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RP Spotlight: Pets can be more than decoration
In WoW social situations, combat and non-combat pets alike usually just take up space looking pretty. Hunter and warlock pets have many actions they can perform to help fight an enemy, of course, and for a normal gamer there's no reason they would need to do anything more. But sometimes, as a roleplayer, if you pat your pet wolf on the head, you might expect it to look up at you with those adorable puppy eyes; or if someone else pats its head, you might expect it to bite their hand off. However, with the emote system as it is, we can only type out custom emotes with our own character's name at the beginning of the sentence, never the pet's.There's a way around this problem, which is actually quite obvious once you think of it, yet roleplayers rarely use it, so far as I have seen. If you write the possessive apostrophe-S as the first part of your character's custom emote, you can make your pet seem to do something on its own: "Isabeau 's pet wolf growls and bares his teeth." It takes a little bit more typing, and it leaves a space between your characters name and the apostrophe-S (since that's built into the emote system), but effectively it lets you roleplay two entities at the same time. Hunters and warlocks can use the PetEmote addon to help make this a little more streamlined. Our reader Ellyndia, for instance, roleplayed a very introverted character that normally would not introduce herself to others, but using such custom emotes, she could have her Jubling walk up and interact with people first to get conversations going. Pets can reflect what your character is thinking but not saying out loud (by hissing or purring perhaps), or they can do anything that such pets in real life might do. Special non-combat pets such as the Children's Week kids, the interactive Animatronics, or even the magical Mojo, could all be especially fun to animate a little now and then. Certainly this technique would become very annoying if overused, but in moderation it can add a extra spice of humor, entertainment and even a touch of realism into the game.
Breakfast Topic: Icy pets
We've asked what sorts of demons warlocks wish they could summon, as well as what sort of animals druids wish they could shapeshift into. Hunters, too, are due to get an influx of new sorts of pets to tame in Wrath of the Lich King, and already I'm wondering what they'll be -- it's not actually so easy.To my mind, most of the tamable creatures up there would be icier versions of pets we already have, which are native to Azeroth. Outland had so much more potential in terms of new and exotic pets, yet Blizzard only gave us a few new types, then went and left most of them without any appreciable abilities. Why would anyone tame a spore bat, or a nether ray, when neither of them can train in certain necessary abilities? Why enable these pets if taming them would be so useless? Some people love the dragonhawk, but the only pet from outland everyone agrees was a popular success is the ravager, though it's a bit ugly for my tastes.So, because it's fun to daydream and speculate, lets imagine what sorts of new pets we'll get to enjoy in Northrend! This means not just wolves and bears with extra spiky icicles or something -- truly new pets we've never seen before. Can you come up with something particularly icy?
A vision of pets with armor
The image you see on the right is not an actual pet in the game. Originally highlighted on Mania's Arcania as a possible mystery pet somewhere in Darkshore, it turns out that some player just switched around some of the files on his computer and replaced this pet's normal skin with the night elf armored mount's skin. We certainly don't suggest you try skin-swapping at home -- it's against Blizzard's Terms of Service. Nonetheless, the image brings to mind the hopes and dreams of hunters everywhere, that their pets could someday have armor of their own.It would be a lot of work for Blizzard to adapt even one piece of armor to fit all the different pet models in the game, but surely just a few different armor pieces would suffice to start with. If even one armor slot were implemented for pets, it would be a way for hunters to further adapt and scale their pets to varying situations, and of course visually it would help set epic pets apart from regular ho-hum pets. Of course, there should be a way to hide this armor, too, in case Blizzard got carried away with some sort of ugly design.In addition, hunters might not be the only ones to benefit from this sort of effort: if such armor could be adapted for pets, perhaps something similar could work out for druids in feral forms as well. Blizzard has given no sign that they intend to make this sort of change, but who knows? Perhaps they'll even go crazy and adapt some of the humanoid armor for demon pets too! It never hurts to dream...
New pets for Everquest from LoN: Forsworn
Legends of Norrath saw its first expansion Forsworn released a few days ago, and along with the new loot cards that offer in-game items to use, there are new cards that grant pets as well. EQ Players has featured the pets that LoN collectors can look forward to claiming in EverQuest.There are three familiars that Forsworn introduces to EQ, the Familiar of Queen Eletyl, the Familiar of Lady Vox, and the Familiar of Zi'Thuuli the Granite Claw. These will be pint-sized versions of their mighty likenesses, and really, who doesn't want to roll with a miniature Lady Vox in tow?Pictures of all three of the new familiars are available at the EQ Players feature page.
