This is probably it and they’re playing it safe as they already lost alot of money with CoD not making sales expectations.
No it is not, if that was the case they’d have to remove the entirety of pet battle content, they’re simply leaving everything up and in Midnight, you just go up to the pet and dont even fight them, simply capture them and they dont have abilities.
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the patent is about catching them to use them for fighting .
so it makes total sense to me
Well I think there is a difference between “niche” content where obviously not the whole majority is going to do them and when the engagement numbers drops so low that its even not worth hiring that 1 guy to “flip the ON switch on reset day”.
We actually need numbers to see the whole picture.
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Yeah I suppose. We’ll never get that of course.
Best we can do is interpret third party gathered data and interpret that.
But it’s never going to be ‘the actual numbers’.
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I would assume that Delves drew a lot of “open world” players away from “casual” activities.
The story was a part of said raid. Hence they added story mode for the “tourists” as you proclaim them to be.
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Very possible.
I myself do less world content than I did in previous expansions.
This is partially due to delves; since they provide me the upgrades and progression I want.
But it’s also because I dislike the majority of TWW’s zones.
Don’t know how it will work out in Midnight. We’ll see.
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Tahra will never admit they’re wrong 
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Or blizzard has fired enough people and laid off employees that they have to cut meaningful casual experiences like pet battles from retail
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If numbers of pet battlers were too low, all they had to do is make pet battles give valorstones, crests, or even equipment. Engagement would then skyrocket.
Participation in online games is reward-driven, not interest-driven.
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Raiding, mythic included, is much more integral to World of Warcraft as a game and culture than pet battles. One is the pinnacle of one of the main pillars of the game, the other is a side activity. Kind of like a mechanical dead end which feeds very little into the rest of the game, especially since the collection aspect is staying.
Not arguing against pet battles, I just don’t think the comparison works.
Well thats the thing. It was never designed to be some major game activity but at best a side gimmick.
Giving it crests and what not…is the same as giving current rewards to old expansion raid tier transmog farmers, alt/new chars for dinging when leveling up, map explorers and stuff like that.
Correct. And if that happened, participation in that content would skyrocket and would show analyzers at Blizzard that players “enjoy” doing old expansion raids.
If Delves did not give equipment or they stopped giving better than Adventurer tier, more than 99% of people wouldn’t be running them.
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And if you gave leveling gilded and myth rewards than 99% of the playerbase will be altaholing like crazy.
And then you would proclaim that “WoW’s leveling is the best thing in the world. Look how many are doing it!”.
You can slap a huge bribe to 
and people will do that but it doesnt mean that the is not anymore.
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They are removing pet battles?
Exactly! That’s my whole point. There is no “good” or “bad” content. There is “rewarding” and “unrewarding” content.
Do people enjoy levelling in Timewalking? NO, THEY DO NOT! They do it because it’s optimal and because it rewards them the fastest with a level-cap character, which they can use for anything else they want to do.
Do people enjoy M+? NO, THEY DO NOT! They do it because it’s currently the optimal way to gear up.
No, they just go the way of Archaeology: It no longer gets new content. New pets in Midnight will not be battle pets but only companion-type (like Argent Squire or Khadgar’s head in a ball), they will be capturable by just right-clicking them, and there will be no more new pet trainers.
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So what about PvP then? That’s basically a side activity which feeds very little into the rest of the game.
No so much ‘removing’ as; not developing it further.
There will still be critters you can catch, but there won’t be new pet battles in Midnight.
Nor new abilities and whatnot. It’s basically being downgraded to ‘collecting only’.
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I beg to differ.
People are doing +11s and above where the only real “reward” is just a bigger number on rio.
And people keep doing pet battles despite them not rewarding anything, where the only reward is simply the satisfaction of killing the same enemy over and over, or maybe some battle-stones to level up lower-level pets.