Many players enjoying World of Wacraft’s pet battle system are also fans of Nintendo’s Pokémon games. Pokémon has been frequently criticized for being a dark concept. A ten year old boy goes out into the world making animals fight one another to near death. He traps them in small spheres, several times smaller than the pokémon being caught, and carries them on his belt or in a digital storage box. The protagonist in the anime and in the video games is always trying to do the right thing and fight some great evil, but that does not necessarily make capturing wild animals and forcing them to fight acceptable.
Denying the similarities between Pokémon and pet battles is silly, and even though pet battles in World of Warcraft are nowhere near as complex as they are in Pokémon games, the core mechanics are all there. So how does World of Warcraft’s pet battle system compare to Pokémon? Can the concept be considered just as dark? Could it be less morbid? Could it be even worse?