Say NO to Destroying Pets

Many pet collectors have their own opinions and/or pet peeves when it comes to the holiday loot bag dropped companions, but a big one this Love Is In the Air in-game event is getting the coveted Toxic Wasteling on a character that already owns it. Normally getting a pet such as this would be a wonderful occurrence... except that this pet is Bind on Pick Up and therefore useless if the character already has it in their collection.

This type of situation isn't localized to just this in-game holiday. All the seasonal events that drop a BoP pet from a once per day lot bag are continuing to drop the companion for toons regardless if they have it already or not.

So what's a collector to do? There are only two options in a situation like this: destroy the pet to reclaim the inventory slot, or bank it in hopes that it can one day be traded/sold to a fellow pet collector.

I know I'm not alone when I say that being left with these two options just feels wrong. These are special pets, available only for a handful of days out of the year, and with SO MANY factors working against it actually dropping for many players. Yet being such an extraordinary pet means that it will more than likely get destroyed if it's a duplicate all because of its simple BoP status. Doesn't this seem illogical? Such a shame? It's downright heartbreaking for a vanity pet lover and collector.

I've wracked my brain to determine the cons of making these pets Bind on Use or at the very least Bind on Account (single use), and the only reason I can think of as to why Blizzard continues to refuse to change the binding status of these pets is "rarity".

Yes, making the pets BoE would mean players could choose to sell/trade/give the pets away rather than force them to add it to their collection, destroy the item, or save it for a rainy day. But with the MANY other conditions that apply to these holiday loot bag dropped companions (such as limited number of attempts, limited amount of time per year, RNG, and low droprate), you'd think the rarity factor would be covered. In fact it seems downright overkill that on top of all those contributing rarity elements that these pets are BoP.

If these companions were BoE not only would duplicate pets be spared the fate of being put down, it would spread the vanity pet love and encourage other players to take part in collecting. It would also mean less broken collections since a player would then be able to send the pet to their main collector if they happened to receive the mini-pet on an alt.

At the very least, I'd argue that BoA (single use) would help cut down on the use of the "confirm delete" button and allow players to help keep collections together on a main collector.

In the end, I know many will argue that it "won't matter" since pets will be account wide in MoP. There's not much to say against that other than things could change and developers could scrap that idea at any moment or put so many restrictions on the feature that "account wide" may not really be "account wide" at all. But that's all still up in the air, and we could talk and debate ourselves black and blue in the face. We just don't know enough yet, so there's not much that can be said.

In the meantime, though, we CAN logically argue for a change to the holiday loot bag dropped pets. Even if it's just a small change. BoP to BoE/BoA (single use). An increased droprate. Multiple sources for acquisition. Purchasable with holiday currency. Making them farmable again.

Still, it seems the simplest and most logical compromise would be to make the pets BoE or at the very least BoA. Many of the other holiday pets have had their binding status changed, why not just change them all (holiday pets)? If companions will be tradable in MoP, then what's the harm of making them tradable sooner rather than later?

I can't speak for all pet collectors, but I don't want to have to destroy something so adorable. Stop forcing us to euthanize vanity pets Blizzard. :(