The highly anticipated and controversial Guardian Cub pet is now available in the Blizzard Pet Store. The reason that there's so much hoopla over this new pet is not just because it's an irresistible, cute and cuddly little companion to the Winged Guardian mount… no, no sirree… The thing that's so unique and exciting about this pet is the fact that it's tradable. The Guardian Cub is the first Bind on Equip WoW pet available through the Blizzard Pet Store.
What this means is that you can purchase these pets at the Blizzard Pet Store for a mere $10 each, then gift them to a friend in-game, trade them to another player for a different pet, etc., or… you can post them on the Auction House and sell them for in-game gold!
Obviously, there will be many players wanting to buy this pet simply to add to their collection, but by making it tradable, it's now going to provide a means by which all players will be able to essentially purchase in-game currency.
The Guardian Cub pet has a 24 hour trade cooldown on it, which means that it is not available for trading until 24 hours have passed since it's been retrieved from the mailbox. Also of note is that this pet is not Bind on Account, like the other Blizzard Pet Store Pets. The Guardian Cub is character-specific, so you'll only be able to use it with the character that's added it to their pet collection.
Of course, this will likely change in either Patch 5.0 or when the Mists of Pandaria hits, since Blizzard has stated their intention of making all pets Bind on Account.
Since the Guardian Cub has just been made available today, it's too early to get an idea of its market price. None of them will be available for purchase off of the Auction Houe until tomorrow. I imagine prices will vary greatly depending upon the server population and economy, but I'm going to predict that they'll be fetching somewhere around 8K-15K in-game gold.
Well what do you guys think of this pet?
I like it, myself. I may have to end up getting one and possibly an extra – for one lucky site visitor. You guys like the idea of a Guardian Cub contest? 😀
As far as the tradable aspect goes… I don't really care. I think it's a smart move on Blizzard's part, for sure. They are going to make a ton of money from the sale of these pets, plus it's going to put the screws to the gold sellers. I mean, it won't put them out of business, of course, but by allowing players the ability to trade a real-money item for in-game gold, it's going to definitely lessen the appeal of those shady gold-selling sites. Also, it's not like it offers players any sort of advantages… it's strictly a vanity item.
This will also be a nice option for players who are filthy stinkin' rich in-game, as they'll likely be able to save their real-money for other things, and just pick up this new Blizzard Pet Store pet in their local AH. 🙂
I’m withholding judgement. I love the theory behind the explanation, and I didn’t mind the one-character thing even before they announced all pets are going account wide. I’m just not sure, though, that this pet will function as they think it will. I’m imagining a glut of them on the AH tomorrow with few or no buyers.
I agree on there being a surplus of them on the AH tomorrow – all with overly inflated prices. But, I think that within a week or two things will normalize and we’ll start to see pricing comparable to what $10 of gold is worth.
Personally, I hope that it works out, because I’d love to see a Blizzard sanctioned gold-buying-practice win out over the gold-selling scumbags.
I just bought my guardian cub the other day and I think $10 is still pretty reasonable for a pet. I really enjoy collecting the pets and I’m the perfect sucker for these kinds of things.
I feel a little sorry, though, for the people who buy a couple of these hoping to make 10,000 gold on the AH… the market on these will drop like a murloc. You’ll see scores of people looking to cash in only to be continually undercut until the pets are virtually worthless. If Blizz were selling them for only a limited time, then yes, the rarity would drive up prices… or if Blizzard had priced them higher, like $25 or $30, where the threshold for what players are comfortable paying real money makes some people opt for the AH prices instead. But really, who would spend thousands of gold on something you can just get instantly for $10?
Though if these drop to about 5 gold each, I’ll feel pretty dumb having spent that $10… lol.
Ok, so I was somewhat wrong… I thought prices would bottom right out because everyone would buy 2 cubs, one to keep and one to pawn off on the AH… and therefore there would be an overstock of cubs on the market and not enough buyers… On my server though, I’ve only seen a few cubs hit the AH and only now has the cost dipped just below 10k gold. So some people must think that 10k gold is still cheaper (even in terms of hours spent earning the gold) than paying $10 USD for an in-game pet. It doesn’t make sense to me, but the facts are the facts…
Checking the Undermine Journal, my server appears to still be on the high end of the spectrum in terms of prices. But even the bottom of the market is still about about 3300 gold.
It makes me want to drop another $10 for a cub and immediately turn it over on the AH, but I always seem to be on the losing end of my AH schemes…
On my server they’re going for around 7K gold right now. I hadn’t planned on messing with buying and selling any, but I’m considering. I’m in this mode of slowly preparing for Mists of Pandaria – making 7K extra gold sound pretty appealing at the moment.