I have less than 100 charms on my account right now.
Even if your solution was to replace all “old” charms with gold, it would still be an unacceptable division in how people can access pets from various expansions. Not everyone has a ton of gold.
At this point you’re just insisting on an idea that has been proven terrible in practice.
I just want to point out that you’re the only one advocating for this, quite frankly, stupid idea. You’re choosing to completely ignore the number of people who had issues with us having two different coins.
Once again, just because you and have 10s of thousands of coins doesn’t mean that the majority of us have that many. I’ll point out that the other players who do have that many coins, and are active here, haven’t spoken up in support of your idea. Instead of proposing a system that we’ve already had and didn’t like, and ALSO helps to disenfranchise new players, what you SHOULD be advocating for is more things to spend your pet coins on - like new pets, mounts, or transmog. But you’re obviously too short sighted for that, because you can only conceive of a solution that suits just you.
Exactly my point, those can keep holding to your garbage coins and watching this content fade away, enjoy.
The fact is very simple, check how many new pets were added in just the last 2 new expansions? and how many new pets out of those that you can buy from such charms or directly related to pet battle (via achievements and dailies/weekly)?
You really think Blizzard is not aware these charms are garbage and there is no point to develop new pet battle content because of its existence? You got more new pets from twitch drops than your “real pet battle content” nowadays and you still not able to realize the issue?
Have a good day.
When is the last time you actually logged into WOW?
These are the CURRENT lowest AH price of pets from TWW that you can buy with pet charms in NA realms :
Sandstone Ramolith - 2300 G
Skippy - 2300 G
Brown Leafbug - 2300 G
Venomwing - 2300 G
Starkstripe Hopper - 2800 G
All you can buy from AH with the time spent on 3 world quests - mostly will take around 5-8 minutes total.
If you want to buy these now, these are the price you can pay to own them.
If this expansion will go away and Blizzard will add them back in 12-18 months later in the pet vendors for 500 - 1000 G each, nobody will care and no one will complain EXCEPT for probably those hoarding tons of these garbage charms and thinking maybe they can make a profit from someone whose new to this content.
No. Pet charms and currencies definitely isn’t the reason Blizz is lacking in new pet content.
Don’t be silly.
This thread started off strong enough and then some chirping about currencies.
The reason that that there was a fall off in pet battle stuff is that there was no new content added to do! They tried dungeons and they were too long and too full of RNG – but it was a darned good try and worth going into again. I think that it is on Blizzard if people are doing enough pet stuff. Safari is great but you do it once – then you are done!
I agree that talking about currencies now is like talking about matching the thread color of the uphostery on the chairs on the Titanic. Charms are nowhere near the issue. It’s just a distraction, and we should ignore it.
I think that pet dungeons may have been what damaged pet activity, and the way devs perceived pet battles.
The devs have dungeons on the brain. It’s in their DNA. But Pet Dungeons were not a success. They were not a total failure, but they did not increase activity, which is what they needed to do to be counted as a success.
Whether you look at Wowhead or DfA, only about half of the people doing WQs regularly completed the dungeons, even once. And the dungeons were designed to become obsolete soon after their launch.
So I think the devs, whose brains are awash in Dungeon neurotransmitters, threw up their arms in despair and said “If even dungeons don’t work, then nothing is going to work.”
But I think Dungeons were never going to work, never could work, and were a bad idea in the first place, [ * ] at least if what they wanted to do was increase pet battling activity. And they should have abandoned Dungeons sooner and tried something else. But Blizzard devs are known for their unwillingness to make conceptual changes. (Tactical and mechanical changes, yes - they can be very agile and responsive on those when their attention is on them. But not so much broad conceptual admissions.) They would much rather abandon than iterate. [*]
But the devs are looking at it and saying “Look how much work we put into it, and the players aren’t responding. Pet Battles must be unsustainable.”
Now, I’m sure that isn’t the only factor in this decision, but I suspect it is probably one of them.
Your “no new content” ide is right, I think, but dungeons wasn’t it.
.
[*] I could write an essay on these topics!
You know, it’s funny. Talking about pet dungeons not beign a success…I can’t help but wonder…why aren’t they investing a bit of time with making a pet delve??
A simple one like the cave delve in fungal folly would be ideal for pet battles. A dozen pets scattered around the cave and a boss pet at the end. And have different variations of the delve using different pets (or different pet families) for variety.
Not as intense as a dungeon, but a framework for make reusable content that is in that golden 15-20 minute range for players.
I don’t think that a shorter dungeon would have hit the spot.
Much more broadly, I don’t think any content targeted at the higher-level, long-term battlers would raise the general level of activity.
Now, I’m fine with the level of activity that we have. I can’t go to a pet battle WQ without seeing someone else there doing it as well. But there is no doubt that we have lost people, simply by the attrition that affects any long-term project. And I do not think we are replacing them fast enough. And that seems to be what the devs are getting at.
What we need are more non-battlers, or people who tried it briefly and dropped out, to join in with regular everyday collecting and progresion.
You’re right, we should have been more aware of the fact that they weren’t charging pet coins any more for stuff as an indicator of what they’re trying to do now. That doesn’t mean that the current pet coin system was bad.
