WCP forum types discussion

[Tekulve2012]

Hiya folks

I have had some chats with players in game about this topic and perhaps others may wish to have their say on this discussion question:

Q ~ Does the current WCPets Pet trading forum of this site work for the majority of today's pet traders/collectors ?

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Many long term members of the site will have noticed a trend in the last 6 months or more whereby the WCP trade threads are dominated by people who only seek gametime or battlenet balance cards. I feel like this is the best Battlepets website on the internet and the information sharing and helpful community is second to none. I love all the guides, pet search tools and the Wall... I'm a big fan of how the content of this site has evolved (big kudos and thanks to the site's admin!)

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Do you believe the Pet trading section needs to revamp? Could there be a separate section in pet trading for 'cash' transaction trades such as Blizz.store/CE's/Gametime and Battlenet balance deals?
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I put this question out there, in part, to take into consideration newer players with smaller collections who may be misled into thinking noone wants to make trades involving these 'smaller value' pets.

[Graven]

Isn't it just more likely that most collectors have all the pets they need from MoP now, and are waiting for the expansion to give us more goodies to collect?

[Gulnarr]

I would like a sub forum for people who are mostly interested in real money items, like battlenet balance, collector's editions, blizzard store stuff, etc. The number of people with things like collector's editions or blizzard store items to trade for in-game pets has to be much smaller than the people who just want to trade pets, yet it seems like most of the people making threads right now are only interested in the real money things.

I feel like more people would be posting normal pet trades in the pet trading forum if all of the battlenet card etc. trades were somewhere else. Plus I, and many others I'm sure, are never going to be interested in trading things like collector's editions for pets, so it would be nice for those to be in a separate place that we could just avoid.

[Peanutty]

Isn't it just more likely that most collectors have all the pets they need from MoP now, and are waiting for the expansion to give us more goodies to collect?

^ This, very much so. Consider that there's been no new content since TI/SoO came out, which was almost year ago? That's a lot of time for people to be sitting on their collections, with nothing new to work on. I love trading but there's not much to trade for right now.

Also the flood of questionable, formerly high end TCG pets has really hammered the enthusiasm of a lot of traders. I used to scour the AH for those in hopes of making a nice trade, and now I don't want to touch them with a 10 foot pole.

[Sibi]

I think it is simply a case of most people have all the in game pets right now and things will change come WOD. I still get PMs from new people trading pets for pets.
I also don't see how pets for cash items is that much more different than the way things were when I first came here and the forum was full of people that have infinite amounts of gold and therefore much larger inventory of pets than the average player making it easier for you to snag all the worthwhile trades just to flip the pets on the AH for an insane amount of gold.
I can't list how many trades got squashed because one of the flippers came in and offered up slightly better trades because of their vast income on many different servers.
Some of us don't want to spend hours farming gold or playing the AH and most of the flippers usually sold the pets they got from these trades on the AH for crazy amounts of gold, which is their prerogative but it is still just as bothersome as your complaint.
I've also had many smaller, just getting started collectors say similar things. "Look, I don't want to spend all day farming gold so I can buy this pet off the ah or buy the pets that some people want for trade can I just gift you something from the Blizzard store".
Pets for cash items isn't that much different than those that list "I want to trade but I only want to trade for this stuff" and yes, there are people so hardcore that they ONLY trade for what's on their list.
The people getting upset about Pets for cash items are mainly the people that were flipping their trades for AH/gold purposes not trading pets to make other trades and expand their collections. Most of the people (most not all) that are looking for Bnet cards or gametime still also do pet for pet trades, you simply only need to ask (or read beyond the first part of the thread).

[Tekulve2012]

I find it hard to believe that most people have all the pets they want up to the xpac... There are 73k members on this site and a large number have less than 300 pets. This means WCP trading forum is probably disproportionately represented by the top tier of collectors/sellers.

I have a soft spot for new collectors and support them in game every day with free pets and advice. Many are on their 1st 100 pets and I always direct them to this site. A new trader might get the impression that nobody out there deals those pandas/DMFaire pets/argent tourney pets and others that dominated the trade forum when I came to this site at the end of 2012. Just my 2cents worth ...maybe I'm way off and the forum is perfect as it is.

[Jerebear]

Just food for thought (not for/against the idea), remember there are a lot of users that use the trading forum but don't post. I peruse it a few times a week to see if anyone is selling/trading a pet I need or if I have some pets that they do. That doesn't mean I am against your idea at all, but I know it is easy to sometimes only think the people who post are the ones using the forum.

Theoretically, I like the idea of splitting the non-gold/cageable pet trades into a sepearate forum. From a practical standpoint, I would be interested to see if doing so would improve postings for trades involving gold and cageable pets. It's an interesting idea.

