Weekend (27 Jan) - Can "Pet Battles" Save the Wild Family?

Weekend (27 Jan) - Can "Pet Battles" Save the Wild Family?

Pet Battles are a new invention by Blizzard that I haven't paid much attention to until recently. Players have had companion pets for as long as the game has existed. Many players collect them, and the most serious collectors will go to any length to get hold of the rarest of them. Pets come in all types and sizes. Only one pet can be active at a time, but they can be switched around as often as you'd like. They are completely passive in that they can't attack or be attacked by enemy mobs or players. They are just for show. Until now. Sort of.

Blizzard got this idea to have companion pets fight each other. Call it Warcraft's version of pit bull or cock fighting. Every companion pet in the game was given ratings and skill sets, and the opportunity to increase in level and get stronger by defeating other pets in combat.

My first thought was that players would pit their pets against each other. However, that is not really the focus of pet battles. Players "can" pit their pets against each other, even against opposing factions (ie, alliance vs horde). However, that is for simple personal bragging rights, only. Those battles are conducted like duels, where no experience is gained and no skills are improved.

The real pet battles are waged between player pets and Tamers or wild pets. Wild pets of every type now roam all over Azeroth. Any player can initiate a pet battle with them and the pet gains experience by killing them or capturing them. Capturing a wild pet adds the pet to the player's pet journal, and those pets can then be used to kill or capture other wild pets. "Tamers" are npc characters who have quests that give experience and other pet battle goodies. As each Tamer is defeated, another, stronger one becomes available. Tamers are scattered all over the world, so it takes time to locate and defeat them all.

Pet battles are rarely just one on one battles, either. Battle is defined by rounds, and as pets gain in level, the number of rounds of battle also increase. While every pet in the pet journal is a potential combatant, each player may only have up to three pets available for a specific battle. Only one of those pets is actually fighting at any given time, but players can swap out pets among the three available during the fight.

Combat is turn based. Pet abilities are chosen by each combatant, the actions completed, and turns are taken until there is a winner.

There is a lot more to it than that, particularly where strategy is involved, but that takes care of the basics.

Pet battles are easy to play and, I must admit, kind of fun. Considering there are something like 500 plus companion pets available, the possibilities for combinations of three pets are virtually limitless. I can tell already that it is also a humongous time sink, since each pet has to be individually leveled, just as a player character has to be leveled, and at nearly the same lengthy pace, from what I've seen so far.

One great feature, though, is that the pet leveling process is account based. Each pet needs to be leveled only once, and every character has access to that same pet. There is a rare exception that I came across by accident, and it took Sin and Wild some time figure it out. A very few pets are specific to a faction. In my case, the pet that caused a problem was the Moonkin Hatchling. There is a unique hatchling for the horde, and a similar but also unique hatchling for the alliance. A horde player cannot use an alliance hatchling in pet battles, and visa versa. Like I said, though, those cases are rare.

I have only been playing pet battles for a few days. Here is my list of the best of the pet battles team for the Wild Family:

Level 10: Strand Crawler - this is a crab with great shell defenses and some healing abilities; he's very good at staying alive.

Level 9: 'Lil Deathwing - This little dragon is all about doing damage. I really like his nuclear arsenal, but he is a little quick to die if I'm not careful.

Level 8: Spirit of Competition - Another dragon with a combination of good damage and survivability.

Level 8: Core Hound Pup - I like the two headed doggy, and he has a good bite, but he's more of a backup than a top 3 type.

Level 7: Strand Crab - This is a wild pet that I captured when I was testing this out. Very similar to the Strand Crawler. The nice thing about this is that I did not have to level this crab from 1 to 7. It was level 7 when I captured it, so it's already almost ready to fit into the team.

I'm not sure how long the fascination with pet battles will last, but for now it's been an amusing way to pass the time in between Happy's Auction House and
Fist's vegetable farming.