Pet Battles Will BRB

Although Pet Battles will be temporarily turned off on the beta for a bit, Cory Stockton, one of the Lead Content Designers, had this to say about it:

"We are hoping to get it back on the servers soon, it's just way to early for meaningful feedback at this point." - source

"I am working on a blog with lots of info on the system now. Hoping to have it up soon!" - source

So if you didn't get a chance to preview and try out this (VERY EARLY) iteration of Pet Battles, don't worry! It will be back and better than ever (hopefully :P). Also, keep an eye out for an official blog post about this new feature.

After spending the entire afternoon wandering about the beta and poking at the critters, I've drawn up a short list of possible concerns about wild pets. They will likely be addressed in a future beta patch, but these things still bother me somewhat:

- Collectable wild pet respawn times. In some cases where there seems to be only one or VERY few of a specific capturable pet, if the respawn time is too long, it will definitely frustrate collectors to no end. Especially if a single player can have more than one version of the same pet in their Pet Journal. What would stop a player (other than the need to eat/sleep lol) from camping a spawn point (possibly the ONLY spawn point) for a rare wild pet and hoarding all of them to sell on the AH?

- It's a shame that a collectable wild pet despawns if you choose not to battle it after engaging the pet battle phase. What if it's the only wild pet of its kind, and it also has a long respawn timer? That would add to collectors' frustration.

- I still haven't tested out whether or not players themselves will remain vulnerable to world PVP even when engaged in a wild pet battle. This is mainly a concern for those on PVP realms, where world PVP is more likely to occur.

- What is the difference between a "Pet Battle" and a "Pet PVP Battle"? The most obvious answer is that the former is when fighting against critters, while dueling other players and finding battle matches fall under the latter. Other than that, is there anything that separates the two?

- While on the topic of dueling, will it be possible to cross-faction pet duel?

That's just off the top of my head for now. More questions and concerns are bound to pop up as testing progresses on the beta. For now, I'm just going to have to sit and wonder and wait. Luckily, being a pet collector, I have lots of practice when it comes to the waiting game. :P