Greedy Goblin

Friday, January 13, 2012

Pikachu!

One of the new feature of Mists of Pandaria will be the pet battle system. It is completely vanity and detached from the main story, there won't be raidboss-pets, you can "PvP" with other pet collectors or "PvE" with "wild pets". The rewards of these "battles" are more pets.

OK, more fun for the lolkids, who cares, the best thing about it is that they won't pollute LFR/LFD while being useless with their silly pets. Well my beloved greedy little green things, it's not true! Read what MMO-Champion wrote! No, not the part that explains that you can get rare pets that only spawn "in the spring, when it's raining, in Elwynn Forest at night". The important part is: Most pets will become tradable, even after being leveled.

Yes, you can sell these little annoying wannabe-Pikachu-thingies. And above all, you can sell leveled, aka "elite" pets. The ones that "pwn" in the dead-serious pet vs pet battles that decide who is the coolest guy on the short bus!

The pet leveling system is yet unworked, but I'm sure that there will be an optimal way that allows mass-production of these buggers for sale to the "special" kids.

Remember, while we don't think of them too high, their gold is just as good as yours. So don't just ignore the "awesome" new feature of pet battles. Pikachu will fight hard for your income!

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, once I've seen the word "tradable" my eyes lit up with signs :-)

My intention was to try the battles out and then not care anymore, but let's see how much time investment is needed for a level 25 snow bunny of fatal death.

Anonymous said...

I really liked this quote from MMO-Champion: (http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2617-Mists-of-Pandaria-Pet-Battles-Blue-Posts-Fan-Art-Curse-Weekly-Roundup)

"Rare pets will not give any combat advantage, but may give a cosmetic advantage. "

Cosmetic... advantage? What does that even means?

Other than that, an amusing little gimmick. A potential business opportunity, too. Since no pets have any real advantage, sell the most amazing looking ones, keep the ok ones for yourself.

I mean, in Pokemon, I had my favorites, and they sure as hell weren't legendaries! But M&S will want to look cool. :/

Not even sure I'm gonna buy Pandaria as it is now though.

Azuriel said...

These sort of posts come across as trash talking at the Special Olympics.

"My fun > your fun."

Energybomb said...

Yay Pikachu!

I mean *cough* yeah...

But really, shunning a potential gold source is simply retarded. I used to make tons of money by buying all the relics of ulduar off the AH and then selling them for triple the price.

It worked, it was directed to complete morons and made me some profit.

I don't see why the "pikachu"'s should be beneath anyone.

on an unrelated note: I miss you guys. Hope everything fares well.

Grim said...

What Azuriel said...

While the pet leveling and battle system is not revealed yet, I see no reason to call it special kid territory.
What if they roll out a complex battle system that can be dominated by superior tactics, instead of grind and rotation/boss ability addons?

chewy said...

...optimal way that allows mass-production of these buggers for sale..

Azuriel's comments are often insightful but today's is quite brilliant. I entirely agree with him/her.

Can't you see the contradiction Gevlon ? You're suggesting that creating pets to sell is "ok" fun but creating pets for themselves is shameful or pathetic.

You're writing style has changed today are there multiple Gevlons ?

bones said...

While I can see where you are comeing from, with your dislike of "pokemon",I don't see how the "pokemon" apspect is really any different from the game as a whole, in its current form

There is PvP, there is PvE, they level-up and skill-up, they have abilities...looks like a different version of the same game to me, albeit in a scaled down simpler form.Yes, I'm ignoring the end-game raiding side of things, but I've been WoWing for five years and never raided, so for me, I'll discount that aspect.

I think its a very clever addition and one that just cements the departure of the game from what it was at inception to what it is now.

I'll looking forward to the AH potentail, but at the same time feeling kind of hollow about it,I mean what do I really need more gold for ?

Azuriel said...

By the way, I also find it amusing that in the commission of "mass-producing" leveled Pokemon to sell for profit, you will... you know, be playing Pokemon.

