I thought it was that there were to be more simply cosmetic pets, but that there would still be battle pets…just fewer of them. (I could be wrong.)
3 Likes
Your contribution to the pet battle community over more than a decade has been nothing short of legendary. After all your hard work, time, and effort I can only imagine how heartbreaking this news is. As someone who’s made extensive use of your site and guides I want to thank you for everything you’ve done. <3
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I don’t think they need to make it more challenging or difficult…just more rewards!
They have clearly recognized this in other aspects of the game, with things like Remix and the Pirate’s Bounty events being nothing but a minimally challenging reward giveaway!
11 Likes
I love the pet battles and I really hope they reconsider the future for this feature. It is such a fun and unique part of the game! Please Blizz - keep this going!
20 Likes
Easily in the top 3 things that keep me coming back to WOW…
28 Likes
Xu-Fu’s Pet Guides and pet battling are the only reasons I’ve been playing since Legion. Because of Aranesh, I’ve reconnected with the community in a way I hadn’t had since Wrath’s launch.
It’s my sincere wish that Blizzard reconsiders this change.
~DragonsAfterDark
32 Likes
This is just devastating to hear!!! I don’t want to believe this! I really don’t! I returned to WoW for the soul reason I missed Pet Battles.
I have so many fond memories of pet battling. Memories that I used Xu-Fu’s guide and Warcraft Pet guide. It just breaks my heart that this is happening to the PB community. I can only fear the true outcome to what will really happen to the wow base.
Thank You Xu-Fu for all you have done for the Community. We can only hope and pray Blizzard will reconsider this matter.
21 Likes
Honestly, I made the mistake of pre-purchasing the epic edition of Midnight before learning of the changes to pet battles. If I had it to do over again, this alone would have been enough to prevent me purchasing any edition of Midnight, let alone epic, which after tax was ~$100.
Sure, I’m interested in the story, in other forthcoming new content, in leveling and in new abilities, new raids to come, etc.
But when I’ve exhausted leveling my characters, played out the story, had my fill of dungeons and raiding, pet battles are one of a handful of things that keep me subscribing. I recognize my $16/mo is just a drop in the water, and that as an individual I don’t matter much. I’d like to think, though, that I’m not the only player who gets a lot of entertainment and continued playability out of pet battles.
19 Likes
In all honesty, the only thing I care about in this game are the pet battles. Which is unfortunate because I already purchased Midnight, so it feels like a waste of money at this point. Had I known they would be phased out all together, I wouldn’t have bothered. And just coming back to the game after a long hiatus, this is just a nail in the coffin for me. The first thing I did when I returned was pick up where I left off with pet collecting/pet achievements/pet battling. Now all that effort feels like years of wasted time.
I don’t know if they are going to keep current pets and abilities and battles in the game, which I hope they do because I still have a lot to do and it will just be the stuff Midnight and forward being changed. Otherwise I feel like I want some serious compensation for effort that meant nothing after many years. I am pretty outraged about the whole situation but I’m keeping it civil.
I don’t know if this has to do with the issues with Nintendo and their copyrights, or if Blizzard is just choosing to be lazy and not create more content for pet battles and this is their excuse not to. I know the population of people who do pet stuff is minimal compared to everything else people do but they’ve already taken all the fun away from everything else in the game and they have to take the last thing that kept me interested.
Transmogs are great and all but you can only ware one set at a time. Mounts are fine too, but you can only ride one at a time. At least with pets, you need a team and depending on what you’re fighting you need variances of that team. It feels like it means more than the other things. I guess furniture collecting is going to take its place, which again, I don’t think I could care much about. With the housing and the overhaul of Silvermoon, the faction merging, it feels like that part is too little too late, it should have been done years ago. The people who’ve been playing since Classic just are tired of it, and the new people don’t know any better because they’ve new to it.
What a disappointment for a game I grew up with enjoyed so much. This is really just sad.
28 Likes
I only recently got into pet battling, but I will be very sad to see it go. I strongly suggest that instead of 86’ing it, it be given the love and attention it so much deserves to make it an even more engaging and fun activity. Removing such a deeply loved activity from the game (albeit niche) is not the answer.
19 Likes
I believe it has been confirmed and the reason cited was “low engagement”. Also, I believe there will not be any new pet trainers in the new zones and all new pets will be non-combat pets, like the balloons are now for instance, where you cannot level them and cannot battle with them as they have no abilities. I’m not 100% sure which parts of this have been fully confirmed, but these changes have definitely been at least partially discussed by the devs, so it’s not all just speculation unfortunately 
5 Likes
Yeah, I was all set to purchase the Epic edition ($115 for me here in Canada), and now I’m completely rethinking it if they are going to stop making any new content for one of my favorite aspects of the game. It’s like archaeology all over again, which devastated me then, and I just can’t believe it’s now going to happen with battle pets of all things.
