Pets as a form of Character Customisation

The other pets topic is sort of stuck in a loop. "Pets! "No only race X and Y can have pets because they will have the the pet classes!" "I don't like pet classes at all!"But the author's idea wasn't even Pet Classes...

So, hears the question, should anyone be able to get a Pet in WAR? I don't mean "should anyone be able to train a tiger and have it fight with joo!" or I would of asked that. Pets would serve to help your character stick out in the game. Think about it, if you are an Orc facing an army of humans are you really going to say

"Look it's that brown haired dude with the funny fantasy name! OMGZORS HE'S UNDEFEATED"

No. You might recognise his name and know that he's tough from hearing it or you might right click him and find he's undefeated but I don't like those options, because they are so fake and unimmersive.

There's a far better chance of you saying

"Wait, I think I see a red hawk on that guy's sholder. Could that be Sir So-and-so of the Blood Hawks? OH NOES WE'RE DOOMED!!!!"

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Now, part 2. Implimentation. There are several degrees to which you can impliment 'Pets'

1. Part of the Character Customisation Screen. Small creature such as Birds and Ferrets could sit on your shoulder like statues.
-Advantages: Easy to impliment
-Disadvantages: Fake as hell
-Found in City of Heroes

2. An NPCish creature that follows your character with Basic AI.
-Advantages: Allows you to impliment larger creatures such as Dogs, Cats and Monkeys.
-Disadvantages: Harder to program.
-Found in Ragnarok. Found in CoH Guild Wars and WoW to some extent.

3. NPCish Creature 2.0. Essentualy Option 2 with more work put into it. Dogs could bark at your enemy when you fight, cats could perhaps climb walls, monkeys could emote faces.
-Advs: Very Immersive and cool, a unigue feature other games lack. Good for advertising.
-Disadvs: Very Hard to impliment.
-Found in...I don't think there is any. Maybe some single players games or non-RPGs

4. Exotic Mounts. Stick out from the crowd by riding a Rhino or perhaps a terridatyl or some other rediculious animal.
-Advs: Adds to Character Customisation.
-Disadvs: Extra work for the art team.
-Found in WoW to some extent(You can get other Races' Mounts after a painstaking process that does help you to stick out from the crowd very much)

5. Allow Pets to Fight.
-Advs: Some people like being to have any class take a fighting pet
-Disadvs: Doesn't add much to game exept immbalence. Diminishes the uniqueness of Pet Class. Tends to be Boring and also creates extra work for the Devs.
-Found in al sorts of MMOs to one extent or the other.

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There, discuss Pets as CC. They probably won't be implimented at launch but if they are hyped enough they might be added in.