I know you guys wouldn't like the idea, but what if pets were getting sick? That could make them energy less for a few days, unless you use a powerful bottle of grandma's medicine that could be available in the premium shop.

Pets getting sick would be totally random and quite rare, UNLESS there's an epidemia of something. You could, again, buy something in the premium shop with a 75% of protection against the virus for a limited amount of time and for only ONE sickthing. Not all.

I think there should be at least 5 different virusses:

The flu : makes your pet inactive for 3-5 days.(exists IRL)

One lasting 5-7 days.(more rare though)

One making your pet eat something randomly in your inventory once a day for a week.

Toxic flu : ALL the pets interacting with the current pet will catch this flu. It lasts a month, and drop yours stats of 20%. If this pet breeds, fight another(that is only if the other pet engaged the fight, not if YOU engage the fight) pet then the second pet will catch the flu. It can give it to another pet in your lair as well, but there's only a 1-3% chance that another pet of the lair catch it. (though if you have a lot of pets, it's easier to spread the flu, and as pets become sick it will spread even faster.)

And there could be event where someone screams in the news "THE XXX VIRUS STARTED TO SPREAD!" and then, you should protect your pet because there's a 50% chance that one of your pet catch it.

:D I think the game would be fun. It would make people sad seeing their pets affected but so much fun X3

Support in general, but one lasting 5-7 days is a bit much unless the cost of medicine is cheap, it is very rare, and/or it only lets pet explore once a day instead of not at all. Also, medicines should be avaliable for all, and maybe a user group could be started which would help newbies pay for medicine. There should be no disease that lasts more than 12-16 days, and that one should be the Toxic Flu. All diseases should have a counter telling you when that disease will end, and pets won't be able to catch it again for a limited period of time ("Blah the Unicorn recovered from Toxic Flu!" two minutes later "Blah the Unicorn caught Flu!"). Sick pets would not be able to be sold, trained, used for building or pounded. I would add a disease that makes pets unable to breed and fight that lasts 2-4 days. I don't know whether sick pets could be used for quests or not- maybe just for gold quests, because it's very hard to do them as is?

We had a rough concept of pet diseases before the launch, though it wasn't developed yet because it requires a lot of work on developing the concept itself (a dozen or two of original diseases, their effect, the methods of cure etc.), coding and balancing. Maybe it will be implemented in the future though I can't give a 100% guarantee that some other game layer won't overlap or make the diseases unreasonable.

Personally I don't really like the idea of diseases. Seems like it'd really just be a hamper on my overall plans. For example, if I was trying to get a pet to level 50 and it got the flu and I couldn't level that pet anymore it'd just be a major annoyance for however long it lasted. I would not neccessarily be willing to pay to get it removed; I would be more likely just to stop playing with that pet until it was gone. If too many pets caught the disease, I would likely quit playing the game until the disease passed; which could be bad because in that time I could find some other game I wanted to play more which could lead me (and I'm sure other players) to not return, or to only return seldomly. Overall I feel like this mechanic would damage the desire for players to continue playing the game, and as such, would hurt the game's financial future. As we all know, a game that doesn't make money does not have a future.

While I support the overall idea of some sort of hinderance to slow down the leveling process and the breeding process, I feel like careful consideration would need to be taken to ensure it would not detract too much from the overal purpose of the game, and would not damage the future of the game.

I dislike the idea, especially when cures are costly....

Though I see the reasons that sicknesses can be good parts of a game in that they do make you spend money and interact more... So I see the balances there. And they can also slow down levelling.

I don't think I like the idea of it being contageous..

I can see the reasons though and do think that some barriers to get money flowing and to 'slow' the levelling and breeding could be useful. I just don't like the concept of diseases on other sites.. I very much hated it on Neopets... I'd literally have to spend all my money or look at some mopey pet I could't use..

However I do think that something could be implimented... maybe inuries from battles? They can take a day to heal, can be affected by a stat, fountains can cure them (and some sort of item), and makes in-game sense. I mean in real life you don't walk away from battles unscathed.. It makes sense that sometimes you are hurt.... Maybe this means decreased experience next time, or decreases a stat like strength temporarily, or takes you out of battling for a few hours depending on the severity of the injury...