I think the part that annoys me the most is that it’s not even difficult to just make the new pets in to combat pets. Give them random moves and a breed and that’s it (a simple script could be written to do this in less than a day by anyone familiar with the codebase)! Sure, making new trainers or pet battle dungeons is difficult, so I could see them not wanting to do that, but I can’t fathom why they would make all new pets going forward not able to b e used in pet battles… that’s the part that truly baffles me. The system already exists, it’s almost no work to just use what they already made
14 Likes
I agree, I won’t be buying Midnight on pre-purchase. I also won’t be spending any more money in the shop - I have bought all the pet content already.
I have been subscribed for years because WoW offers me a variety of ways to play. My kids also play when they come home, they each pay a month’s subscription so we can play together.
I am disabled and when I am at my best I play the latest content (especially the latest wild pet battles) but when I am in pain, it is pet battles and Aranesh’s Xu-Fu that keep me interested.
Please keep the pet battle sub-system going, Blizzard.
22 Likes
Out of amusement & possibly spite… I noticed that Amalia active in the Dalaran Pet Tournament area. No world quest, but the mouse over showed I could talk to here… and start a battle 
. So I did . Xp was typical for being lvl 20ish, but still repeatable. Much much slower that timerunning quests, but the point is that she was active and I coudl pet battle. Went out and captured a royal moth, went back to Amalia & lvled it to 25. Simply because . For all the changes they are making, I just found it amusing that this was still in the code. Pretty sure the same will happen with the other trainers through out legion. That they are cutting off the battle pet community is a horrible decision. Yes yes, it will still be in the older expansions, but that is part of the problem… This is all the same game!! I wish they would treat it as such instead of ditching 90% of the game simply because it’s not the newest sparkly! Sure, there are plenty of annoying battles to get through, and some that are daunting if you don’t have a good team, and then there’s the time invested in getting the variety of pets so you can handle the variety of battles. Ramble ramble… it’s not for everyone & thats fine. Clearly there are some trolls that probly got a beat down with too many battles and now they would rather hate on the system then leave people alone. But it’s the people that love the system that are getting hurt by this. I can’t stand pvp, but it has plenty of others that love it. For all the attention that gets focused on that, I wish a 1/10th of that would be spent on the pet battles system. I hadn’t planned on collecting… it just happened. And for that time investment that we’ve all put into it, I truly wish the higher ups would just put in a opening for a new pet battle developer. With all the postings and comments, It’s a guarantee they would find someone passionate about the position.
14 Likes
I just want to add my two cents here. I think removing the pet battle mechanics and just collecting them is very sad. I’ve been playing since beta, and although I spend more time in dungeons and doing things that my guildies want to do, I’d rather spend an afternoon pet battling for sure. I don’t care much for the PvP type pet battles, but finding new pets, and battling them to win them is such a fun activity to do when I have a little extra time and the husband and guildies aren’t around. I agree with the majority of these posts. Please, don’t scale back pets, add new pet dungeons, as those were awesome!
25 Likes
A heartfelt Thank you to you for everything you have done for Pet Battles and will do in the future. I have used your site many, many times and have received much joy from doing so.
I agree that implementing the Pet Battle system the way have have been doing it the last few expansions - with minimal effort - is a much better option than slowly gutting it. This idea that the Pet Battling system is using a significant amount of resources that could be directed at some other system du jour is just absurd.
Regardless, thank you again for your contribution to the Pet Battling community.
18 Likes
Just here to add my support for pet battling. It’s what has kept me re-subscribing since 2012!
21 Likes
Pet battles are one of my favorite parts of the game. I check the Xu-Fu site every day, and regularly use the strategies there. I’m deeply appreciative of the Xu-Fu site and all that has gone into it. I will be heartbroken if they do scale back pet battling in Midnight. Pet battling and collecting provides a low-stress activity when I’m not feeling up for regular combat, and I’ve also spent money in the shop to collect pets. I love the community that is part of pet battling. Please keep it!
17 Likes
Nobody has to agree with me about this—I’ve always said that disagreeing with me doesn’t make you a bad person; it only makes you wrong!—I just feel like, as a community, we’d be easy to placate.
Add another pet to the Celestial Tournament for us to purchase with Celestial Coins. And you’d see everyone one of us going back there.
You could do the same thing with the pet dungeons. Add another pet to purchase, and trust me, we’ll all be back doing the dungeons.
Same moveset on a different skin, and you’ve created a new pet that we’ll all rush out to get.
I realize we’re a niche group, but I just don’t feel like we’re asking for much.
24 Likes
Its a niche group because Blizz doesnt make it rewarding enough for the general player base to care about it. I remember back in MoP most of my friends wanted to do the Celestial Tournament. And none of them were huge pet battlers. It was challenging yet fun content with decent rewards.
Player engagement in pet battles is directly related to the attention paid by Blizz.
20 Likes