Let me preface this by saying that I absolutely love the tonks. I cackle with fiendish glee anytime one of my guild mates pulls out a tonk while we're waiting on the rest of the group to get to an instance. Tonk wars are no end of fun.

One of the things that has been conspicuously absent from the game for some time was more mini-games like the tonks at the Darkmoon Faire. Sure, you get the Battered Steam Tonk Controller as a quest reward in the Bone Wastes, but I already have a tonk. I had hopes when I did the Arcano Scorpid quest in Shadowmoon Valley... It seems like you should be able to battle them. But sadly enough, as a guild mate and I found out, once you've turned in the quest, you can no longer control the arcano scorpids. (We can only guess that it is still possible that you can battle them, considering they have attacks that only work on other arcano scorpids. But you'd have to never turn in the quest to be able to continue playing.) And yes, you can do the bombing run over and over in Hellfire, but without actually playing against another person, where is the challenge in it?

So, what we'd like to propose is for Blizzard to actually build in some form of mini-games. Not a true PVP thing, like dueling or battlegrounds, but something of a smaller and potentially sillier bent. Like giving folks control of the arcano scorpids after the quest is completed. That way you could play Scorpid Battle Mechs to break up the monotony of puking your guts out while searching for that one perfectly ripe Arakkoa egg. Or hey, how about making those non-combat pets useful and let us fight them against each other? I can just see it now... Magical Crawdad, I choose you!

Well, okay, maybe that last bit is all me.

The quest for new toys could be used to revitalize old content like, say, the old L60 instances. Collect trinkets from the old bosses and turn them in for some form of uber-toy. Perhaps a Mecha BattleYeti based off the Mechanical Yetis you get in Winterspring, or how about having your very own Killer Rabbit a-la Monty Python? I think most of us would fall all over ourselves to get another yeti that actually fights. (Or hey, let engineers make ones that fight, perhaps? I'm sure they'd love a new schematic!)

Battling with new pets/toys would be fun, much like my beloved tonk has been. Other options could include something like the Texas Hold 'Em mod that proved the bane of many a Raid Leader, or the /gems game, which started a Tetris-like game to kill time while you waited for your raiding party to get assembled.

Then again, maybe it's just me who wants to play with toys while waiting around for a raid group to form up... What do you all think?