Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW
, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play?
Remember in the last edition of Lawbringer, when I wrote that the majority of the questions post-
BlizzCon 2011 were
questions about panda people, whether
Kung Fu Panda would sue, and how Pandaren are possible in China? Well, there was a third question: How can the Pet Battle system exist in
World of Warcraft when it is so spiritually and mechanically similar to the underlying game mechanics of the
Pokémon franchise? The truth is that it is and it isn't as similar as you might suspect, and the key factors in any copyright fight don't hold up a potential cause of action.
From the BlizzCon presentation, we gleaned a good bit of information about the
WoW Pet Battle system coming with
Mists of Pandaria. Players have been collecting companion (or vanity) pets for years, little dudes and dudettes who follow your characters around looking cool, performing cute emotes, and acting as the occasional status symbol. Companion pets even became the first foray into Blizzard-accepted
real-money gold buying with the
Guardian Cub as an experiment in fighting gray-market gold selling. Companion pets have become their own meta-game in
WoW despite the introduction of the actual meta-game Pet Battle system.
Companion pets will now be at the center of a minigame of their own. After years of collecting and coveting, finally these pets will serve a purpose beyond looking adorable or annoying Dalaran with chilling screams of "NEW TOYS, FOR ME?!" Many players have noticed that the Pet Battle system bears a striking resemblance to the biggest pet battle system franchise ever created,
Pokémon. Do you know what
Pokémon is? I'm sure you know what
Pokémon is.
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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Lawbringer