PvP is very central, and I don’t even say this as a PvPer, because I only have a casual interest in it. You can choose not to engage with it, as with almost every single mechanic in the game, but it’s still integral to WoW’s design, it’s built on the same fundamental combat interactions, it rewards gear and benefits from owning gear, it’s deeply intertwined with the game’s world, narrative and main themes, and it has a huge historical and cultural significance.
Pet battles are like a minigame in comparison. Which doesn’t mean they don’t have a place in the game, but you can’t take PvP or Mythic raiding out without greatly damaging the game’s identity and culture.
Of course this would not be the POV of a fan of pet battles, but I think from a wider perspective they are not very significant compared to the real pillars of WoW.
Then as I said to Tah already. We dont know the exact numbers regarding pet battles.
M+ activity can at least be somewhat “educated guessed” based on reports on rio and etc while pet battle numbers are completely unknown.
If the activity for pet battlers has been reduced to such levels that Blizzard decided to pull the plug on it…
Well a restaurant will eventually close shop if it only gets like 5 customers as week and cant even cover electricity bills…despite those 5 people thinking that its the best restaurant ever and will feel sad about it being closed.
I disagree with most of what you’re saying, and that’s fine.
But look; at the end of the day whatever any of us think doesn’t matter.
Blizzard is a business and if a system doesn’t make financial sense to keep supporting with development time and money, then it’s their fiduciary duty to stop it and focus on things that do make the company money.
I am not arguing against that. I am arguing that it is extremely easy to change the popularity of a feature simply by attaching a sought-after reward. If pet battles are on their death bed because too few people do it, them simply make them give a good reward that the majority of players wants and suddently it will raise significantly in popularity.
Hell it doesn’t even need to be equipment! Imagine if every week there was a weekly quest to defeat all 8 trainers to get 1 Augment rune. Literally more than 50% of players would be doing pet battles.
I agree.
In fact; I never liked pet battles. But I grinded it like crazy back in the day, because I wanted the safari helmet toy.
Rewards are excellent motivators for engagement.
Not gonna lie, happy to see Pet Battles go. They felt unrelated to WoW and resulted in pointless Pet Battle World Quests on the map instead of a normal World Quest.
I’m sorry to hear you liked them, I always roll my eyes when I see a paw symbol on the map.
The fact still remains that it’s still removal of content.
However, I’m sure that with the removal of pet battles, those three extra raid tiers that have been missing for the last few expansions will return, given the immense drain on the developers and resources that pet battles took…
Excellent. Bye bye PvP… Farewell Mythic plus… rToodleloo forever raids… and Blizzard can funnel all development into single player questing.
People celebrating the removal of Pet battles should be very careful what they wanted.
Ok I was confused for second that why the hell would they be removing pet battles, still pretty meh if they can only critters but no new pets
Technically that is same as ending them then
Its a real shame that PB and Archology are both not getting anything new, also PVP seems to be left with bare minimum again. The whole expac being done on the cheap season 1 for m+ is having 5 reused dungeons and only 9 bosses spread over 3 raids, yet we have to pay 90 bucks for the game.
I addressed this above in another comment but you were so eager to reply you didn’t read it. (Shocker).
So I’ll be nice and quote it.
So now you read this, how does that make you feel? 
I wouldn’t mind PvP being removed. I quit playing it in WotLK because of how toxic people are in it.
I don’t celebrate it. I never with my post tried to take a shot at the OP. I am sorry for you if you did think that. It means you are set to look for the worse in people.
I do enjoy pet battles myself. I just wanted to offer a viable alternative.
You know it’s really easy to say what’s wrong but harder to provide a viable, constructive solution.
You immediately assumed the worse.
There is bit of irony in here, anyways, I would prefer if they didnt as its my only content I do in the game 
For the record thats a gross generalization of any who plays pvp, assuming the worst. Also announcing to be fine by straight up removing some content from the game cause self have generalized opinion about its playerbase is not constructive solution either.
Me saying I wouldn’t mind PvP being removed and sharing my opinion with the community is a subjective view.
I never said the whole community is toxic, but from my experience with it were, think of making alts to /w you after they fail to kill you. I did the best thing possible and leave that aspect of the game alone, rather than complaining on forums about it or trash talking others.
So I feel what I did was constructive.
Your reply reaffirms I did the right thing and let PvP be for those that enjoy it 
You literally did, that is a generalization. And literally you claiming players in pvp to be something of your opinion.
The forums purpose is to express our thoughts about the game. Argue what you want about pvp on your opinional level but you will lose the argument on whether people should complain or express their wishes and worries of the game on the games forum. That is literally one of the many purposes of any game forum out there.
That was not my intention, that was a communication error on my part.
I appreciate you fully quoting that sentence.
As you are well aware, constructive debate is something to be encouraged. However, you got gaslighting and black mailing people on certain forums and that is not ok. I am sure you can agree on that.
Like I said:
That’s my opinion and a solution that seems to work just fine for me ever since WotLK.
The game for me, became les toxic and more enjoyable. That’s my personal experience.
Tbf, the engagement you made with my post about that subject specifically, while not directed at you, must have some words of truth to it. Else you wouldn’t find the need to defend the aspect of the game and by extend yourself (bold assumption of me)?
Edit: Tldr though, this is my opinion on pvp based on my experience with it back in the day and I can’t say if it’s still relevant. In addition, it’s not part of the topic of the OP.
There is similar everywhere not specifically tied to any specific game content whether it is pve or pvp.
You shouldnt try “read me” or try do psyche analysis of me from a reply you get on your generalization you make on playerbase to call them in some negative tone. Maybe I just dont like being insulted personally, which you do if you call all of us as something who play pvp. Or maybe I just dont like reading comments like “I wouldnt mind pvp being removed”
We can agree then that you used wrong choise of words if you generalize everyone in one content to be something you think of them personally as your opinion. But its whatever. Only thing I take personal is seeing you say you wish pvp being removed from the game
Can i have your pumpkin ? 
Correction: I said I wouldn’t mind it. That doesn’t mean I have a desire for it. There is a thin line where you want to put words in my mouth that I didn’t say at all.
Let me define this so it can’t be taken out of context:
I wouldn’t lose sleep if the game developers decided to completely remove this aspect of the game. As I do not engage with this specific aspect of the game. I am not asking for it’s removal, but I will let you know it would not affect me, in how I play the game.
Well, I wouldnt mind if shuffle were removed from the game as its currently deflating arenas after they add it in dragonflight without doing any rework or adjustment on the existing rated system at all, leaving arenas severaly deflated after majority of playerbase moved into shuffles and later in blitz. Other than that pvp is fine, just need more active devs with more say. In general its great content you log to play when you want and end playing when you want. Easiest content for max lvl gear in its content aswell. If they didnt have pvp templates for its gear raiders would be max ilvl in few weeks by doing random stuff in rated for conquest and mixing up pve and pvp gear. I wouldnt even mind.