its already been stated that pets will go up in level, and when you reach level 100 you can give your wasted xp to your pet. I think that pet perma-death is the way forward purely because i hate it in games like swg where players chuck pets at the mobs with no real consequence when the pets die. perhaps a tier system, where pets of lvl 1-5 have no neggative effect, 5-10 pets run away for set time 10+ they die. or as level increases, increase the time it takes for pets to heal, only natural healing.

*about the other points you make I believe it would be great if in a herd of animals some where harder to tame than others those that were harder to tame had better traits and those who were easier to tame had traits such as being lazy or cowardly, would add humour to pvp if the pet ran away ect..

*I also like the being able to train animals skills perhaps from the players own skill list, each skill requiring certain critea, and if the pet meets these critea it is possible to train it, although i hope that would take time. Also on the similar point about pets helping you track ect I think this is a great idea aswell, I think it wouldnt be too hard to implement either, this added extra off a pet would also balance the downside of perma-death.

*not feeding the pets will cause the pet to eat you..

*only one im against is the small mini games, to like tamagotchi i dont mind pets having emotes ala swg.