Newer player's dilemma

[Aislinge]

I myself started in BC as a warrior and there wasn't a guild or group out there who would take a DPS warrior (utility) and none wanted to break in a brand new player who'd never tanked and would teach him the ropes. I couldn't even get into 5mans in BC. I was limited to dailies and PvP. I'm surprised I ever made it out of BC still playing to be honest.

Sounds pretty much like my experience tbh. I couldn't get a look into our Kara Team and Sunwell, well, pft... I had more of a chance of hell freezing over. Oh wait. It did.

The thing is, I have a lot of rare pets. My collection isn't exactly thin (I'm slow admittedly but when it comes to TCG, CE and sheer 'I've had no life for 5 years' pets, I'm doing ok), and I agree with others - I wouldn't crack a hissy fit on the forums if suddenly everyone had a Baby Blizzard Bear or an Onyxian Whelpling. They are cool pets!

Give you 2 examples - my old GM occasionally hops on once every 6 months or so. He has a Vampiric Batling and quite frankly, doesn't give a toss about it. He was lucky enough that the raid team back in the day was a healer short and they lowered their standards enough to let him heal. He got the bat. I got more tears. He would GIVE me that bat IF HE COULD. But he can't. Where is the winner in the current situation?

Another example, guy on my realm, in my guild is sitting just beneath me in the rankings. Before Mists hit I was 2nd/3rd on my realm and while I've dropped to god knows what (told you I'm slow), he likes to pace himself off of my shocking collection. He's a very cool guy and loves his battles. He didn't start playing WoW in BC. Or in WotLK. I think he started sometime in Cata. So why should I have some right to get on my elitist high horse and withhold pets (which frankly I didn't 'earn' - this is a game, not a job) from him? It's holding back his enjoyment. Only tonight he was dismayed that, in the end, he'll never EVER have a chance at being number 1 on the server.

To me, both of those scenarios suck. They support a culture which doesn't support the game. I think people think too much of some of their pets to be quite honest. Killing Mirkblood isn't an achievement. You just had to be level 70 and be allowed into Kara - the drop rate was 100%. Spirit of Competition was RNG. Baby Blizzard and Ony were mailed to you for having no life. Realistically, I cannot think of any pet outside of those that is not obtainable with cash or time. Aside from the mad ones from China/Korea/EU.

[Raptorbait]

With a fresh batch coming out today maybe a mad dash on collecting can get me closer to the top ... At least for a few days o_O

[Stonewallred]

What "you" have doesn't effect the way I feel about my pets.
I have the baby blizz bear and the whelping. I like having them, but if blizz put them up in the BMAH, on a vendor or made them available by any means other than cash money, everyone else having them would not impact my enjoyment.

The baby blizz bear and whelping came because I happened to be subscribed during some arbitrary period of time. Duh, no skill involved, other than remembering to buy a game card lol.

[Talmar]

Personally, I'd like to see pet collectors have a chance at pets from other countries. How many cool pets did Korea or China get, that US players never had a shot at obtaining?

This would be cool. If there was some way to really identify "hardcore" collectors and allow them some kind of way to acquire otherwise unreachable pets.

Of course, I have no idea how you would identify "hardcore" when it comes to pet collecting.

[Dash]

Sorry to necro this post, but I have one little thing to add. It may be a bit silly, but I take some pride in my pet collection, partly because I have lots of super rare / unobtainable pets. I've been collecting pets since vanilla, and I enjoy my collection for what it is, something to do in the game.

Now lots of people push things further and dutifully buy many if not all the pets at the Blizz store, buy CE editions and whatnot. These pets I'll never have, because I'm not willing to spend money on this game (apart from the monthly fee obviously). Does that make me angry or jealous? Nope, it's my choice after all, and I'm happy with that.

On the other hand, I may find it a tad irritating that people who spend sometimes hundreds in cash will then call themselves "hardcore collector" or rank proudly as "number 1" on their server / world /universe, and boast about how nobody who hasn't bought these pets will ever have a chance of "beating" their score. There's nothing "hardcore" about clicking checkout at the Blizz store website imo, and this is coming from someone who definitely has the "must have all the pets" mentality.

I don't want to spend more cash than I have to, I'm missing about a dozen pets (haven't even counted). Fine.
I wasn't playing when such pet was available, I can't get it anymore. Fine.
Not everything has to be 100% evened out, that's what's interesting about it.

[Talmar]

Sorry to necro this post, but I have one little thing to add. It may be a bit silly, but I take some pride in my pet collection, partly because I have lots of super rare / unobtainable pets. I've been collecting pets since vanilla, and I enjoy my collection for what it is, something to do in the game.

Now lots of people push things further and dutifully buy many if not all the pets at the Blizz store, buy CE editions and whatnot. These pets I'll never have, because I'm not willing to spend money on this game (apart from the monthly fee obviously). Does that make me angry or jealous? Nope, it's my choice after all, and I'm happy with that.

On the other hand, I may find it a tad irritating that people who spend sometimes hundreds in cash will then call themselves "hardcore collector" or rank proudly as "number 1" on their server / world /universe, and boast about how nobody who hasn't bought these pets will ever have a chance of "beating" their score. There's nothing "hardcore" about clicking checkout at the Blizz store website imo, and this is coming from someone who definitely has the "must have all the pets" mentality.

I don't want to spend more cash than I have to, I'm missing about a dozen pets (haven't even counted). Fine.
I wasn't playing when such pet was available, I can't get it anymore. Fine.
Not everything has to be 100% evened out, that's what's interesting about it.

I agree with you. My only issue is when pets become available but are kept out of reach based on the attitude of the general WoW community.

If a pet is released and is available to "everyone" but cannot be acquired unless a certain group of people are willing to let you into their special club then I wouldn't call that fair at all.

If I'm willing to put in the work, no money, hundreds of hours of doing something, I should have an equal chance of acquiring whatever it is I had been working toward. I should at least have a shot.

The only pet that's been released that was available to "everyone" but couldn't actually be acquired by "everyone" was the Vampiric Batling. If you've been playing since Vanilla then you should be well aware of how jaded the Raiding community was during BC. And not even the raiding community but the heroic 5man's as well. There was absolutely nothing I could do to acquire that pet unless I could find a Raiding group that would take me. I tried the entire time the pet was available. I applied to guilds, even faction and server transferred for "probationary runs". But I was new to tanking and DPS warrior brought no utility.

However, on the flip side of the coin, when the Spirit of Competition was released I was, once again, more than willing to put in the time and effort to get the pet. I had never done PvP, didn't have the gear for it, and soon came to loathe PvP but eventually, time and effort paid off.

I totally agree that store and CE pets doth not make one hardcore by any means. I too have lots of super rare / unobtainable pets that I am proud of. That doesn't mean I wouldn't like access to pets previously inaccessible to me. I'm not saying to go so far as what they did with Warbot but to at least make them accessible, with some time investment and effort.

[Yalina]

The Warbot was a funky thing though. To get the pet when it was first available, you had to register on Mountain Dew's webpage. (I still get emails from them.) It was like a TCG pet, from an outside vendor, and only available for an extremely limited duration. I was totally fine with them making it available to everyone.