I wish they had never changed it.

I had a lvl 70 Ghostsaber which was pretty rare, considering you can only tame them at lvl 19.

Now any jackass can grab a Ghostsaber and have it to lvl 80 in a day. What skin pet you have doesn't mean anything anymore.

I agree that if you are going to level it 5 lvls below the character, you might as well level it to the same level, because it is totally pointless now.

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Q u o t e:
In a world without pet loyalty, we feared that letting pets instantly jump to your level would make them truly disposable. When it was time for your raid or Arena you could just literally grab a pet, buy talent points, and you'd be good to go. The hunter pet is supposed to be a buddy, your loyal companion, and as such some kind of investment, not the closest bear, dinosaur or spider you could find.

It could be that our fears were not a big deal in the long run, but that was our logic for keeping pet leveling.

It is also slightly fun to have a few more milestones pop up after you've earned your last level, but by far this was a secondary concern.

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Outside of a very very VERY select few no one considers leveling pets a milestone.

I consider them a chore and time investment I have to endure that no other class does.

The people that really care will still go out of their way to find a skin they like... sometimes traveling far away and even inside instances etc.

If there is any chore it should be in regards to getting the right look of a pet you like so the people that take pride in that can worry about that and the people that don't don't.



OH and GC please throw us a bone on what you guys are working on in regards to LnL.

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Q u o t e:


Outside of a very very VERY select few no one considers leveling pets a milestone.

I consider them a chore and time investment I have to endure that no other class does.

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If we could go replace our pets with PVE NPC's, we would.

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Q u o t e:

It is also slightly fun to have a few more milestones pop up after you've earned your last level, but by far this was a secondary concern.

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It's not fun to have to keep leveling a pet, not because I want to, but because YOU, Blizzard, cannot decide on how much damage certain pets should do, constantly changing their damage coefficients, means people have to constantly change their pets, VERY annoying. And honestly, it's a video game, how much loyalty can someone have to a prettified block of polygons?

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Q u o t e:
In a world without pet loyalty, we feared that letting pets instantly jump to your level would make them truly disposable. When it was time for your raid or Arena you could just literally grab a pet, buy talent points, and you'd be good to go. The hunter pet is supposed to be a buddy, your loyal companion, and as such some kind of investment, not the closest bear, dinosaur or spider you could find.

It could be that our fears were not a big deal in the long run, but that was our logic for keeping pet leveling.

It is also slightly fun to have a few more milestones pop up after you've earned your last level, but by far this was a secondary concern.

---

For many players, time investment isn't going to make a pet less disposable, it's just more wasted time. For those that truly care about pets, having to spend a bit less time mindlessly grinding isn't going to hurt them.

Maybe create a system that allows a master to feed his pet something at max level to make it level much much quicker? That way, those that do enjoy the "milestones" can have them, and the rest of us don't need to? :)

And while you're at it, give them resilience. >.>

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Q u o t e:
In a world without pet loyalty, we feared that letting pets instantly jump to your level would make them truly disposable. When it was time for your raid or Arena you could just literally grab a pet, buy talent points, and you'd be good to go. The hunter pet is supposed to be a buddy, your loyal companion, and as such some kind of investment, not the closest bear, dinosaur or spider you could find.

It could be that our fears were not a big deal in the long run, but that was our logic for keeping pet leveling.

It is also slightly fun to have a few more milestones pop up after you've earned your last level, but by far this was a secondary concern.

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so why not keep the 5 level gap but peed up the leveling process... it is painfully slow and a waste of time right now...

speeding it up but keeping the 5 level gap would still eliminate grabbing any random pet for a raid like you mentioned.

also, when are you guys plannning to fix the numberous pet spellbook bugs and pathing issues? its been nearly 2 months on the spellbook bugs.

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Q u o t e:
SNIP... What Ghostcrawler said.

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I think this is a good reason to preserve pet levels. Honestly, forming a bond and having a kind of "buddy" is fun.

However, consider this:

I've had the same two pets since level 20 (on my hunter, which I am not posting on). I really want to stick with them because they are my buddies. I have TWO pets to keep at my level, however, and the higher level I get, the harder it is to maintain. In the end, one of my pets is my level, and the other is 10 levels behind.

In my example, the gorilla is CAKE to level. He's always my level. My PVP cat that stealths when I shadowmeld, however, is brutally painstaking to level with me.

The result is that... as much as I'd like for these guys to be my buddies, your design actually ENCOURAGES me to abandon my "10 levels in the rear" cat in favor of a brand new "5 levels in the rear" cat, even though my current cat is my buddy whom I've had for years now.

