Agreed that pets are different, and that problems have existed (and been posted about on the forums) before the changes to Explore.
A ‘perfect storm’ was a phrase used to describe some of the kerfuffle around the changes to Casual PvP in the 4.7 update (combined with dissatisfaction around ETs):
On the one hand, I wanted to sympathise, since there were obviously mistakes made and the devs were under a lot of pressure.
On the other hand, many of the elements of the ‘perfect storm’ were things that had been brought up or visible well before the ‘storm’ arrived, like the PvP matchmaking and gold payouts that @Mithran has championed many times on the forums.
So again,
I also thought the points around agency (hat tip @Magnusimus) and having a ‘way forward’ to progress pets at any point in time were on the money.