Just remember not to have fun playing it!

Gevlon said...

Did I ever say that the optimal way of leveling is doing yourself? Do scribes farm their own herbs? No, they buy it.

It is possible (and very likely) that most of the leveling process can be outsourced.

maxim said...

What makes pet battles "useless" while something like wow raiding is "useful"?
They are both just pixel games to me. What am i missing?

Bobbins said...

You refer to a business opportunity and yet gold in Wow has been devalued to almost worthless. You have put your gold to some interesting uses however without decent gold sinks whats the point of accumulating it?

Anonymous said...

@bones

I disagree with you. In my opinion the pet-battle-system is more or less identical to Pokemon.
In both we have:
- PvP
- PvE (less roleplay/story in WoW-Version)
- tradable pets (Gold or useless Caterpie; doesn't matter)
- round based combat
- lvl-up
- skills
- and even the "Shiny-Pokemon" aspect if you want to compare it to the rare-pets
(http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Shiny_Pok%C3%A9mon)

Blizzard uses the entire system. And there will be enough people out there who "wanna cath them all" and would pay a high price for a rare pet.

Good luck out there.

Unknown said...

It will be fun to see how many players will be still interested in accumulating "virtual useless gold coins" when the Diablo III RMAH will go live.

Spending months of your life to gain virtual-useless gold and brag you're a great economist?

No thanks ;-)

Glyph, the Architect said...

in b4 they add rewards such as BiS PvE gear for pokepet battle tournaments.

(PS: I plan to exclusively try this feature with Argent Squire because of Child Cruelty)

Goatie said...

It may certainly be possible that the pet combat system will be very evolved and highly tactical, but the history of recent changes to the game suggest something different.

Also:

Azuriel's comments are often insightful but today's is quite brilliant. I entirely agree with him/her.

A-"I-m-so-full-of-crap"-iel's comments are insightful, let alone brilliant.
It is simply an advanced way of trolling by deliberately misinterpreting what is being said and twisting it around. While its style may seem sophisticated, the core idea behind the "writer" is rather sad. This goes for its blog and the comments on other blogs alike.

chewy said...

@Goatie
I disagree. The technique you describe is certainly plausible but the metaphor used today was, in my opinion, very astute.

Anonymous said...

Do you dislike the Pokemon games in general, or do you just think it's stupid and pointless to put it into WoW?

Anonymous said...

@ Goatie:

If you can't provide a logical rebuttal, then whatever you said is worthless.

If you don't want to provide a rebuttal, it's the same.

You're not providing anything against what she said, only criticizing it.

This kind of responses will be done by people who cannot provide a counterargument or rebuttal, they're already defeated and they know it, so they resort to standard internet immaturity. These individuals can barely read, let alone comprehend what I've written. They're unimportant and clownlike.

That said.

I dislike how Gevlon makes posts doing a point, is asked clarification, but does not bother doing another post. For instance, the Girlfriend post from a couple days ago. Squishalot had a good point, it wasn't adressed.

Today, Azuriel has a really good one, it wasn't adressed.

How is raiding making you better from someone who only level characters?

You can be better compared to other raiders or loot hungry try-hard-and-fail M&S that can't do anything, yet try to play that aspect. But you can't say you are better than someone who levels up or farm old stuff.

I mean, can't I play the game the way I want to play it? For me, a MMO is about facing the world, be an adventurer and growing stronger (RPG aspect) not powerleveling to the max level to spend nights wiping on bosses. I don't find that fun.

Singleplayer RPGs are better for tough bosses because I don't have to rely on other people and I can spend the amount of time I want, and stop when I am tired, and no play on a schedule (so will be D3 and Torchlight 2, because I can just time my schedule with a couple friends, and play with one, two, or three at a time, not depending on the Holy Trinity).

WoWkemon looks interesting. It's an aspect of it's own. There will be the good players (effective, logical, theorycraft, know what works) and the M&S (wanting to look good, have the strongest WoWkemon but not willing to put the effort in them).

