Talk: Companion

Correct naming

I moved this to it's proper name, Minipets - also removed the thotbott links - wiki principle, internalized ETC - internalizing of links might just be my first community collaboration *CHEER!* (-:

User:SilverSide/sig 11:20, 1 Dec 2005 (EST)

What you call collaboration is unilateralism in some ways. Also, I'm sure how you came by "Minipet" as the –proper– term for these pets. In the BlizzCon swag page they called them "in-game pets".

--Fandyllic 3:27 PM PST 1 December 2005

I'm probably gonna reword this page and move it to Small Pet, since the term Minipet seems to have come from nowhere in particular. Blizzard calls them "Small Pets" on there official site, so I figure they're the authority. --Fandyllic 4:45 PM PST 1 Mar 2006

The model viewer has some models of a tiny zepplin, steam tank, and other such things. Are these vanity pets or something else? --Iavas 16:07, 18 March 2006

I cannot speak for the zepplin (model name of the tiny zeppelin), but the miniature steam tonk is an engineer-made item that can battle with other steam tonks with players who have them in duels only. Which means you can only whip one out during a duel, so I wouldn't call it a small pet. They are also available to play with at the Darkmoon Faire, but once again do not follow you around as a small pet would. I'm not sure what other such things you speak of. There are a multitude of small and baby animals in WoW, but many of them are not available as non-combat pets... such as bear cubs and skunks. Lilyth 06:31, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

People are definitely being confused by this page. I'm getting hits from the google archive of the old URL. I would personally change it back, this change seems arbitrary and anal. NickGray 22:48, 27 April 2007 (unsigned)

Realizing this is an old post, still, it seems that it would reflect current concerns, so, here's a response:

Badly named articles are confusing, and make the site less useful. Using Blizzard's terms facilitates lookup by players, who are already familiar with Blizzard's terms. The goal is functionality, and it is more important to wordsmith names, where bad wording may miss a connection, than in the articles, where it is possible to read between the lines and extract meaning.

Arbitrary would be, 'let's call it what my guild/friend/other local culture call it'. I don't see anyone making that argument.

Anal? Maybe so, but that's just Freud's negative spin on detail oriented, which is something you want here.

The getting hits argument is perhaps the most relevant, but is 'small pet' or 'companion' hard to find? Are they not getting hits?

It might be helpful if Blizzard used consistent terminology. Madkaugh (talk) 01:32, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

In patch 2.2 all these pets are now being called "companions", maybe that would be a better page name? Oahkoah 10:57, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

There is another fitting name for them, said in the article itself. "They are purely for show, providing no bonuses." so show pet could be better too. This small pet is quite unfitting. I would like to see a vote for companion or show pet. Both are more accurate than small pet. BlackSmith 15:08, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

When a character has one of these deployed, if you enable the names for companions in your interface, it says 'character name's companion' as the name for the pet. So the official Blizzard term in the interface is companion.

A few of them are conceptually closer to companions than pets - Green Helper, Red Helper, Snowman, Kwee Q. Peddlefeet, Tyrael.

So, they're not exactly all 'pets', nor 'small, nor 'mini', not exactly just for 'show' (see article), nor 'vanity', which also presumes a judgmental aspect that is not really appropriate.

non-combat pet might be a good choice, it is technically accurate (mostly, some of them are intended to duel); a bit wordy though. Could be called passive pet, but that could mean a combat pet set to passive.

By moving the subtypes of pet to their own terminology, Blizzard is disambiguating the term pet. Temporary, uncontrolled combat pets are now guardians. The subjects of this article are now companions. Warlock pets are minions. That leaves hunter pets as pets. If Blizzard is consistent, and the terminology takes root, future discussions will have less need for disambiguation. If I say pet, you don't think of mounts, do you? Madkaugh (talk) 02:03, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The new UI refers to them as "COMPANION" and the Unit functions bring back "Non-combat pet". So take your pick of those two. User:Tekkub/Sig 08:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I like name companion for the class, it is conceptually more inclusive. A pet is a companion, but not all companions are pets. In an article, I would use a pet name (non-combat pet is fine) if the creature type is critter, and companion if the creature type is a humanoid. I guess by default anything that isn't clearly a pet, the wisps, the elementals, would be a companion. Madkaugh (talk) 08:59, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Magical Crawdad

The information about Magical Crawdad pets seem to be moving out of the the realm of "unsubstantiated rumor", so I've updated the page with info from the best page I've been able to find on them yet [1]. Hopefully it isn't just a hoax.  :-) User:DarkRyder/Sig 14:31, 7 February 2007 (EST)

Indenting

I tried to fix the lack of indenting and bullet on the Alliance pets line for the Great Horned Owl. I could not find anything wrong and was unable to fix it.

