I can’t speak to what goes on in Gevlons head but what I get out of his blog is not so much the belittling of people who collect minipets but the people who do so and then join a raid and leave after a few wipes because they can’t afford the repair bill.

These are the type of people who show up to a raid and perform poorly because they don’t take the time to learn a proper spell rotation or can’t afford to Enchant and gem the gear properly let alone buy flasks or buff foods. When the raid leader tells them they need to be replaced he is called an elistist or worse.

These are the people who complain so much that the content is too hard for them that Blizzard nerfs the instances so that anyone who does it after the nerf can never get quite the same feeling of achievement.

As for the real money pet’s I’m not sure people have a problem with the pet’s in and of themselves but they take it as just the beginning of the slide down to where you can buy gear with real money.

Now I know some say “so what I could care less” but to some the epic gear is like a trophy of their achievements in the game and it would be like going and buying a sports trophy and displaying it as some personal achievement.

Hell, half of the Pandaren’s cost goes to charity anyway.
Abi´s last blog ..The Icecrown Citadel Progression Plan.

Well said.
Psynister´s last blog ..AoE Grinding: Frost Mage Edition

I think each faction of wow player kind-of hates the other, though. Min/max raiders think it’s dumb to do anything in the game that doesn’t improve your kit. Casuals hate achievement hunters for screwing up a pug when trying to do something silly in an instance and wiping it. Raiders hate casuals for getting equivalent gear to them for anything other than raiding. .. and don’t get me started on PvP, Duelling and Arena.

“Cute”-haters, myself included, are actively annoyed by the train sets, Mr T’s, Costumes, and noise-making pets. I mean, really? If you want cute, I hear there’s a ‘Hello Kitty’ game that’s out there. Why don’t you go play that, so blizzard can set their art people back to making things that actually pertain to the game. But, then, I don’t think you’re dumb for liking cute pets, and in fact, I’m sure the “Cute” collectors out there think I’m taking the game too seriously. It’s just human nature.

I collect mini pets but definitely not to have better ones than other people, that doesn’t make any sense to me at all. For example my druid’s favourite pets are the dragonhawks you can buy from vendors, they fly along with her as she zooms through Outlands

^^^^^ It’s that simple. Gev collects gold. He’s already tested his techniques but continues to hit the gold cap.

Cute as pets may be, I do not like in-game pets, free or otherwise.

But in my, across multiple 80s, backpacks you will find:
‘Faded photograph’ of Link and Zelda gnomes
Well worn, and well loved toy that was a quest reward from the child in Terrokar forest for saving his friends.

Neither of those items in my backpack add value.

I do not expect anyone to agree, or understand, with my reasons for keeping them in my inventory.

However, I do feel that I have no right to criticize what others consider fun in game as it does not interfere with my in game enjoyment.

I check in on Gevlon every 2-3 weeks to see what’s up. I like how he started out, and I do enjoy some of the MotW posts, but the rest is crap these days. It’s never been on my blogroll because it has nothing at all to do with leveling, and I find that most people actually hate his methods rather than enjoying them.

But, he has his right to playing/doing whatever he wants just as much as the rest of us, so I’ll leave him to whatever he enjoys doing.

I didn’t buy the pets for myself because as much as I like the Panda’s kung fu goodness, I’m not really big on pets myself. I buy a lot of them in game and don’t mind grinding for some here and there, but I never actually use them. I’ve got a macro that randomly summons them, but I never remember to click it either. So it just wasn’t a reasonable purchase for me to make since it does take real money.

However, my wife really likes the minipets, so I went ahead and bought both of them for her the day that they were made available. She loves them, she uses them, and she has a blast showing them off to her friends and getting them excited about having them too.

If Blizzard makes a ton of money off of these, then so be it. I happen to love blizzard and their products. I’ve played every game they’ve ever put out, and at one time or another have owned every one of them as well. If Blizzard continues to live a long, healthy life because of my contribution to their wallets, then so be it. That just means more games for me to have fun with in the future.
Psynister´s last blog ..Vanity Pet Analysis: Lil’ K.T.

If I cared how many my neighbour had, I would be constantly asking each person about their collection, or looking up their stats on the armory to see if I was “beating” them.

Certainly the cooler, rarer items are nice to show off – I had a huge amount of fun taking my Ethereal Trader through Stormwind and Ironforge while I was stealthed – watching everyone wonder what on earth he was, running through the city.. but I don’t “show off” my pets because I want to feel superior to people who don’t have them.

I have the rocket mounts. I get them out occasionally because, like the turtle mount, they crack me up. Cruising around at a snail’s pace on the blue rocket is hilarious to me. Hitting spacebar over and over on the turtle or doing laps of Dalaran is well worth the price I paid, for the laughs I get (and that others get, while I’m having gigglefits over it).

I will concede that sometimes, “cool stuff” is for showing off on the Dalaran bank steps. But Gevlon is way off when he thinks that every pet and mount that we ever get is purely to add another chalk mark on the board to represent what we have and what our neighbours don’t.

Cute and entertaining pets make me laugh – there’s really not much else to it.

For those who may not know (if you care) about what I was rabbiting on about re the Pavlovian Response and how it relates to WoW, here is is:

WoW is built on manipulating the work-reward-pleasure mechanism of the brain – you spend long amounts of time grinding mobs, doing quests, you get rewarded – you ding, you occasionally get a random blue drop or you win that long-sought-after epic, whatever and that makes you feel happy.

The reason this conditioning works is because the brain is hardwired to release chemicals that make you feel good when you get the “payoff” for a bunch of hard work – the biological incentive for doing something that keeps you alive. Hard exercise is a great example of something that hurts and yet makes you feel good because your brain rewards you for doing something good for you.

However, the brain can be tricked into making you feel good for something that wasn’t really of any consequence at all in terms of your survival for another day as a living organism.

In short, the reason people enjoy collecting pets or grinding reps or whatever is that they get that biological sense of reward for doing so – the game makes them do “work”, and then the game both predictably and also randomly rewards them for that work with something cool. Did I mention how over the moon I felt when I was levelling in Dustwallow Marsh and I got a Dark Whelpling when I wasn’t event farming for it? I was ecstatic, and I had wanted one of those things for the longest time, ever since I first learned about them. I even sent emails to my RL friends with a picture of me… err, I mean, my toon… with my new Dark Whelpling friend and they were like “WTF?!? what is this crap?!?” and I didn’t care because I was so so happy. But I digress…

People don’t collect pets or mounts or exalted reputations just because they want to “keep up with the Joneses” as Gevlon ignorantly proclaimed (although of course there will be some who do do it for that reason) – most people do it simply because it makes them feel good for the well-researched biological reasons I outlined. Even though I just quit WoW for the umpteenth time (I know, don’t ask lol), I will be up front and say that when I saw the two new pets my immediate reaction was “OOH SHINY!”.

It’s pretty obvious from his constant reference to “ape-subroutines” that he read that pathetic “Monkeysphere” article and had an epiphany. It’s no surprise that his rantings are as intellectually bankrupt as that same screed.