Name that pet
Picking a pet's name is always one of the decisions I like best in WoW. It's creative and interesting, and if done right, it can bring lots of smiles to you and your friends. Naming your own character is also fun of course, but even in light of the name-changing feature, it still feels so permanent to me. With your pets, you can name more than one, and there's always the possibility that in the future you'll get to find some new and incredibly awesome pet and get to think of a name for that one too. Excellent pet namers even have special synergy between their hunter and pet names -- a creative feat which is at once challenging and simple.Mania's Arcania has an interesting little feature: in addition to all her other hunter and pet information, she's started a sort of "contest" called "Name That Pet," where hunters can submit pics of their pets for public inspection, and we all get to help them think of names for them. The latest pet in the series presents an great opportunity for hunter-pet name synergy: an owl tamed by the tauren Hawkspirit. In her blog, Hawkspirit's player shows how her owl finally reached 70, but still doesn't have a name, and Mania is here to help her out.If you're interested in pet names, check it out and apply your naming genus.
WoW gifts? I has em!
WoW is a big part of the time my husband and I spend together. If we're not actually playing, we're usually talking about strategies or our in-game goals. Likewise, I spend a ton of time with my guildmates, either raiding or just joking around. These are people I consider good friends. So with one of the major gift giving holidays just around the corner, I've been working on ideas for WoW-themed presents for the lot of them. And I'm certainly not the only one. The folks over at Warcraft Chicks have been compiling a list of inexpensive to legendary items you can buy or make for your loved ones. There are also a lot of posts over on WoW Ladies about gift ideas. Likewise, Grumble N' Autumnn has compiled a list of in-game toys. At this point, though, there's less than a week before Christmas. Yikes! So in the interest of time, I'm going to put together one giant list of WoW-related holiday gift ideas and where you can get them.
White Lions are the last career for High Elves?
Just a little bit of fun speculation about the last class for Warhammer Online's High Elves-- GOA, the company co-publishing WAR in Europe, apparently put up this big display picture at Dreamhack, and Warhammer know-it-alls have identified that High Elf on the right as a "White Lion," supposedly a career straight from the miniatures game.Of course, we have no idea what this means-- previous speculation has called the White Lion career a DPS-based pet class (wielding a melee-two hander and fighting with pets?), and while the miniatures class looks completely different, there's no doubt that there is definitely a white lion fighting alongside the Elf in the picture above. All of this is still just rumors, however -- we won't know what that last High Elves career is until they announced it -- but hey, at least it's a cool looking display.
Pet leveling in the 2.3.2 PTR
Over the weekend (while I was chowing down on turkey and mashed potatoes), Mania headed into the new PTR, and came back with some great news for Hunters leveling pets-- it's going to be faster.Pets will require 33% less XP to level up on the PTR, which (I believe) is in addition to the player leveling changes. Pets still, however, don't earn XP from quests (which makes sense, in a strange way, I guess, because you could bring one pet on a quest, and bring another to turn it in), and they don't earn XP on grey kills, either. Mania's testing also shows that pets earn the same XP on both live and test realms, which means pets don't actually earn XP faster-- they just don't need as much of it.Good stuff. I don't ever plan to actually level up a pet on its own (I have enough trouble leveling up my alts as it is), but it's good to know that the pet I've got coming with my lowbie Hunter will be grabbing XP faster than ever.
Upcoming Hunter changes
Hunters received a lot of changes in patch 2.3 and now Salthem on the european WoW forums has announced even more. Patch 2.3.2 will bring three buffs to the class, or two buffs and one un-nerf, depending on how you look at it. Check out the list of changes below.
