I was two years too late with Pokemon. I didn’t have a Gameboy at the time, and it was two years of pleading before my parents finally acquiesced and got me one. But by then it was too late. All my friends already had MewToo, and they just didn’t care when my Squirtle turned into a Blastoid. I was despondent. You can avoid a similar fate, because WoW’s pet battles are now live on the Private Test Realm, which means they’re going to be headed to the actual servers imminently.
It’s not exactly Pokemon, to be fair to it, and while there are a few bugs left to quash, it’s ‘feature complete’, as they like to say in development. You can play solo, 2v2, or 3v3 battles, capture pets in the wild, and go find Master Pet Trainers to make your pets better stronger faster. There’s also achievements and badges and all those gubbins, as always.
It’s looking to be a pretty extensive sideline to WoW, and something that isn’t just more raiding to lose yourself in. Roaming around Azeroth finding new pets and training your current ones could easily become a whole new metagame all on its own, or at the very least something to occupy your time while you arewaiting for a Raid to get going. It’s a pretty brilliant move on Blizzard’s part, not least because some people don’t want to while away their time on PvP. Not to mention they’re going to be able to do all sorts of unique pets at Christmas and Easter and holidays. Or, as they’re doing with Mists of Pandaria, with expansion releases and collector’s editions.
With the system being finished off in the PTR, hopefully it’ll be out and implemented in the game proper before Mists comes along and makes everyone go crazy.
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