounts... I've gotten a couple mounts recently at roughly the $1 to 1k conversion rate, and I've been happy with those trades, but if this pet swings the value to $1 to 2k, then I pray it just stays with the pet and doesn't affect the TCG mount market.

To me, this seems like a sort of trial run for the real money auction house coming in D3. Sure, this isn't nearly as big as that seems like it's going to be, but I think Blizz will be gauging how players react to this, how much we're willing to sell/buy, the $ to gold "exchange rate", etc. It'll be interesting to see how this shapes the D3 auction house, if at all (again, this is just my opinion).

Now he'll definitely not read my email. :(

I probably should have been more specific.
It won't be a traditional gold sink in the sense of, say, the Traveler's mammoth, but I do think it could work as one on subtle level. The AH cut might not be substaniel, but on a high price item over multiple transactions it can add up.
The people most likely to spend gold on them will be the people with some gold to burn (though perhaps not many AH Goblins as they can be notoriously stingy).
Those who can't afford the auction house prices or those who can afford it but consider it to not be worth it still have the recourse of purchasing it directly from Blizz for real money.

Combined with void storage, I think it could be a small scale way to help leech out some of the inflation, though as with the normal gold sinks it's probably going to draw more funds from the semi-casual gold maker then the serious AH PvP'er.

Just my opinion on one small aspect of it.

This is a bad sign: my outline for the piece is 400 words, and the article is supposed to clock in at around 1000 :\