Bristal said...

Gevlon's polluted LFD/LFR comment aside, his point is that this new feature has some good potential for like-minded Goblins.

So he's on board with it and we can expect some entertaining posts about it. Instead of merely bashing it, he will throw himself into learning it in order to abuse it.

And he retains deniability as to actually enjoying it. Talk about brilliant.

Also loved Azuriel's turn-of-phrase (and plan to use it), but it seems like fishing in a barrel over here.

Harri said...

I'm honestly surprised by the number of butthurt Pokemon fans around here. Gevlon often discusses fairly serious topics in addition to videogames and as such I guess I was expeting the readers to be fairly mature as well. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

I'd just like to reply to one comment in particular;
What if they roll out a complex battle system that can be dominated by superior tactics, instead of grind and rotation/boss ability addons?

I don't know if the author of this comment plays World of Warcraft (which is the game that this blog is mostly about), but I've personally played it for several years and I can say that judging from what I've seen in playing that game, the likelyhood of Blizzard introducing a complex, tactical system is, to put it mildly, low. In other words: not gonna happen. :D

Azuriel said...

Did I ever say that the optimal way of leveling is doing yourself? Do scribes farm their own herbs? No, they buy it.

It is possible (and very likely) that most of the leveling process can be outsourced.


In this analogy, the Pokemon will be farmed by others, and the Scribes will be ones leveling them to sell for profit. Otherwise you are saying that a Scribe is someone who buying cheap glyphs and sells them at higher prices; which is something any non-Scribe can do (until a real Scribe sets up paywalls, etc).

We know nothing about how the Pokemon system will shake out, that's true. I am just pointing out the irony in that it could very well be that leveling these Pokemon will be the most efficient way to turn a profit. In which case your disparaging remarks concerning a system you know nothing about might come to bite you in the ass if you accidentally have fun with it.

Anonymous said...

I don't think people who like Pokemon are butthurt about Gevlon's comments. At least, I am not.

No, the issue stems from the way he writes his post. He may not like Pokemon, that's cool. But for an objectivist, he analyses subjectively pretty nicely.

Calling whoever likes and who wants to/will play this aspect of WoW drooling children...

Saying "Raiding is the ONLY game of WoW, if you don't raid, you're a drooling children".

When many, many times, he's been proven wrong, and had it put in his face that fun = fun, and that my fun = your fun.

For one week, he made one post about how fun can be objectively defined, and each day, he was corrected and proven wrong. I think on Friday, he made a post that made sense and worked objectively with the reality.

In my case, it's not butthurtness; it's disappointement from posts like this, that doesn't seem they were thought through and rush to conclusions, with subjective generalizations.

Coming from an objectivist, this is pretty bad, in my opinion.

Just to put it into perspective...
He puts everyone in the same basket. Or at the very least, it's hard to interpret it otherwise.

OK, more fun for the lolkids, who cares, the best thing about it is that they won't pollute LFR/LFD while being useless with their silly pets. The important part is: Most pets will become tradable, even after being leveled.

Yes, you can sell these little annoying wannabe-Pikachu-thingies. And above all, you can sell leveled, aka "elite" pets. The ones that "pwn" in the dead-serious pet vs pet battles that decide who is the coolest guy on the short bus!

Anonymous said...

"I don't know if the author of this comment plays World of Warcraft (which is the game that this blog is mostly about), but I've personally played it for several years and I can say that judging from what I've seen in playing that game, the likelyhood of Blizzard introducing a complex, tactical system is, to put it mildly, low. In other words: not gonna happen. :D"

Ah, if we're going to resort to that kind of style: clearly coming from someone who hasn't played high-end in SC2. Don't tell me "but that is SC2" they switch developers around in games, and adapt ideas from one game into another. I'd also argue a complex, tactical system is a heroic end boss. Both of these games have something the Pokemon won't have though: action. However, they're also not metagames.