With the dawn of the '/mypet' command, and the lack of a functioning empathy skill, I think the lifespan of pets should be increased from 2 minutes (to say... 20 minutes, or even infinitely). At least temporarily, until such time that empathy is implemented properly, or when pets actually have a use other than in RPs.
The reasons being:
- It's annoying, having to ration your time with your pet over the course of an RP, and usually it doesn't last long at all. (2 minutes of pet per game day just sucks, even if it pops out 5 seconds at a time)
- It's out-of-character that a pet just spontaneously disappears mid-action.
- It's disruptive to the RP to have it vanish, especially when the RP is based around it.
Basically, if the time limit was increased or removed it would finally give a solid use for familiars, and a decent reason to go on that long quest to get one.