why would blizzard choose to make this pet "event-specific" rather than a permanent pet, learnable and usable all year round?
i've been wracking my brain trying to come up with possible explanations. a couple of them are a stretch. i was honestly trying to give blizzard the benefit of the doubt and think of something other than the obvious and most likely (it's up to personal opinion as to which is "most likely" :P).
1. political/social reasons
because many countries and regions in the world play this game, the cultures and practices need to be considered. much like you shouldn't give a survivor of the holocaust a gift with a giant nazi sign on it, there are some things that blizzard are probably doing to avoid conflict with offending other cultures.
could the Day of the Dead and Macabre Marionette be one of those things?
making the pet event-specific would mean that pet collectors who would find day of the dead to be offensive to them do not need to worry or go out of their way to obtain the pet. it would also make it easier for blizzard to leave out this in game event in certain regions where the day of the dead is not celebrated.
of course the argument against this is that there are many in game celebrations of holidays that are not recognized all around the world. yet those events DO have companion pets that are available, learnable and usable.
2. blizzard didn't have enough time to plan/code the pet and event properly
between blizzcon, the onyxia patch, patch 3.3, and the announcement of cataclysm.. blizzard's had their plate full. coding and programming for an all year round companion pet just wasn't high on their priority list. rather than leave everyone high and dry, though, they figured they would just add it in for now and come back next year with a more permanent pet.
3. blizzard didn't really intend for players to have the macabre marionette
we all know there are plenty of GM only items in game, none of which are obtainable by players, but most of which are data-mined and discovered by players. after finding the marionette data on the PTR, the pet community was excited and hopeful. blizzard, while not intending to release it to the general public, didn't want to let this community down. so they sought to compromise by giving it a time limit.
4. blizzard has a sadistic streak
i can't say that i know any of the developers or blizzard employees personally, so this one is really just throwing it out there. basically, they give us a pet, they take it away, they sit at their cubicles, rubbing their hands together and cackling with glee.
my imagination really needs to take a break sometimes.
5. blizzard forgot
plain and simple. they added the pet to the event with the intent on awarding it to players, but forgot to make it permanent/learnable. instead it ended up being placed in the same category as the other items for this event, aka: temporary.
WHATEVER the reason may be for their decision on making the macabre marionette event-specific (will we ever get a real answer? who knows), it has outraged the pet collecting community and has made for a real headache on the programming/GM side of things. perhaps blizzard should take note from this experience and either forgo the whole temporary pet idea, or test the item better.
