Make your pet battles look like Pokemon with WoWkemon
Let's be honest, we all saw this one coming! It was just a matter of time before someone wrote an addon that really genuinely converted the pet battles into something remarkably similar to Pokémon. And it's already happened, just a few weeks after the launch of Mists. I am, by the way, sorry for constantly bombarding readers with Pet Battle addons! But, for Pokémon lovers, this is a pretty cool one.
Download WoWkémon from WoWInterface.
WoWkémon is installed simply by downloading the zip file from the link above, extracting and copying the contents into your Addons folder, which resides within your Interface folder in your WoW directory.
When you begin your first Pet Battle with it active, WoWKémon will enter its tutorial, with the eminent Professor Birch. He will guide you through the process of using this heavily adapted pet battle system, which has been cleverly squeezed into something as close to the original Pokémon format as possible. You will need to pay attention during the tutorial, as some of the commands are a little counter-intuitive, and intelligently the tutorial doesn't let you progress until you've actually done what it's telling you to do!
Do finish the tutorial on the first battle, though, otherwise it starts from the beginning again on your next battle, and it's not the very fastest process in the world!
You can move the nameplates for your pet and their opponent around, and carry out all the usual functions, but the addon author, Nyctrennis, hasn't stopped there. There's also a splash screen that comes up each time you battle, showing your character in a different randomized outfit with a description of the outfit's theme!
So, for example, you can see my hunter in a very fetching hat and robe. Later on she was in a bikini being a swimmer! This addon also plays the Pokémon music throughout the pet battles, so have your sound turned up.
The author has gone to an enormous amount of trouble to get this addon resembling Pokémon as much as possible, with the pet selection screen, the bag screen, and the options in general. I'm not going to go into huge detail about the function of the addon, all the pet battle abilities are there, you will just need to pay keen attention to the tutorial to make sure you're using the addon correctly!
You can mouseover the Pokéball icons on each pet to get their original tooltips, and hold shift and mouseover abilities in the main command screen to see the original Blizzard tooltips.
The only minor issue I had with this addon is that the Pokéball seemed to be a tad ineffective when used with ElvUI, my default UI replacement. The addon author had already fixed a bug with this function, and I've let him know over on the comments page, but if the Pokéball isn't working for you, switch off your other addons and see if that fixes it. WoWkémon also doesn't seem to be super effective with a couple of the other addons we talked about, such as Pokémon Trainer.
All in all, though, this is a great fun addon, and anyone who's into Pokémon or just wants to see what all the Pokéfuss is about! The author has really gone to great lengths to ensure it's as accurate a representation as possible of the original Pokémon format.
Thanks to NDMiko for the tip!
Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
