Guardian Cub taking a bite out of third-party gold sales
by Fox Van Allen 
Nov 3rd 2011 at 2:00PM
The price of the Guardian Cub varies wildly by server -- a function of supply and demand. An impromptu Twitter survey suggests that the pet is currently selling for between 6,000 gold and 40,000 gold in game, depending on server size, competition, and a number of other factors. Most realms are currently seeing prices just north of 10,000 gold.
Certainly, the final page of the Guardian Cub saga has yet to be written, and prices will be extraordinarily volatile in the next few days, weeks, and months. Still, even at a conservative exchange rate of $10 for a 10,000-gold pet, players can get a far better (and safer!) deal buying gold through Blizzard via the Guardian Cub than dealing with a gold seller. The difference is stark -- the same amount of gold may cost you $20 or $30 through a third-party site. And even then, you have no guarantee of getting your gold, no guarantee that your account won't be compromised, and no guarantee that your purchase isn't supporting forced labor and account theft.
Will the Guardian Cub kill off third-party gold sales? Probably not, at least on its own. Interest in this new pet simply cannot be sustained long term. But if the last 24 hours of trading on the in-game Auction House are any indication, Blizzard just fired a shot into a multi-billion-dollar gray market.
Maximize your profits with more advice from Gold Capped. Do you have questions about selling, reselling, and building your financial empire on the auction house? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: News items, Economy
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Claire Nov 3rd 2011 2:03PM
That's what they're listed for on the AH -- are they actually selling?
Foxfyr Nov 3rd 2011 2:07PM
I bought one and sold it for 15k.
Everclear Nov 3rd 2011 2:35PM
Maybe, until these pets reach the saturation point for the target demographic. And then they become cheaper and more obsolete, down to 3k... then 1k... then around 500 gold a few months from now.
At which point $10 for 500 gold isn't even close to the 3rd party rate. All those sites have to do is wait a little bit and it swings back in their favor heavily.
(cutaia) Nov 3rd 2011 2:46PM
"Maybe, until these pets reach the saturation point for the target demographic. And then they become cheaper and more obsolete, down to 3k... then 1k... then around 500 gold a few months from now. "
Where do people get the idea these are going to reach 500 gold just because the biggest demand will wear off? As the demand goes away, so will the supply, naturally. In order for your theory to come to pass, people would have to see prices that low, yet still decide to buy the pet to sell it. The sheer terribleness of that deal is going to stop people from doing that.
The whelplings, for example, are still pulling in around 10k gold. I'd imagine these guardian cubs are going to continue to pull in the same amount into the distant future, because as demand dissipates, you're going to see people purchasing cubs to sell them just about as often as lucky farmers find whelps on corpses.
You're correct that there's going to be less of a market as it saturates, so this particular pet is going to cease to hurt the gold sellers -- but I think that's going to be due to the unreliability of quickly selling one or more at 10k...not because of the complete inability to sell one at that price.
Claire Nov 3rd 2011 2:57PM
I assume that when this pet's AH price drops to the point that people no longer consider $10 worth it for the gold they get, Blizzard will introduce a new BOU vanity item.
Grovinofdarkhour Nov 3rd 2011 3:03PM
I don't buy any "extras" from Blizzard, but that's a personal decision. Were I likely to participate in this grand experiment, I could see paying $10 for something that'll get me 20k, maybe even 10k. 5k? That's a coin toss. But 500g? No way in hell.
It does makes sense for Blizzard to test this with something most folks only want 1 of. There'll be a pretty clear endpoint where they believe most (95%? 98%?) people who will want one have acquired one, and they can evaluate their data and apply it to forward decisions. If they like what they see, it'll make sense to apply the same model to some thing or things that you'll buy over and over again, like higher-octane-than-you're-used-to raid consumables.
Or, I dunno, perhaps... fightin' pets.
Grovinofdarkhour Nov 3rd 2011 3:15PM
Yeah, and THEN I see that the next post down and at least a half dozen others are already saying the same thing. Try reading all the posts first, big guy...
Thundrcrackr Nov 3rd 2011 3:15PM
"The whelplings, for example, are still pulling in around 10k gold. I'd imagine these guardian cubs are going to continue to pull in the same amount into the distant future, because as demand dissipates, you're going to see people purchasing cubs to sell them just about as often as lucky farmers find whelps on corpses."
People are willing to pay that for the whelplings because that is the only way to get them. If people had the option of buying them from the Blizzard store, that would drive the prices in game way down. There are plenty of people who would rather spend $10 for a pet than 10kg or weeks of farming.
