Ani

I started playing 8 years ago, and about a year later I got introduced to the pet battle system by a guildie and friend, who taught me how to start, what pets to get and where to find strats. I was hooked ever since.

I've done every pet dungeon, every tournament, I have every pve achievement (nothing wrong with it, I just don't do anything PVP). My collection has over 1900 unique pets, which is about 96% of the available pets in the game, and only 26 of them have not seen any battles yet (I just collected them).

They claim no engagement, but it's them who failed to add replayability to the system. The dungeons only give so many rewards, so once you've collected everything, there is no point in going back.

Pet battles are the way to go if you play a pacifist character (all my priests and rogues are), a chill and relaxed thing to do while having your coffee or getting ready to start your day, and one of the staple activitites when the seasonal content runs dry.

Pet battles have been the only true evergreen system WoW has ever had, that requires you to do everything in the game if you want to collect all the pets.

I'm already pissed at their decision of removing all wild pets from the last content patch, and only adding 6 new models with the same movement set but slightly different colors, and even more pissed that they don't consider the subject worth it of even one line on the patch notes. This was only announced because someone called them out for it.

I'm for sure sad and angry to see the system go, and will stop my subscription if it happens (yes, it's that important to me).

If their decision was about the Nintendo lawsuit, they would've gotten rid of all pet battles, not just the new ones, so I highly doubt that's the real reason. The real reason is their investors want more money for less effort, and it's starting to show all around the game. Pet battles is just one of the first steps towards that.