There has been rumours that Ion Hazzikostas said that in Midnight there will not be traditional pet battles, but capturing pets will still be around. The reasoning behind this was that players are not engaging with the pet battles.
Everyone agrees there’s a problem, the pet battles can get stale and for those looking to do the world quests they may just lean on automating battles via scripts. Pet battling is a minority community in WoW, but a very active and passionate part of WoW’s community. Last year alone, the pet community saw large tournaments, exciting collections nearly 2,000 pets, an influx of players looking for something to do, and a whole host of player feedback.
As someone a part of this community, removing battling feels like a step in the wrong direction. Instead of trimming the system, could we make it better? The pet battling system hasn’t been updated since its conception in 2012. Back then, people thought Halo 4 was cool and everyone was talking about the new The Avengers movie. Point is, of course the data is going to report that few players engage with the pet battling system if it’s been given no modernization.
One example is the double battle, a feature released in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire in 2002 - ten years before pet battling hit WoW in 2012. Now today in 2025, this feature could be used to make pet battling quicker and more interesting.
I understand this is a commitment of more resources, some alternatives while the pet system is modernized could be:
- Pet battles could be made much easier. Making them easier would mean players could complete them quickly and with little requirements. In this scenario scripts wouldn’t feel ‘required’ to ‘efficiently’ do them. In Midnight especially, the zones we are in are old leveling zones, so having easy pet battles makes sense for Eastern Kingdoms!
- Pet battles could be removed from the rotation of world quests, but the trainers (and associated achievements) could be kept. This way, pet battles are still an optional part of the player experience. Pet battles have always told a little bit about the lore and ecology of an area, so I think this alone could be neat to still have as a side-‘minigame’.
- Add a single feature. The community has generated a ton of cool ideas for the future of pet battling, maybe we could test how a single cool feature does!
The pet community has been generating their own content and sharing their collections for over ten years. With a storied past, seeing it trimmed down instead of propped up feels bad. I think what many players feel is off about the game is the world feeling like it’s all dependant upon mechanics like dungeons, raids, and gear. Yet, if the world is the main character, then side activites matter a lot! Midnight is taking great strides in making the MMO feel more… RPG - With efforts in housing, map design, main city hubs, and everything in between we should be celebrating and enhancing pet battlings past not moving away from it!
How do we make pet battling better?
Here are some posts where I’ve collected a bunch of feedback from the pet community to make suggestions:
Annoying Financial Side-Arugments:
- Maybe the sale of pets, something that has been a go-to for yoinking cash from WoW whales, will take a hit given the pets themselves lose utility in the game.
- With the removal of family battler, overworld battles, and the overall “moving away” from the pet system, the number of pets in game decreases where the percentage of MTX-focused pets increases. Is it healthy to have a collection in game that becomes more-and-more dependant upon the wealth of the person rather than the experiences of the player?
- If, in time, interest in pets goes down - and sales go down with it - will MSFT have found value in their merger with ATVI, and will this be one of many cogs that assist in Blizzard changes?
- two things from this update I really appreciate: