Mists of Pandaria: Pet Battles
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 19th 2012 at 3:01AM
Each pet that you own can learn up to six abilities, but only three of them can be used in the turn-based battle, so you need to carefully assign which you plan to use. Pet Battles will have a queue system just like dungeons and Battlegrounds, with one small difference: you will never see the name of the player you're facing off against. Blizzard wanted to minimize the "shame of defeat" that tends to be a barrier to entry in PvP -- nobody likes feeling bad when they lose. You will never know who you've lost to, and they can't trash talk you during or afterwards. While your statistics page will keep track of your number of wins, it will not track your losses.
Filed under: Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
bribbs00 Mar 19th 2012 3:42PM
I'm wondering if this will be something you will be able to do during breaks on a raid night while in the raid. My guild has a lot of down time. This would be useful for that. I'm not sure but I don't believe you can dual in a raid instance.
breehid Mar 19th 2012 5:05PM
How cool! There is no reason not to try this out!!!
Caribald Mar 19th 2012 5:11PM
Coming in patch 5.1: Pet battlers in the Master League will have their losses shown.
amkosh Mar 20th 2012 12:12AM
I honestly wonder if this will get cut.
If Blizzard can and will cut PvP from Diablo 3, then I don't think anything's safe. And I don't mean this as a dig, just an observation.
I do wonder why they didn't put in an AI, the fighting against other players is pointless unless I have an idea of who I am beating and can brag about it. I can understand about lowering the barrier to entry, but by doing it this way, you're lowering the incentive to do it.
I can also see this as being a stigma. "lolol you won 200 pet battles, you must be too pathetic to fight real pvp and you're a kiddie lolol" and crap like that.
Snuzzle Mar 23rd 2012 8:01AM
But PVP isn't being "cut". It's just not going to be in at launch. Unless I missed something...
rylanlarsen Mar 21st 2012 2:41PM
I'm starting to like playing less and less because of this. I have to agree with an earlier comment about this seeming like it is geared towards children who don;t want their feelings hurt. I may get upset when I get killed or defeated in PVP, but it's PVP. Pet battles seem really cool, but there's no point in only showing wins and not letting you see the opponents name. If someone doesn't want to lose to another player, don't play PVP. Blizzard is turning WOW into a game for little kids; things are getting too easy.
amkosh Mar 23rd 2012 1:36PM
Not being there at launch is the same as it being cut from launch. I don't know why you would split hairs that way. Sure they say it will come in later, and maybe it will. But the point is its not there for launch, and that will devalue other D3 systems. People will pay real money for items if they can use it to knock the crap out of other players, at least more often than they would for PvE content.