Take Dragonflight for example. Nearly everything there requires some sort of expansion specific items in order to purchase them. It sucks. Nobody liked it. It’s why they pulled back on that sort of thing in TWW. Even they few extra currencies they require in TWW is annoying. Yet your genius take is that all expansions should work like that for pet battle purchases.
I swear, just thinking about this just makes me feel dumber.
The problem with the pet dungeons is that, once you’ve done them X number of times, there’s no need to do them again. They were fun, and if they did new ones I’d certainly run them. But there’s no need to run them again. There’s no timewalking version or mythic+ version to make us want to run them again.
Are there even any hooks for new players to be aware of them anymore? I vaguely remember getting a letter for the Wailing Caverns dungeon. And I think there’s a hook in Legion Dalaran, but if you don’t play through Legion, when would you see it? Especially since new players are going to start with DF now. It’s yet another example of, “players don’t play pet battles” without even letting players know that they’re a thing.
If I may correct you : ONE problem with the pet dungeons is that, once you’ve done them X number of times, there’s no need to do them again.
This has always been the way. Varzok is at least visible in Org, but Audrey is well hidden.
Even if you played through Legion
And don’t get me started on the locations of the pet places in Boralus and Dazar, or hiding the quests to get the Murloc pets AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!
I think the starting sequence for pets was AMAZING in Mists. I do. Many of my fondest memories come from the climb from nothing to the CT.
But it always was disjointed and glitchy, and phasing has added more problems, and there is no roadmap for anyone starting - it all has to be done on faith that this is leading somewhere.
That is why I would make it a priority to put ONE RELIABLE QUESTGIVER in a prominent location with a series of quests that provide a clear path. And I would, reluctantly, skip newcomers to their first 25 immediately. They have other ways of doing it now anyhow. I would have Breanni open a stand in the new hub.
That would not be enough.
We would also need to provide daily and weekly stimuli to participate after the basics, but they can come from that one reliable source.
That’s fair. I think it’s the main problem, though, at least in the context of, “Players don’t do pet battles.”
Don’t all pet battles and trainers scale now, though? I found that leveling pets back in the day helped me learn and understand the overall system. (edit) Maybe give an ultimate stone to level a pet to 25 after completing the intro quests/achievements?
Not all scale.
BfA and onward World Quests do scale. I think Legion ones do now, as well. Not before that.
I agree that a great advantage of the original journey was that you had a pretty solid understanding of the system by the time you got to Pandaria.
Yes, in my post above I suggested that the questgiver sell the player their racial pet, at level 25 right at the start- or perhaps, with a Purple Stone; that would do as well.
But until Blizzard has done something like this exercise to give newcomers a clear on-ramp, they simply have no right to say that the numbers aren’t holding up well enough for their tastes.
Lubbins was a step in the right direction, but it was just a fragment, in a system whose main problem is that it is already fragmented.
But that’s also where a shorter delve comes in. An activity that is 15 minutes (or less) is much more popular for the majority of players than a long, drawn out dungeon or raid. That’s why I think pet delves might work for bringing in a new wave of pet battlers. It also means you don’t need a massive collection or a handful of super pets to get through a delve.
Plus, delves are designed for multiple scenarios…so less work for the developers to produce multiple sets of content. And I get the feeling Blizz might be more likely to go that route since delves are one of their little darlings right now.
It’s more about expanding the pet battling player base than keeping the hard cores happy.
And that’s kind of the idea, right? We can sit here and suggest things we’d absolutely love to have in an ideal world in WoW, but if it costs Blizz a thousand hours in development time and cost, it ain’t going to happen.
When delves were first introduced I really felt like it was implied that they wouldn’t all just be mini dungeons. Having an occasional pet battle delve storyline would be pretty cool, especially if it dropped more Polished coins and stones than a WQ.
You and I are looking at different pictures.
Check out DfA.
About 6% of the playerbase are doing at least some pet world quests.
About 2% are doing Safais and Families and Dungeons.
The objective is not to get that 6% to do what the 2% are doing.
The objective is to get that 6% up to 15%.
This is really good. Except for one small thing, most (all?) allied races don’t have racial battle pets. But that’s an easy fix. Just make a new pet, with superbark/weakening blow so new people are guaranteed a capture friendly pet, as the initial pet instead.
Fair point. But then, I’d make one for them, so that they’re not left out! 
I don;t think we need to feed beginners a Superbark pet. But it is a legit option, if combined with a little lesson on its use.
I’d be happy either way.
My own suggestions:
Award honor for PvP pet battles. If there are pets that are only available if you attain a certain level of honor, then PvP pet battles should award honor. Not suggesting that you have to award the same amount of honor that you would get in a battleground, but if they awarded honor, you’d see a lot more players doing it, if just to buy Sir Snips.
On the subject of PvP, do away with teams in which all three do weather changing moves. That should do away with the Sandstorm teams, and the Singing Sunflower teams.
As our pet collections grow larger, change the UI. I would like to see a separate tab for pets that we don’t use. Let’s face it. A huge number of our pets will never see a battle except when leveling. I’m aware we can mark some as favorites, but I’d prefer to the see the second tab for infrequently-used and unused pets. This would just allow me to open my main tab and scroll for the pet I need, without accidentally going too far and into territory of pets that I haven’t even collected yet.