This is the big flaw with the current design, as I see it.

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Q u o t e:
In a world without pet loyalty, we feared that letting pets instantly jump to your level would make them truly disposable. When it was time for your raid or Arena you could just literally grab a pet, buy talent points, and you'd be good to go. The hunter pet is supposed to be a buddy, your loyal companion, and as such some kind of investment, not the closest bear, dinosaur or spider you could find.

It could be that our fears were not a big deal in the long run, but that was our logic for keeping pet leveling.

It is also slightly fun to have a few more milestones pop up after you've earned your last level, but by far this was a secondary concern.

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Gotta agree with this, if hunters are going to get to customize their pets as much as they want, both in terms of abilities and aesthetics, there should be some work to do in order to earn those pets.


Otherwise allow me to permanently enslave any random demon i want.

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Q u o t e:


so why not keep the 5 level gap but peed up the leveling process... it is painfully slow and a waste of time right now...

speeding it up but keeping the 5 level gap would still eliminate grabbing any random pet for a raid like you mentioned.

also, when are you guys plannning to fix the numberous pet spellbook bugs and pathing issues? its been nearly 2 months on the spellbook bugs.

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They already sped it up once. The problem is that they think a lot of hunters "enjoy" this, and that we have more loyalty to a pet than a warlock because we get to level them, WOOHOO, looks like they nerfed Scorpids, so I have to go tame ANOTHER pet and level it for my PVP!!!! YAY, OH JOYOUS DAY!

/rant

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Q u o t e:


I think this is a good reason to preserve pet levels. Honestly, forming a bond and having a kind of "buddy" is fun.

However, consider this:

I've had the same two pets since level 20 (on my hunter, which I am not posting on). I really want to stick with them because they are my buddies. I have TWO pets to keep at my level, however, and the higher level I get, the harder it is to maintain. In the end, one of my pets is my level, and the other is 10 levels behind.

In my example, the gorilla is CAKE to level. He's always my level. My PVP cat that stealths when I shadowmeld, however, is brutally painstaking to level with me.

The result is that... as much as I'd like for these guys to be my buddies, your design actually ENCOURAGES me to abandon my "10 levels in the rear" cat in favor of a brand new "5 levels in the rear" cat, even though my current cat is my buddy whom I've had for years now.

This is the big flaw with the current design, as I see it.

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A separate point...

I lose a lot of motivation to keep my cat buddy when you introduce brand new high level cats with the same skin (black lion, which was once exclusive to Humar).

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Q u o t e:


I think this is a good reason to preserve pet levels. Honestly, forming a bond and having a kind of "buddy" is fun.

However, consider this:

I've had the same two pets since level 20 (on my hunter, which I am not posting on). I really want to stick with them because they are my buddies. I have TWO pets to keep at my level, however, and the higher level I get, the harder it is to maintain. In the end, one of my pets is my level, and the other is 10 levels behind.

In my example, the gorilla is CAKE to level. He's always my level. My PVP cat that stealths when I shadowmeld, however, is brutally painstaking to level with me.

The result is that... as much as I'd like for these guys to be my buddies, your design actually ENCOURAGES me to abandon my "10 levels in the rear" cat in favor of a brand new "5 levels in the rear" cat, even though my current cat is my buddy whom I've had for years now.

This is the big flaw with the current design, as I see it.

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This is a great post and a really good reason why I'd like to see a method of leveling pets up to speed. Perhaps somehow making it much easier to level a pet to the highest level of other pets you have?

RP'ers vs practicality. Who wins?

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Q u o t e:
In a world without pet loyalty, we feared that letting pets instantly jump to your level would make them truly disposable. When it was time for your raid or Arena you could just literally grab a pet, buy talent points, and you'd be good to go. The hunter pet is supposed to be a buddy, your loyal companion, and as such some kind of investment, not the closest bear, dinosaur or spider you could find.

It could be that our fears were not a big deal in the long run, but that was our logic for keeping pet leveling.

It is also slightly fun to have a few more milestones pop up after you've earned your last level, but by far this was a secondary concern.

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I dinged 80 yesterday. My profile hasn't updated for whatever reason.

I can say with absolute certainty that I am not looking forward to leveling a stable full of pets to 80. That is a chore and it seems almost completely unnecessary. It's a carry over though, so if I have to I'll just suck it up and get it done. Frankly I'm thrilled not to have to level them from 70 (or worse), so the current implementation is an obvious improvement.

