My First Day of Pet Battling

As part of Navi’s Ten Days of Pet Battles, I wasn’t sure if I had anything new to contribute since I’ve posted a lot about the subject but it’s always nice to reminisce about the things you love. It’s been seven months since I first wrote about Pet Battles. My first beta post described my initial experiences as a novice who didn’t learn the skill until it was reactivated for beta players. It wasn’t long before the post morphed into the Pet Battle Guide you see today so I took the opportunity to revisit my first published version giving you a look back at what it was like.

Day 1:  Your first day pet battling.

Things are quite buggy on the beta right now.

• Missing pets – not all pets were available through the character transfer. I ended up transferring my toon over four times over the course of the beta.
• Dead pets on challenge – This was one of the most aggravating bugs since you would start a battle and all your pets, inc. enemy pets would be dead as soon as you entered – like watching a mass suicide over and over. This was particularly annoying as I was trying to capture a cheetah cub which was really hard to come by.
• Pets phasing in and out – passing through the threshold of zones between Mulgore and Barrens thanks to CRZ’s.
• Flagging when you change zones or go into same faction territory – At the time I thought it was odd as I would flag passing into Thunder Bluff.

I was excited the morning after the new patch, even though it was ~19GB of download goodness. I asked on Twitter if the Battle System still needed L90 to test and was told you only needed to be L5. Woot! I couldn’t wait for my DL to finish so I could test it.

I remember getting a kick out of seeing the name of the Org Trainer. Even Matty couldn’t resist having a look when she noticed a spike in traffic. I headed outside the gates of Orgrimmar to find the first paw I could battle. I was so excited when I saw this little guy (although he was labelled a Creepy Crawly beforehand).

I mean, when do we ever get to see Harvesters in Horde zones? It brought me back to my early playing days, running around Westfall on my Night Elf/Human, so this was an unexpected surprise. I was so excited, I was just hoping I didn’t kill it with any of my pets. Luckily I didn’t.

This was the makeup of my original team. I really only used my corehound as he was such a beast and demolished any opponent I went up against, including tamer pets.

I had such a blast that day, I couldn’t resist mentioning my first Moonkin Hatchling battle – I almost died laughing in my chair.

If you get a chance, battle your Moonkin Hatchling with a rat (or anything with stampede). It was the cutest thing, I couldn’t stop laughing. Stampede causes the Moonkin to spin around (as it flaps its wings) which was adorable.

And from there I was hooked.