Addon creator Nyctrennis has gone ahead and created what everyone has been thinking since World of Warcraft introduced the pet battle feature in Mists of Pandaria. Wokémon takes the standard pet battle interface and transforms it into the Game Boy version of retro classic, Pokémon.
While the appearance of this old-school interface is a tad incongruous in the relatively slick three-dimensional world created by Blizzard, it’s definitely a great addition to the addon world, a great bit of retro flavor for one of the most popular new features in the game.
Installation is simple, following the standard procedure of downloading the addon, extracting the zip file, and placing the folders therein into the Addons section of your World of Warcraft interface folder. Once you’ve completed those steps, simply log in to the game, find a pet to battle by looking out for the green pawprint over their head, and right-click the pet to bring up the battle interface. If you don’t see any pets with the green paw icon over their head, it’s likely that you haven’t yet trained pet battles, so head to Stormwind or Orgrimmar to visit the trainers.
Once you start your first pet battle, you’ll be flung headfirst into the Wowkémon tutorial. The first notable thing is that the tutorial is given by Professor Birch, rather than Oak, but aside from that the authenticity of the interface is impressive. The author has gone to great lengths to preserve the original look, while integrating features like tooltips and such into the addon. It’s definitely advisable to pick a pet you’re not concerned about capturing, as unless you win the battle, the tutorial won’t complete, and will restart on your next battle.
The unitframes you see for your pet and the opposing pet can be moved with your mouse, but interact so can’t be moved independently of one another, but it’s straightforward to get them to reasonable positions. Once you’re happy with that set-up you can proceed to use the interface, as pictured above. All the commands are included, under Fight is the sub-menu for all your abilities, Bag is the same as trap, and so on. Generally, the standard WoW interface can be revealed by holding down shift and mouseing over the relevant button. Some of the commands are a little counter-intuitive, so it’s really important to pay close attention to the tutorial.
The addon creator has gone to a huge amount of trouble to make this addon function within the bounds of WoW, yet provide a Pokémon-esque experience. Little features like the bag and the pre-fight splash screen, which shows your character in a different outfit with a different tagline each time you battle, really add to the experience. At the time of testing, the addon wasn’t fantastically compatible with other addons, pet battle addons and even others like UI replacements, but a great experience nonetheless.
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