This weeks episode (sorry for the length):
1) Some things I am excited about!
2) Community conversation: non-combat pets.
3) Giveaway winner announced!

I hope you enjoy!
- Alan

Grats to Kondor I really liked the non combat pets is wow. They gave me a reason to do extra runs in certain instances, learn different crafting abilities and do stuff in game I prolly wouldn't have done otherwise in order to fill out my collection. I don't think they should be sold for actual money though. Pets should be a trophy of something out of the ordinary that you accomplished, not how much disposable income you have.

Non-combat pets are fun to collect and show off. They wouldn't break immersion at all for me, this is just a game after all. Blizzard makes a ton of money selling these at $10 a piece, I could definitely see something in the future for Bioware if they decide to go that route.

As for where to get them, I think all of the methods mentioned are usually good. Rare drops, craftable ones, maybe even little side-quest rewards from missions that are kinda hidden would be nice.

*sigh* I never win things. XD

Personally, I love all pets. I frequently play pet classes just because I think pets are so cool. On my hunter in WoW, I would always run around with my pet and noncombat pet out, especially if the pet I was using had a non-combat version of it, such as Dragonhawk or the Core Hound.

I also spent a huge amount of time collecting non-combat pets. Maybe it was because I grew up during the pokemon craze, but I personally wanted to collect them all. My friends and I even grinded instances just for a stupid parrot to drop and we hunted that boy in Stormwind who sells limited edition cats DOWN!

In TOR, however... not sure how that would work. Can't really think of any characters who had 'pets' with them. Until I actually saw something, I couldn't really say. However, I do have a few ideas.

-Jedi Training Remote ( http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Remote )
-Something like Salacious B. Crumb ( http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Salacious_B._Crumb )

...thats all I got. XD

I loved my mini-diablo and mini-zergling pets from getting the original WoW CE, got asked at least once a day where I got them. I was ok with them being in WoW cause it's fantasy, but in the Star Wars universe. I would be disappointed if they did put some in, cause it would be just one more thing people would say "oh its a WoW clone". It's not something that would be immersion breaking for me, cause my character wouldn't ever have one out. If other people want em, so be it. Also, grats to the dude who won.

But Vader had mouse droids on his battle cruisers. I want a mouse droid. They rock!

In general I like vanity pets; however perhaps there should be an option to display or hide vanity pets for those that don't like them, and never have one that forces a character to emote, like the stupid trainset crap that WoW has.

Grats Kondor.

On the non combat pets I am a bit iffy about them being in the game world. Not so much in the game. Like it would be cool if you could have a pet on the ship but having it around doing random emotes in open world I wouldn't mind either in small doses. But I don't think I would like seeing hundreds of monkey, lemur like things running around the city just because its the cool thing to have. Speaking of which did they say players could enter other players ships? If they denied it then my pets on the ship statement carries little weight.

As long as you can toggle vanity pet display on and off I'm fine with that. The potential problem I see with them is pvp targeting. Using tab and targeting the pet instead of a player could lose you the fight.

This is actually the only reason im for having vanity pets, they can have that be the only thing to put microtransactions in use for, not stuff that would actually improve your character stats or normal companions.

You should come to england the sky waters the grass for us even in the summer!!