Captured Pets Not Tradeable in Mists

Tailswish alerted me to a blue post link over at MMO Champion that states that all pets captured as part of the Pet Battle system will not be able to be caged, traded or sold. This may have large implications for gold-making surrounding pets and pet battles in Mists of Pandaria.

Read on past the jump for the blue post and my thoughts.

A Cruel Mistress

Pre-expansion speculation can be a cruel, cruel mistress. (Just ask anyone who stocked up on materialswhen it was "datamined" that the epic gem cooldown was going to be removed in WotLK.)

I've been feeling quite a bit of whiplash as I've been trying to suss out how exactly the Pet Battle system will fit into World of Warcraft gold-making.

My initial impressions were that pets would be more valuable because people would want them to battle. Stockpiling pets was bandied around as a possibility for Mists of Pandaria.

Then I get into beta and I notice that getting pets is ridiculously easy. Anyone can go out and battle to collect and sell pets. This (along with the rumor that duplicate pets on your various characters may be "mailed back" to our characters) gave me the impression that certain stockpilied pets would actually end up being worth less. (On a related note, the rumor about the pets being mailed back was also discussed in a recent Google+ gold-making hangout put on by Gold Shield.)

This lead me to work on liquidating many of the pets I had been holding onto. Now I think that may have been a bad idea.

The New News

We've all been working off speculation and a lot of the ideas I've had may very well turn out to be wrong as blue poster "Mumper" posted the comment below in response to a forum poster asking about the auction house's relationship to the Pet Battle system. (Emphasis mine.)

"We just finished a pass making all pets that are caught via pet battles in the world non-tradeable. This means these pets cannot be put in cages for trading or posting on the AH. We felt that the option to buy these pets on the AH would take away from the exploration/collection gameplay of the system.

This could always change in a future patch, but this is how it will go out with MoP. You should see the change in our next build."

The Effect?

There you have it. Captured pets will no longer be able to be caged, traded or sold on the auction house in Mists of Pandaria.

How will this change effect the way the economy works around the Pet Battle system? Initially I think it should help keep the auction house clear of tons and tons of sub-par pets that would flood into the auction house.

Secondly, this may end up meaning that the only pets that can actually be caged and sold will be pets obtained through "normal" mean. Pets that will be able to be sold in Mists of Pandaria are the same exact same ones we can buy and sell in the game now.

I think if it is true that "normal" (non captured) pets are able to be leveled up and sold on the auction house it very well may make them the de-facto pets that people will work towards leveling up and selling for gold.

This may mean that any pets we have now may go up in value (perhaps a few months after the stock of pets that the "mail back" of pets to players dwindles).

Conclusion

What does this all mean and how am I using this information? Mainly I am going to stop selling off my companions and hold onto them for Mists of Pandaria. I don't have a huge stockpile but I'll hold onto the ones I do have.

Also I may look at doing a tiny bit more stockpiling of pets (specifically pets that players aren't likely to have multiples of thus avoiding the "mail back" problem) as I feel the change above makes them much more valuable.

Thoughts?

Your thoughts on what effect making captured pets non-sellable will have on the economy?

UPDATE: After thinking about it I think the main reasoning for this was to keep people from capturing and selling high level pets for battling.

This means that all pets that sell on the AH will have to have been leveled by someone. Makes sense.

---

Like this post? Get even more Power Word: Gold - Purchase our 100-Page Illustrated Gold Guide, subscribe via RSS, subscribe to the Podcast via iTunes or RSS, watch our Livestreams, follow us on Twitter, Circle us on Google+, Like us on Facebook, subscribe via Youtube and join us on reddit.