I was a little verbose earlier but summing up two of those paragraphs, players will go for what is generally believed to be the best, even if it isn't. That's what the 2nd part of that was about - the fact that even with the obviously limited number of viable pets currently in existence, players still largely do not bother to play around with different builds. 99% of what I've seen has been 5 mules, 5 nobles, 3+ imps, or 1 bio. There's already unused mix-and-match potential there, especially when you add extra pet slots.If I were back in my Christmas wishlist thread, I'd probably write something like Yoda's suggestions. It seemed crazy to me that non-human bios had absolutely no inherited special abilities, making them pretty much coolness trophies for the super-rich. It seemed crazy that, outside of the power pets mentioned above, all maxed non-casting pets would essentially be identical in ability and power and all spellcasting pets likewise identical to each other. But with me not knowing what is possible or realistic to actually code in this game I'll just say that if it IS possible to add a wide range of specials to pets, I know at least one guy that will go crazy having fun with them.
But if reality falls short of fantasy here, we'll wish for something smaller next time.Last thing - I want to sound off about my support of albino squirrels!
Truth be told, seeing them made me fall in love with the server before I even started playing. My wife and I collect squirrel + chipmunk items and we're woodsy people; I thought super squirrels was the coolest thing I'd seen in UO in a long time. I admit that it doesn't make much logical sense but I'd argue that most custom servers have lots of rare items that don't really fit into a swords-and-sorcery fantasy world, so why not squirrels? And small creatures are sometimes fiercer than huge ones - there's a great video online of a wolverine chasing a grizzly bear 15 times its size away from a deer carcass. 
), or etc. It's the nature of certain types of people to go with what others say, the easy route as it were. In the case of imps, it isn't just preference that became contagious and prolific, they are in fact by far the best pets, others aren't even worth considering for most applications. If we made it so that other pets were equally awesome in terms of stats/slots/specials/etc and therefore equal in usefulness, the copycat mentality will still exist, but mostly in terms of cosmetics. There will be options for those who don't want to just follow the crowd, to utilize other pets besides imps. Just because most people will still stick with what everyone else is doing/telling them to do in terms of pets doesn't mean that imps don't need a fix, or that we shouldn't work on options for those who want to change it up. 