I'm still expecting the cub prices to go way down. Sure, supply will eventually dry up with them, but unlike any other vanity item in game, people will always have the option of buying it in the store instead, preventing it from maintaining a high price in game over a long period of time.
jfofla Nov 3rd 2011 3:52PM
I bought 3, and sold all 3 on different Realms for an average price just North of 10k.
I expect it to normalize at 10k, so for the rest of the week I am going to buy every panic sale I see, wait for market to stabilize, and then sell them at 10k for a massive profit.
Amaxe Nov 3rd 2011 4:34PM
Probably will go down in price because the potential supply is limitless... anyone who wants one can buy one for $10, but the demand is limited (number of buyers who want one but not @ $10.00
Basil Berntsen Nov 3rd 2011 6:11PM
(cutaia) has it right. People will stop buying these to sell for gold when they become a worse deal than other things. Hopefully, though, Blizzard will have a new one in the pet store by then.
Everclear Nov 3rd 2011 7:48PM
Yup. On one end you have people scrambling to buy the pets to make gold in the game, and on the other end you have the buyers that are fully aware of said strategy. So you have this sequence about to happen:
1.) A flood of new Cubs are hitting the AH. Let's be optimistic here and say they're selling at a steady 11k gold right now (they're at 4.5-5.5k on my server). Right now you can get 9k gold for $10 via 3rd party sites (this isn't me recommending anything, by the way). So right now, you're "making" 1,000 gold per Cub.
2.) The large slice of people that are keenly aware of the system are just waiting for Cubs to drop in price before they buy one, much like the Tankard O' Terror from the Brewfest holiday: Just wait until there's three pages of them in the AH and then buy the cheapest one. A week of undercutting will make these Cubs relatively cheap in comparison to the original, first-day Cubs.
3.) Now you have the majority of potential buyers buying them at the lowest price, which is far lower than the 3rd party rate of 9,000 gold (like I said, even right now there are Cubs under 5k on my server alone). It will take a couple weeks for all the cheap Cubs to be sold and for the sellers to stop undercutting the market to get the rates back up to the 1:1 ratio of 9k per Cub. But once they do, 80-85% of the demographic that wanted a Cub already has one. And 60-75% of the sellers that wanted to make gold off a Cub already sold theirs (more people want gold than want a Cub, after all).
4.) Result? More people are selling than people are buying. And if the Cubs ever get to 9k or more, it's smarter (in terms of money, not security or morals) to just go to a 3rd party site and purchase the gold directly again.
This Cub won't solve the 3rd party issue. It's sad, but the 3rd party market controls the WoW market, not the other way around. Because making gold in WoW is free (outside of the cost of time, which isn't quantitative), and it can be done infinitely. Releasing a new pet every couple months is not going to be the cure-all for 3rd party gold-selling. People only need one pet, and after that it's obsolete. Unlike gold, which stacks infinitely and can be used for virtually every in WoW (including buy cheap pets on the AH), pets don't stack. So they have a ceiling of value, unlike gold, which skyrockets in value every patch and expansion.
The best way for WoW to stop the bleeding and REALLY take a bite out of the 3rd party gold sellers is actually Diablo 3's AH model. It's brilliant, and renders the majority of 3rd party gold and item sellers useless. But that would flip WoW upside down at this point and kill the subscriber base. It's too late to do something like that now. Like one of the WoWInsider writers wrote in a column a month or two ago about gold inflation in the game, it's a tough, tough problem and I really don't see a concrete solution on the horizon. Which must drive Blizzard higher-ups mad.
But, sadly, the Cub isn't it.
Jyotai Nov 3rd 2011 9:10PM
Word.
That there's more than 3 of them listed is a bad thing - shows they're not really selling.
Foxfyr Nov 3rd 2011 2:07PM
What they should really do is release a dozen well designed pets like this at once. Something that most people can't afford to just buy from the online store all at the same time.
ionian Nov 3rd 2011 2:35PM
That would dilute the purpose of the pet. It's better to release one every couple months in order to maintain the approximate value of 10k, that way there's always an option to buy gold.
Lorax Nov 5th 2011 3:20AM
What they should really do is sell game time cards that you can sell on the auction house the way eve online sells PLEX.
Bumblebee Nov 3rd 2011 2:07PM
I'm hoping they expand on this. Everyone that matters gets something good from it. Blizz gets profit, players get pet/mount/other vanity items and Gold Sellers get jack-squat. It's a rare Win-Win situation.
Task Nov 3rd 2011 2:07PM
Dear Gold selling persons,
Your move.
Sincerely,
Blizzard
Bellajtok Nov 3rd 2011 2:28PM
Dear Blizzard,
Fuck.
Donhorn Nov 3rd 2011 2:50PM
CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES!