10 Days of Pet Battling Day 1 - My first day Pet Battling

This post is part of my 10 Days of Pet Battles series.

My first day pet battling was done on the first day Mists of Pandaria went live.  I started out in Pandaria with everyone else, but when I saw all those green paws... and I couldn't battle them, I knew I had to level my pets to get out there.

I started in Orgrimmar, as most people Hordies do, because that is where the trainer was.  But which pet to choose? Almost all of the things to battle in Orgrimmar were beasts, so I decided to start with my Clockwork Gnome - a mechanical who was strong against beasts.  And he was a star, he would knock those beasts dead!

I wasn't the only one in Org pet battling - it was hard to find even a Dung Beetle or Spiny Lizard so I went outside to go and try to catch some of these things.  And I was hooked after the first capture.  I remember I knew so little - I caught a rare chicken - it was my first rare - and I named it KFC.  I didn't know what rares were back then, I was such a noob!

I remember there was no easy way to tell what a rare was by looking at it.  People had macros for it, and there was also a mod for it - it's so much better now they fixed that so you can see what the rarity of the pet is when you battle it.

The levels come so easily at those low levels, and achievements pour in so easily, it wasn't hard to get hooked.  I only did toon levelling with Lushnek, so when he wasn't online, I spent my time Pet Battling.  I had pets at max level before I myself was max level!

I remember the day I was ready to tackle Pandaria.  I had just hit 22 with my Clockwork Gnome (which was named after one of my surgical colleagues who was quite buff - we named it Magic Mancuso) and my Gregarious Grell was also in the early 20s and I set off to start catching and battling all the Pandarian pets on offer.  I think my toon was still level 87 (and I had friends who had been 90 for days already) and after that I was happy levelling my toon in Pandaria, now that I could catch everything out there.

Those early days were quite good.  Nobody had high level pets then, so once I got to level 18 or so, those zones were mine for the picking.  No campers like now.  I remember seeing a Minfernal stuck in a tree - and I was so cross I couldn't battle it (I didn't know the interact with object keybind back then) that I killed it.  I didn't see a minfernal for ages after that!