In defence of the pet battle system

WoW right now is my derp game. The one I play when I’m tired or don’t have much to or just want to waste some time away while watching Futurama reruns for the umpteenth time. In the past I’ve always had an eye toward raiding and I have to say that playing a game like WoW just to relax does change a lot your expectations and views toward upcoming content like Pandalands.

This time around I have no expectations and it feels awesome. I’m not worried about if they’re going to make raids too easy or too hard, if it’s going to be a grindfest or if the story is going to make sense or not, I’ll just enjoy whatever I’ll come across no matter how silly it could be.

And at the top of the silliness pile is this.

Come on! Who doesn’t want to be a Pokémon master? Okay… you can lower your hands… I know it’s not for everyone but if like me you’ve been subjected to Pokemon by overzealous little cousins more than ten years ago, that theme song and those critters stayed in your head.

Think about the potential for awesome RP with these! Imagine going up to Arthas in Northrend and battling for the fate of all humankind in a pet duel involving you Westfall chicken vs his mechanical Squirrel. How can you not see the beauty of that?

Why so serious?

Okay, if we’re being perfectly serious here why not just embrace this. A lot of people I’m talking to are officially against the whole pet battle idea. Hell, I was last year when I heard about it.  But, the reality I’m seeing is ton of people collecting pet for that or talking about what pet they’ll want to raise up. I know I’ll want my mini-thor in prime fighting condition. Of all the new features of Pandaria, this is the one I see people preparing themselves the most for. So it cannot be that awful right?

Does it break immersion and the long established epic tone of the Warcraft universe? If you asked me about it 7 years ago when WoW launched I’d have said yes but now? We’re talking about a game where you can ride around on a giant chicken, fight other players using radio controlled zeppelins  and play football using goblin shredders. Thankfully the lore has mostly ignored all of this can continued on unimpeded but all that stuff have been in the game for a really long time.

In fact, if you go back in time to the old Warcraft games there was a lot of silliness going on even back then with annoyed units quotes, in-game jokes and tons of other small stuff. Like I said, the official lore ignored it but it was there if you wanted to feel silly for a moment or two.

So, why would you be against pet battles? In the end it’s another venue for players wanting to relax doing funny stuff and not worry about end of the world dragons for a bit. You’re not forced to participate after all and if you feel like it will kill the game spirit… well… it was pretty much killed way back somewhere in BC.

You know what’s my best moment in Cataclysm? It happened on day one while I was questing in Vash’jr and someone started singing Under the Sea in general chat and everyone joined in. It was silly but it was also funny as hell if you let it be funny. So once again I ask, why not let yourself enjoy pet battle for what it is, a simple way to let loose and not worry for a while?

Come on! I know you want to!

Sadly, I could not find a good video of the old Pokémon opening…