Is this how it works?

[Luciandk]

Manually kill the wild pet and it will eventually respawn as another set if undesirable to you, and that you CBA to defeat it in a pet battle. Which also will cause it to disappear.

[Peanutty]

A is correct, but what you're assuming isn't always the case. Any time I'm out hunting specific rares I usually leave the zone with more rares up than were present before my arrival (assuming that no one else is out there pet battling at the moment) because I usually manually kill non-rares (except in cases of pets with long spawn times or weather conditions, etc) and end up leaving behind rares I don't want, since I'm usually only looking for one thing. I think anyone that pet battles in a zone right after I leave must wonder at their incredible good luck at finding rare after rare.

I would also think, unless you're on a super low population realm, that just from random players pet battling or accidentally killing wild pets that might get in the way, that the population of wild pets is constantly in flux. Sometimes RNG just makes it feel like you've found this dead area of nothing but poor quality pets.

[Kendrah]

From what I understand, 'a' is the correct answer, but if that's true, does that mean that people will go around to catch every rare wild pet and, over time, all that is left is low quality pets until the next realm restart?

A is correct but they aren't the same pet set when they respawn after being killed (either by pet battle or brute force) or caught. It's mostly just RNG. It sometimes takes a long time to get a rare to spawn.

[Kpb321]

It's possible that someone went through and captured all the wild pets with rares while leaving everything else up so that there where little or no rares up. If you are going through looking for a rare and don't want to actually do the pet battles just kill the pet with a quick hit and it will respawn fresh. If there are people doing stuff in the area the accidental kills should keep pets turning over but in a zone like Krasarang that may not be happening much.

[Gwenolyn]

You don't have to wait for a reset (unless you just want to). YOU can manually reset the battle pets by killing them (after you check that there are no rares). When they respawn, they will have new qualities/breeds etc.

[Slugggo]

In my experience, it's (a), with one caveat:

- If you start a wild pet battle and forfeit without killing anything, the pet returns in a few seconds, with the same trio of pets and breeds. You can even restart that fight and forfeit multiple times, and the pets/quality/breeds will remain the same. On many occasions, I've left rares I didn't want up for other people and even announced locations in /general.

- If you start a wild pet battle and kill the first pet or two and forfeit, the pet disappears. If the rare is the first pet of the trio and you kill it accidentally, you can't forfeit and reset it. Even if the rare is the third of the trio, and you only kill the first pet and forfeit, it's gone.

I follow the logic that over time, rare pets would keep getting replaced with non-rares that people leave up, but as others have mentioned, there's incidental AoE, there are people who do wild battles for XP, along with server resets. And personally, I'll often kill pets outright if a trio is poor quality stuff it's unlikely anyone would want. So they do seem to get recycled pretty regularly.