pets and those other pets

there's always been a bit of a nomenclature problem in wow. hunters and warlocks and death knuggets have "pets", and so those dogs and cats and baby dragons and blobs of corrosive ooze that follow us around need to be called something else. non-combat pets and companions are terms that blizzard has tried to get us to adopt, but non-combat pet battles sounds pretty silly, so we've all gone with pet battles. which makes them pets, just ... uh ... different than those pets.

now, if you do pet battles with a warlock or hunter or other pet class, sooner or later you bump into a problem - while you're battling, you get put into some little phased bubble so that the wolves and demons and other things wandering around the world don't bother you. however, your pet does not. should something bump into him while you're taking care of business with a bandicoon, you get kicked out of the battle and have to go finish what your pet (no, the other pet) started. which can be mildly annoying or (if, say, you're finally about to capture that scourged whelpling) justification for throwing your monitor out the window. so, try to remember to dismiss your pet (no, the other one) first, if you can.

last night i was doing a spot of pvp'ing. i haven't done much pvp yet because, even though i find it interesting, it's rather a slow process what with queue times and other players taking longer to choose a move than the computer does. but last night i wanted to test out an idea against an all-fluxfire feline team, which some people on the forums say are nearly ubiquitous in pvp. unfortunately, they were not ubiquitous last night, and i didn't get a chance to run my test. another time, perhaps. but something amusing did happen, so i'm gonna talk about that instead.

the game put me into a pvp match and selected the icky smelly swamps of the krasarang wilds for a location. as my opponent and i locked horns in an epic clash of a dead bird against a floating rock, i got a message on my screen: "you have entered combat." the hell? aren't i already in combat? then i notice one of those lizard-man dudes, standing at the edge of the phase bubble, looking really pissed. he's throwing punches and blood is spurting and white and yellow numbers are floating all around him. meanwhile, my opponent and i have moved on to a spider locked in mortal combat with a toy robot. eventually, lizard dude falls down dead. i never did see his opponent, which i assume was my voidlord.

i wonder what would have happened if my demon had lost. would the saurok have come after me? or would he have stood at the edge of the bubble, spitting on me and using harsh language?