| The wolf being boring when poorly implemented is exactly why wild life usually fails terribly. IF the AI could support interesting mechanics, you could have interesting wild life. Wild life that kills each other, hunt in packs(not group of mobs with social aggro, but real packs with mobs surrounding you and getting bigger hits in your back and retreating when low hp while snaring the shit of you) and stuff like that.
But you see wolves standing next to deers, and when you attack a wolf that's wandering around in some shitty woods, looking like he ate some shrooms and has no idea what going on and runs up to you then melees you even though he has not a chance of killing you, yeah it's retarded.
Might as well have a goblin, or whatever. The issue I guess is you can only create so many monsters, and while there's a fuck ton of possible monsters, you then run into immersion issues if you use a too wide selection, for example greek/norse/egyptian mythology have tons of monsters, but they don't always fit right with your universe. You can make your own version of those mobs obviously, like blizzard did with Minotaurs. Nowadays you show a minotaur to random joe, and he'll say it's a tauren.
However the big advantage of using animals is pretty obvious. They're easy to make. You have tons of illustration, and you don't have to make sure they look "right", since you just copy the real thing. Making an imaginary monster look "right" can take more time. You can also use sounds from a premade bank and stuff like that. You know like the crocodile wow sound that's the same as the UO fizzle. Or UO crocodiles for that matter. They also somewhat add a "real" feeling to your woods and stuff, when there's wolves and bears. It looks retarded, but still fits because most people are used to the image. It's like armored bikinis. Stupid, but ultimately fits. | 