I do agree to some extent Fur...I've told hunters from early on, "You are not a whole class. Your Pet is half of you. If your pet dies, you are half dead/useless. Do not neglect your pet."; I focused on my pet in Early lvls(Read: spec'd BM loooooooooooooooooooong before that tree was worth shit), then found a balance to keep him alive(thus keeping me alive) while also making him a tool in my arsenal to kite. Boar charge = extra snare for kiting, tell him to stop/passive mode then charge when he's far enough away to let you get your lead back. Stuff like that, pets are insanely useful :p

That said, the quests worked pretty well without the pets, and was most likely a coding limitation at the time; they wanted to ensure you HAD to SOLO it, and being lazy coders they most likely made it so anyone but the hunter doing anything to it would despawn it, and pets are still seperate entities even if under your control. Or I'd like to think, anyways :p