[Sibi]

73k people aren't coming in to the trading forums though. (of those 73k how many are actually active, how many avidly collect, how many simply came here registered once just to see what it is) I've sent private messages to people that make comments on the wall having a hard time finding specific pets that they really, really want directing them to the trading section and a lot of times they respond with something like "omg I had no idea! thanks!". In fact one of them in the last day or so acquired 2 pets he never thought he'd get ever.
By "most of us" I obviously meant "most of us...the people that post day in and day out everyday for the last x amount of months". I go to the armory page of pretty much every person that makes a post, a lot of those people have quite a large number of pets already collected. Are some people put off because a lot of us are looking for higher end pets/bnet/gametime? Perhaps. Does it deter many of the new posters from asking us if we'd consider a trade with them for something other than our want lists? No, I don't feel like it does. "I see that you want A and B but I have X, Y, Z I'm interested in your B could we maybe work something out?" I get a lot of these types of private messages. The fact we're looking for these items also doesn't stop us from contacting the newer posters with offers either. I do this quite a lot. I also hear fairly often "oh, I didn't know you could trade for that kind of stuff that's awesome I've been wanting to get *this store item* but don't want to spend the money on it".
It's also still a nice option for people that don't mind paying actual money over grinding gold or farming pets.
Several, maybe not many, but a few of us contact new collectors that post and simply give them pets. Many nights I simply sit around in Darnassus watching players and often mail several pets to new players.
I think putting posts for cash items in a completely different spot will just deter people that would otherwise normally say "well, I don't have that but maybe she'll trade with me anyway" instead they'll say "well, that's the thread for people looking for things I don't have might as well not bother". Especially if the not so friendly private message I received last night after posting in this thread was any indication. It isn't like asking for the items we still need suddenly makes us bad people snubbing the new players just because we need more expensive/cash only things.

It doesn't hurt to ask and the only person stopping you from asking is you.

[Yazhi]

I don't see it as a bad idea to separate them for more of an efficient 'I'm only looking for the rare CE's/IRL money pets so I can just search in this subforum instead' PoV.

However I really think that most people have got the majority of pets they want so far in this expansion, as you can see from my post count I'm a huuuuuge fan of pet trading on this site but recently I havn't been posting as much as I trade for a collection and not to make gold out of it (nothing wrong with those that do ofc, they helped me get some of my rares ;D'.

You also need to take into account a little bit the about of 'duped' pets that are sitting here there and everywhere on the auction houses across the world. That's hit the trading market pretty damn hard as most of these can be bought for 12-15k each now so real collectors/traders alike have lost out on a huge market.

Theres always a little bit of a drought this time round whilst waiting for new pets and I'm certain that with the launch everyone will be back on here again.

Maybe it would be nice if we can think of a community event to liven it up a bit here, I was thinking myself of putting one up that I did on my realm forum a while ago. I'm not rich but I could donate a cheaper TCG or something as a reward, maybe even a store pet or something

I'll chuck up a post later on and see if theres any interest in it, all ideas would be welcome!

[Peanutty]

I find it hard to believe that most people have all the pets they want up to the xpac... There are 73k members on this site and a large number have less than 300 pets. This means WCP trading forum is probably disproportionately represented by the top tier of collectors/sellers.

This would be true because out of 73k, there's maybe a few hundred that actively post and use the trading forums (undoubtedly less right now, due to people unsubbed from lack of content). So yes the trading forum will always skew more towards "hardcore" collectors.

As far as the original question, I would prefer the forum not be split because many traders do consider a wide variety of trades and even those that have most pets will still sometimes do "lower end" trades (like for me, I'm always looking for cageable pets to gift my spouse). And I think once WoD hits you'll see a renewed interest in trading of pets that are in-game items: luck drops, boss drops, new holiday rewards, etc.

[Triara]

I also think it's just that most people who'd consider posting at all have most of the pets that they were after.

The truth is, 99% of the pets are just way too easy to get, when you put your eye on pets, you progress very fast. I have only started babbling in pet battles and pet collecting maybe 6 months ago and I was more or less done in two months, even though I play only about 15 hours per week and absolutely not all of that was about pet battles. After that short initial period of getting from nowhere to maybe 80% of all pets that I aimed for (excluded collectioner's edition stuff, etc), it was mostly about waiting for pets that I don't yet have to appear on the AH or get lower in price. That's all.

I am still missing some pets, but half of that are pets that have to be farmed manually for various achievements (not a lot), and the remaining are all TCG/store. Thus, the only pets that are of interest to me in the trading section are TCG/store. And it's likely the same for quite a number of others.

It might become more lively in WoD. Then again, I am not sure for how long - chances are, we will get to the state where the only pets of interest are TCG/store once again in maybe two months or so.

PS: Sum total: against the divide. Keep it all in the same trading forum, it probably will never get a lot of traffic, so dividing is just a waste of time.

[Shalista]

Question: If there are only 574 possible pets, how come some of the high leaders have more than that?
Nevermind I figured it out.