Just to illustrate:
I had a Jormungar worm I tamed in Borean Tundra almost as soon as I got off the boat. I ended up liking it and kept it as my primary tenacity pet to about 74. Rather than go through the grind of leveling him 75-80 after I dinged, I just abandoned him at the stable and flew to Storm Peaks to tame a new one @ 80. It didn't bother me to lose him, because -- oh wait, here he is back again, same name same talents, and he's 5 levels stronger! It just made sense.

There's definitely an attachment to unique pets that you've nurtured and brought up to high levels -- Uhk'lok and Humar the Pridelord for me. That was essentially stripped away when the auto-pet levels were introduced. Honestly, I don't miss it.

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Q u o t e:
RP'ers vs practicality. Who wins?

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Obviously, as the realm types would suggest Practicality take the cake....

RP Server that way >>

I just bring the deadweight in to leech exp off of groups until it levels enough to be able to hit things.

Level 75 pet at level 80 is useless. A talentless level 80 pet would have been far better.

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Q u o t e:
In a world without pet loyalty, we feared that letting pets instantly jump to your level would make them truly disposable.

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Flipside is you gave us 5 stable slots (and spec dependent pets) along with handy raid buffs to smooth out less than ideal raid makeups. Without a time machine its currently impossible to store lvl80 pets i could possibly bring to a raid along with my pve/pvp pets.
Also i dont know if you are aware how many lvl 79-80 tameables exist right now but its pretty poor, simply placing one model of each pet at 79-80 randomly around Northrend would make the whole system easier.

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Q u o t e:
In a world without pet loyalty, we feared that letting pets instantly jump to your level would make them truly disposable. When it was time for your raid or Arena you could just literally grab a pet, buy talent points, and you'd be good to go. The hunter pet is supposed to be a buddy, your loyal companion, and as such some kind of investment, not the closest bear, dinosaur or spider you could find.

It could be that our fears were not a big deal in the long run, but that was our logic for keeping pet leveling.

It is also slightly fun to have a few more milestones pop up after you've earned your last level, but by far this was a secondary concern.

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While this may be true and valid to an extent (I'll admit I still have the boar that I leveled this toon with, even used him to level through Northend "just because"), he's really more of a "I keep him around because..." pet because of the nerf Boars got to their threat generation a while back.

And OK, the large threat generation was a bug, I understand that. But that doesn't change the fact that the other edge of the "we want you to have some sort of attachment to the pet" is that we get more annoyed with you when you change them. Whether it be too much DPS, or too much threat, or some other aspect ... its annoying to lose some of that investment you want us to make in the pet.

Would having pets auto-level to the Hunter's level make them more disposal. I dunno ... maybe. Maybe not. What makes someone choose one pet skin over another? Or keep a pet with one look over another when new ones become available? I think there's more to attachment than just "grinding them 5 levels" of catch-up when the hunter/pet level difference is 5 or more levels. No?

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Q u o t e:
In a world without pet loyalty, we feared that letting pets instantly jump to your level would make them truly disposable. When it was time for your raid or Arena you could just literally grab a pet, buy talent points, and you'd be good to go. The hunter pet is supposed to be a buddy, your loyal companion, and as such some kind of investment, not the closest bear, dinosaur or spider you could find.

It could be that our fears were not a big deal in the long run, but that was our logic for keeping pet leveling.

It is also slightly fun to have a few more milestones pop up after you've earned your last level, but by far this was a secondary concern.

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Couldn't you think of another system that offers incentives for length of ownership while not needlessly punishing those that seek change?

Maybe a title system for pets? Or a visual distinction for pets that have been tamed for years verses pets that have been tamed for days? Nothing that makes a pet better, just something cosmetic (like achievements are).

I am not a game developer so my creative offerings are limited.

But if your goal is to encourage (maybe even reward) hunters who hold on to and use their pets, I think a less tedious and more fun system could be made.

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Q u o t e:


For many players, time investment isn't going to make a pet less disposable, it's just more wasted time. For those that truly care about pets, having to spend a bit less time mindlessly grinding isn't going to hurt them.

Maybe create a system that allows a master to feed his pet something at max level to make it level much much quicker? That way, those that do enjoy the "milestones" can have them, and the rest of us don't need to? :)

And while you're at it, give them resilience. >.>

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Don't overlook this idea. A pet biscuit only usable at 80 that automagically levels your pet to 80... Hell, make it a gold sink if you want. I could see myself seriously considering that over the level grind. Especially if the cost wasn't astronomical.


Edit: Better yet, make it an Engineering item. That profession could use a boost. ;)