Wild Pets In Midnight
Midnight Alpha has begun, and there’s a significant change to the new wild pets as noted by MrGM, a WoW content creator. [source]
Changes to Capturing*
As showcased in the Twitch Clip above, instead of the traditional method of entering a battle with a wild pet, players will simply right click on one of the new Midnight wild pets, throw a crate at it, and loot the pet directly into their inventory to learn.
Wild Pets As Companions*
These captured pets are non-combat, meaning they do not show a breed, moveset, or battling stats. They cannot be used on a team to fight other battle pets.
*It should be noted that these changes have only been observed for the new wild pets in Midnight. Existing wild battle pets in non-Midnight zones have not changed at this time.
Future of Pet Battles
It is currently unclear how Blizzard intends to approach Pet Battles in the expansion and in the future. Early testing on Alpha shows that the Pet Battle system and activity continues to exist in Midnight.
However, many of the datamined Midnight pets are flagged as non-combat, with only a handful of collectible non-wild pets having movesets and stats. More battle pets might be added later, but it is still concerning to the Pet Battling community that the majority of pets are only companions.
Other battling content in Midnight revolves around older Trainers, with the addition of new Family Battler achievements for Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and Northrend. It’s unknown if new Midnight Trainers will be added.
Another WoW content creator, Bears Adventures, had a small interview with Game Director of World of Warcraft Ion Hazzikostas. [source]
Bears Adventures made an inquiry about Pet Battle Dungeons, and Hazzikostas stated that no new dungeons are currently planned.
He also went on to explain how the new wild pets would be obtained in Midnight, paraphrased by Bear, “…the actual battling part of it [wild pet encounters] won’t be in Midnight(…)”. His reasoning behind this change is low engagement in wild pet battles.
It is still very early in the testing phase, so many things are subject to change. We currently only know of the updates to the new wild pets in Midnight, and will have to wait and see if there are any other changes coming.
We are hoping Blizzard will respond to forum threads and requests for additional clarification and explanation about the future of Pet Battles. If you have constructive feedback regarding the changes to wild pets, you can add them to this thread on the official Blizzard Pet Battle forums.
We’ll be sure to post if more information about wild pets or Pet Battles is released, so stay tuned.
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