Ghost Wolf: The newest, rarest pet
"Ghost wolf" is usually a term you associate with shamans, but now it might just become the keyword for the newest, rarest, most difficult to tame, and most visually unique hunter pet in the game. As the Mistress of Pets Mania's Arcania reports, some of the new Dustwallow Marsh content in Patch 2.3 involves some Grimtotem shamans who summon tamable ghost wolves. For most hunters, however, these ghost wolves will be impossible to tame, because a few seconds after they appear, they just die, regardless of how much damage they take. The only way to tame them involves using various items or abilities which can shorten the casting time of your "Tame Beast" spell down to a fraction of its original 20 seconds. Here's a list of what you might find useful, listed in approximate order of how important they are to your success: [Mystical Skyfire Diamond] -- This metagem can cut the time it takes to cast Tame Beast in half, and you can't tame this beast without it. You have to repeatedly cast various aspects until its special proc goes off. Heroism or Bloodlust -- The same ability with different names for Alliance and Horde shamans; having a friend in your party use this will further reduce your taming time by 30%. If your latency is good, this should make your taming just barely fast enough to succeed. Mind Control -- Bring a priest friend along too, and he or she willl be able to take control of one of the Grimtotem NPCs to summon the ghost wolf whenever you're ready. A handy macro -- To save time in getting your casting going, just type "/target grimtotem spirit guide;" on the first line of a macro, and "/cast tame beast" on the second. Then drag it to your action bar so you can hit it repeatedly just as you ask your priest friend to summon the wolf. [Thanks Grunde!] [Drums of Battle] -- It's also very helpful to either be a Leatherworker, or have one in your party who will use this for you just before you start your taming, in order to shave a few more moments off your taming time. Be a troll -- Trolls get a Berserking ability, which might just be the final little bit you need in order to cut down the taming time enough to snatch this ghostly wolf pet. A lot of non-trolls have succeeded in taming this pet, too, of course; but if you happen to be a troll, feel free to use this ability to make it a bit easier. After all that, you need a macro or something to immediately target the wolf and start taming the very moment it appears. Then, you can pray for a few seconds and hope everything works. It may be very hard, but it has been done before -- though one person on Mania's site said that her new ghost pet died a second after she tamed it, possibly as a residual effect of its otherwise very limited lifespan. So if you want to try it, be patient, and don't get your hopes too high don't worry -- even if your pet dies, once it's tamed, it's yours. Just revive pet, and proceed. Oh, and get ready for an extremely long leveling grind to get it up from 30 to 70 (though it's soon to get a bit faster). Hunter alts passing through Dustwallow as you level up: Don't even dream about it.[Update]: I've edited this post to include some of the other helpful information from commenters and other sources that came out after we originally published it. Be sure to check out our other resources on the Ghost Wolf pet, including a video showing the taming in action, a story about how Matthew Rossi helped his wife get one, and proof that the Grimtotem Sririt Guide will remain tamable in the future. Read about the Ghost Wolf's color changes in combat ==>>
The trouble with happiness
In certain ways, playing a hunter is about depletion. You have to worry about running out of ammo, running out of mana (although not as much since Aspect of the Viper was introduced), running out of range to fire your weapon (though thankfully there's no longer a dead zone), and of course you have to worry about your pet running out of happiness. Which means we have to carry around stacks of food in our bag space, which let's not forget is one bag smaller because every hunter needs an ammo bag, and often some extra ammo on top of that. For some reason, I've never thought about this before: why do we need happiness at all?Sure, it's a nice mechanic at first, adds flavor to the class, but I really like this suggestion by Killernuts (*cough*) of Arthas-H: remove happiness once your pet reaches the top loyalty level. After a while it just becomes a pain; at best I click an AddOn button every once in a while when the alert pops up, and at worst I have to take a break from what I'm doing to scrounge up some food. Or instead of removing it based on pet level, how about based on player level? Make a trainable skill at, say, 30 that keeps pets happy. You can use food to boost their happiness faster (useful with a newly-trained pet), but you don't have to. At least one nice change is already slated for the pet feeding department: pets will be able to be fed in combat "at some point in a future patch" (Nethaera). So I guess that's nice, since indeed it does suck to lose what can be a significant portion of your damage just because you haven't been obsessively monitoring that little smiley face. Prior to 2.3 it was possible to feign death and then feed one's pet, but this has been "fixed".
Rise of Kunark pets prove productive
Lets face it, there are lots of pets in MMOs that serve as little more than trophies for players who have happened upon some lucky achievement or who were willing to dish out some extra cash to get the prize in the proverbial cereal box. Lassie, these pets are not. At first glance the Burynai Digger house pet in EQ2 Rise of Kunark appeared to be more of the same - just an interactive trinket for people who preordered the expansion. According to elquinjena at the Legion of Kithicor website, that assumption is quite misguided.Evidently, you can feed your Burynai Digger various food items and he'll occasionally spit back collection items. From her description, there didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to the goodies that came out of his mouth -- he just procured what he felt like. According to the official website, the little buggers go to bury the trash you give them and discover shinies within your home and bring them back to you. How nice of them! They're still ugly little buggers though, if you ask me.
Petopia ready for 2.3
Everybody's favorite pet database/hunter resource Petopia has been made ready for 2.3 a day early (and it's because Mania is going to take an AFK-- I hope it's for something relaxing, because she deserves it!). The closest thing we have to a changelist is a running tally of 2.3 news over on Mania's blog, but there are definitely new pets (including this hot obsidian raptor above), skill updates, and lots of other new information in the database.I'm especially excited because I've purposely left my BE hunter at about level 29 since all these 2.3 changes were announced, so his eyes are the ones I'm going to be seeing patch 2.3, the new Dustwallow Marsh, and all the updated pre-60 instances through. Petopia is a great guide for all Hunters, but I'm especially excited to use it for myself.
