Overwhelmed by duplicate pets!

[Nomm]

Hey guys,

Before I took a break from wow, I was pretty big on pet collecting. Having 182 pets, all collected on one character, the unique-ness of those pets was pretty valuable to me. The number was a trophy, and each pet had its special place.

Recently I logged in, and to my surprise (and horror), my collection had become bloated and inflated with duplicates! I'm sure some of you experienced this as well.

I prefer that the number of pets I have equals the number of unique pets I've managed to collect, without duplicates. Is there any reason not to just delete/release duplicate pets? Or does the new pet battle system give good reason to keep pet duplicates?

Is anyone else concerned/disturbed by all this mess in their collection due to alt/account-wide copies?

[Nkara]

I can totally relate to that, I don't really see the point in having more than 1 pet of each. I guess it's to encourage trading?

[RallyC]

WellI suppose there's also the idea of having different names for the pets and such. Example you have say, 3 white kittens. You start to level one and give it a name, "Snowball" or something. Now if you're into RP maybe you sorta base the name off what you think your character would name it. Now the issue arises, with sharing the pet journal among all characters: well this toon is a different, class/race etc. than this one and this name really doesn't make sense for them as it doesn't fit their personality. So rather than having to rightclick their name and rename them every time you change characters you can just give the other toon a separate kitten to have. Also I do believe moves become unlocked the more you lvl the pet, yes? So perhaps you want to change up play styles for the same pet. Have one focus on dots or something and another healing.

[Prime]

I thought after the launch of MoP, you're supposed to be able to cage those duplicates to get them out of your spellbook and then sell them or at least send the cages off to an alt for the time being (rather than just releasing them).

How exactly do you cage them? I'm not sure yet.

[Lysi]

You can cage and sell/trade/give away many of the pets. To cage them you just right click on the pet in the pet journal and caging is an option. Of course for the common pets there will be no market, but for rarer pets someone else may want them. For battle pets they can have different stats. Lets say you see a better one in the wild, you can capture it, without losing the one you already had. Also, many wild pets have the same name but different skins, so you might want those extra spots to get them in different colors. At the moment your journal can have way more than 3 of any given pet (as many as your alts had of that pet) but to learn another of the same pet you have to have under 3. Also, if your collection with the duplicates is over 500, you'll need to get rid of some to learn any new pet. The achievements are supposed to show your number of unique pets, but last I looked it was bugged.

[Nkara]

Ah yes, it all makes sense now after reading your posts and having played Pet Battles for a few days.
I know see the benefit of having multiples of the same pet - for example you could build a team of 3 of the same pet but have them using different abilities. And also that the skin is different makes it more fun having multiple versions.