WoW Battle Pets FTW

• MMORPG

• World of Warcraft

This is it. It’s all or nothing. My marmot is almost out of health. He won’t survive another round, and he’s the last one. I throw the box. I watch with breath caught in my throat as it teeters … totters … and falls down on the frog. I got it! I pump my fist and celebrate the capture of a new battle pet in WoW.

My gnome jumps for joy on the screen, too. For this is not just any captured battle pet. This is a blue. A blue frog, to be specific. Not blue in skin color, mind you. Blue in rarity. That means it’s a special frog with lots of health and survivability. You don’t see blue battle pets out in the wild very often, so you try to grab them when you see them.

The blue frog will immediately be drafted into the second slot of my starting lineup, bumping the green marmot down to slot three, and knocking the green cockroach out entirely. Only slot one remains the same: I’ve been cultivating a blue cockroach for a while now, and he’s made it up to level 14. One level below my new frog, but the scuttling, disgusting cockroach has tons of health, so I like it in the lead-off position to inspire an appropriate amount of fear and loathing in my opponents. Two blue pets and a green, one 14 and two 15s. A formidable stable of battle pets as we head into the Blasted Lands.

I never would have believed it, and I laughed along with everyone else when I heard about battling pets coming to WoW, but I’ll be dipped if they aren’t fun as hell. And worth a surprising amount of XP, too. I wonder if one can level a character exclusively through pet battles.