I've played through some of the quest hubs in the Jade Forest in Pandaria on both my Alliance druid and my Horde shaman. I also have an Alliance shaman. For the purposes of this page, perhaps I should have chosen her as my Alliance toon on the Jade isle, but the druid is my first ever toon created in the game so I have a bit of a soft spot for him. Maybe I'll jump on the Alliance shaman to try out the new dungeons in the expansion. For now, I have only quested and gotten way too in to the pet battles.
Pet Battles
Upon logging into my character, I was invited to join a guild named <Pokewow>. Most of my friends have moved on to other things besides the game, but I'm still looking for people to meet in the game. More often than not, I'm initially want an interesting or clever guild name. I have been in a guild named <You Can't Say No to a Panda> and currently my Horde guild is <Fabulous PINK>. So, as soon as I saw the name <Pokewow>, I clicked join. Even though the guild has been hit or miss as far as interaction between members, it is a match made in whatever the Azerothian equivalent of heaven is. I'm enjoying this pet battling thing much more than I ever expected. It might have something to do with my oldest son getting into the video and card games due to my introducing him to the Diamond version after he showed an interest in the cartoon while we were on vacation in Florida.
Whatever the reason, I'm having so much fun with the game. I've put aside part of my game time specifically to comb the wilds of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, find all of the hard to find pets, catch all of them (Is that too close for copyright? I've heard that Nintendo is terribly litigious.), leveling the proper pet type to challenge all of the trainers in the introduction quest line, and move on to that second tier of quests. One of the things that I really like about this is that they've made the pets and mounts truly account wide. No longer do you have to do the same thing over and over on each one of your characters. Somehow people play this game enough to have done some of these things on multiple characters, but I don't see how there are enough hours in a day and enough span in your attention for such an endeavor.
But, I digress. Now, we don't have to live in Azeroth to be on equal footing with the hardcore league in at least this aspect of the game. Some of you are probably screaming at your computer screen, "The whole game is welfare now! There's nothing left for us to feel good about because everybody gets everything handed to them!" First of all, woah. Slow down there, Tiger. Just because Blizzard has tried to make the game more enjoyable for people who don't have the time or energy to take on a full time job in the guise of a game simply to be successful at that game doesn't mean that they are taking anything from you. Also, this game is 8 years old. Give me another game that has had such staying power and continued to entertain over those 8 years.
Dang, I digressed again. Having all of these characters on your account is a definite plus. Being able to park my characters in various parts of the world and pick up where I left off has shortened the amount of time I've had to devote to the task. As I say, I've been able to level up a variety of pets in a short period of time and finish the introduction quests. While those are fun and it is nice to see what some of the special pets are that these trainers possess, the real fun comes when you are out in the wild and a new pet pops up on the minimap as a green paw print or even more exciting when the second pet in a fight ends up being the rare version of something that you've been searching for. I have actually found myself mimicking my son's victory fist pump when I catch one that I need and checking my notebook to be sure that it was recorded and to check out the stats of the new pet. Derided by some players as a direct Pokemon rip off, the pet battles actually add something very fun to the game.
My last word on Pet battles:
Pros: Pets are account wide(!), mostly fast paced combat, finally gives you something interesting to do with all of those pets you've been collecting over the years, good implementation of strategic advantages, sense of accomplishment when you find that pet you been hunting.
Cons: On level battles are a bit too much of a challenge sometimes. That's not completely a con, but sometimes when you're battling, you have to take an 8 minute break to allow your pet heal cool down to expire. So far, that's the only complaint that I have so far. I haven't tried PvP yet, so I will update with my thoughts on that soon.
Overall: If you ever liked Pokemon, you should check this aspect of World of Warcraft. It is a good way to bring other play styles into the game. They have even added new pets to old raids, allowing you to go back to experience content that you haven't for a while/never got a chance to see. So far, Molten Core has been an easy run and has inspired me to chase after the Sulfuron Hammer. BWL is still challenging, at least for me while I learn the mechanics of that first fight. AQ isn't too bad on my Boomkin, and I haven't checked out Naxx since I was 80. Looks like I'll have to have another installment in the near future.
As always, thanks for reading and stay tuned for my review of Jade Forest next!
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