World of Warcraft Guardian Cub ready to take a bite out of gold farmers, available now

The Guardian Cub pet has arrived in the World of Warcraft pet store , boosting WoW's cuteness levels by a solid 1.5%. The winged, purple, flaming lion cub will be able to follow you into the skies of Azeroth and is possibly the cuddliest thing ever conceived, but may also fill another important role. The Guardian Cub is World of Warcraft's first tradeable pet.

Unless fully equipped, the little $10 lion can be passed on to friends and fellow guild members as a gift, or traded for in-game gold in the auction house. In the official Guardian Cub FAQ Blizzard say that they made the Guardian Cub tradeable to give players a way to get a new pet within the game without having to visit the pet store. It also happens to give players a legitimate way to sell their pet for gold within Azeroth, effectively bypassing external gold farmer operations.

"We're ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services," say Blizzard in the FAQ, adding "we also hope this change will help reduce the number of incidents of scamming via trading for invalid pet codes."

"It's important to note that we take a firm stance against buying gold from outside sources because in most cases, the gold these companies offer has been stolen from compromised accounts," continues the statement. "While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that's preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling “black market” and account theft."

All other World of Warcraft pets will remain untradeable for now. It'll be interesting to see if that changes if the Guardian Cub proves to be successful. While we ponder that, let's look at this image of a Guardian Cub meeting a fully grown flying lion. D'awww.

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.