Madkaugh 00:48, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

That is odd...--SWM2448 01:11, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I just ran into the same problem with the Ancona Chicken and the Disgusting Oozeling. I managed to fix them. What was needed was onlyinclude brackets on the tooltip in the item articles, or both also had an empty noinclude pair on the first line, just before the tooltip, which I also removed. Not sure which of the two changes or both were necessary. The body had noinclude brackets, which I left intact. Madkaugh (talk) 01:07, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Mounts are Companions and Pets?

Well according to the tab in-game, Companions and Mounts are under the Pets category. On the website, Mounts and Small Pets are under the Companions category. Check it out with the link I put. Rolandius (talk - contr) 10:19, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I thought you knew the difference between Mounts and Companions. g0urra[T҂C] 10:25, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I do. I was just looking at the new updated armory they did today. It has a Companions tab and then you look under it and it says Small Pets and Mounts. In-game there is a Pets tab. You click it and it shows you the Mounts tab and the Companions tab. Rolandius (talk - contr) 10:30, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Goblin Weather Machine

I just removed [Goblin Weather Machine - Prototype 01-B] from the consolidated companions table.

This item produces "a small weather effect above your head" - not that much different from a cascade of petals or snowflakes. Do we start calling those "companions"? I'd prefer an new name and article for "Character effects" or "Graphic effects on characters", distinct from mobile objects that follow the player around. Madkaugh (talk) 03:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I was the one that added [Goblin Weather Machine - Prototype 01-B] to the list only because WoWArmory calls it a small pet. -- ( Morph | Contribs | Talk ) 04:17, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

My bad; I will restore it right after I save this, but I still don't like it. Still, there's a lot of merit to sticking to Blizzard's terminology. Madkaugh (talk) 05:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Split recommendation

In two ways, this page is too large: The gallery causes it to have an extended load time. Beyond that, the text of the page runs to some 53k or so currently. The WoWwiki editor notes this as a possible browser concern.

I would recommend that this page be split along the same lines as Mount was: divide the pets into categories (better than the current, one would hope), and provide the gallery piecemeal.

Another possibility is to have the gallery on a separate page. Either way, the master companion table might also benefit by being transcluded into this page, to make working on it more separable. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 00:23, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

It would be wonderful to have at least the gallery separate, if the Mount page doesn't need a gallery within the article, I don't see why the Companion page needs to be any different. Since we already have an example to work with, we should go ahead and do that. The load time for the page is redonkulous. The consolidated table could also use it's own page.--Mondoblasto (talk) 05:45, February 24, 2010 (UTC)

I sorta undertook that task on my own recognizance. I haven't though, heard squeals of outrage. You wanting an actual gallery page, or would you be happy with pets images as with the current mount pages? --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 20:54, February 24, 2010 (UTC)

I would say like the mount pages: if people browsing want to see a picture, they can just go to the mount's page. It's a bit annoying to scroll down the gallery as it is, the words "wall of pics" come to mind, heh. No harm in distributing the pics and taking the load off the Companion page. I think because the pets are small, we tend to think that we can just bundle all the pics together.. "well they're small, so they should fit, right?" Kinda bit us in the butt though.--Mondoblasto (talk) 06:48, February 25, 2010 (UTC)

Rarest companion pets

What I believe are the rarest companion pets are the Jade Tiger, Zipao Tiger, Poley, Lurky, Lucky, Tiny Green Dragon, and Tiny Red Dragon. FenneKindleFire (talk) 23:22, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

the zipao tiger is currently available via amazon prime gaming--the page for it just hasn't been updated yet. that'll increase how many people have it at least a little bit.

but yeah, other than that, it seems like region-specific pets indeed tend to be the rarest. WarcraftPets has a list of rare pets here; it's only able to count among people who track their collections on WarcraftPets, but it's interesting to look at nonetheless. (also note that the first few pets, the ones that don't have a blue bar at all, are unavailable on retail) --Eithris (talk) 01:06, 2 October 2023 (UTC)