Pet Pals boxart designer unfamiliar with humans
The boxart for Pet Pals: Animal Doctor clearly shows where the artists' (and developers') priorities lie. The animals are all presented using what appear to be real photographs, looking totally realistic and even cute. The humans, on the other hand, are awkward 3D models hastily Photoshopped into position. The troubling thing about this is that it probably would have been cheaper just to take pictures of whoever happened to be around instead of going to the trouble to render these subhumanoids, and the game is already full of 3D renders of animals. So they unnecessarily modeled humans, and also unnecessarily photographed animals.
Breakfast topic: Rarest hunter pets
Sometimes it seems that in our rush to be different, we end up just like everyone else. You can see this every day at your local Hot Topic. In WoW, I tend to notice this in hunter pet choice. Some days it feels like every single hunter has a lynx from the Blood Elf starting area, or Humar the Pridelord, or a nifty-colored Warp Chaser. Where's the individuality? So I've decided to ask the community what the rarest hunter pet model is out there. All the skins are available here on Petopia, if you need a visual reminder. Hordeside, at least, I see a surprisingly small amount of tigers being leveled to 70. It's such a beautiful model, and so simple to obtain -- I'm shocked there aren't more out there. The plague-stricken animals, such as bears and boars, are also underrepresented -- maybe only Undead hunters would want undead pets? In general, there aren't a ton of spiders, serpents, crabs and birds out there, except for lowbies with owls. But looking at the Petopia page, there are only two models that I've never seen a hunter with. The white carrion bird model can be found at the named mob Trachela in the Bone Wastes, and the pure white gorilla is only seen on a rare mob in Un'goro. What do you think is the rarest hunter pet out there? Hunters, would you rather have an uncommon pet, or do you prefer the cats and wolves?
New toys for Engineers
Amanda M. had a tiny mention of this in her big Engineering post earlier, but I felt it deserved another mention. Our friend Boubouille at MMO Champion has discovered that there are new toy models coming for Engineers in 2.3: a rocket chicken (yes, really), a paper gyrocopter and a paper zepplin, and this crazy model above, a dragon kite.Now, I don't mean to rain on Engineers' parades-- they definitely deserve all the love they're getting, and I can't wait to see all the cool stuff they're making out there on the realms. But here's the thing: wasn't the whole problem with Engineering that they were stuck making toys instead of useful items? The Epic Mount is awesome, but is anyone else surprised to see that an "Engineering revamp" includes papercraft toys? This is just more Mechanical Squirrels, which is what Engineers were disappointed with in the first place.An unweighted Companion Cube would be hilarious (Portal has my game of the year vote right now, until I get to check out Mass Effect). But I thought the whole point of beefing up Engineering was to get past these pets. Will letting them do some papercraft really bring the profession up to speed?Update: Or maybe they're not all for Engineers. The Rocket Chicken certain seems like Engineering, but there's speculation floating around, according to our illustrious commenter Kyle, that these are rewards from the new Upper Deck loot cards.
Show these IQ Breeder screens to your cat
We think IQ Breeder is our new obsession. We can't help but approve of the insane premise behind the game-- blending Nintendogs and Brain Age to create an unfathomably weird training game in which you perform brain training exercises to increase the IQ of a virtual pet. The new screens at Famitsu show some of the games that you and your "friend" can play together in the interest of boosting its fake IQ. And as for those pets, you can choose a dog, a cat, a pig, or one of four types of turtles!The games range from math problems to rhythm games, as well as classic distractions like mazes. One of the math games involves solving equations to win a race, like in the Atari 2600 game Math Gran Prix. Our favorite game, however, is the cat-picture jigsaw puzzle, because it looks like developer MegaHouse actually went to the trouble of making a 3D model of the same cat that appears in the sample puzzle. We hate puzzles, but we love cat pictures!
Brain Training for fake pets
Megahouse's IQ Breeder is a cross between a Nintendogs-style virtual pet and a brain training game-- which, you must admit, is kind of a clever way to try to make money on the DS. It's a brain training minigame collection in which the goal isn't to lower your Brain Age, but to raise the IQ of a virtual pet.As you complete the minigames and improve your performance, your pet's IQ increases. It's brain training by proxy. And as if that concept weren't bizarre enough, the goal of all the training is to raise your nonexistent pal's IQ until it can complete the training games itself. We've played countless hours of Brain Age in front of our cat, but we have yet to see him attempt any Sign Finder. Maybe we should get him his own DS so he can practice.
Breakfast Topic: Noncombat companions
What noncombat pet do you use on your characters?Each of my characters has their own noncombat pets, something that I decided early on fit them. My Human Shadow Priest has a cute black cat, my Undead Rogue brings a Snowshoe Rabbit along with him to the BGs (just because I love stealthing and thinking of a little rabbit hopping around on its own), and while my Orc Shaman used to rock a snake, he recently got One-Eyed Willy (no comment) from Children's Week, and every chance I get I pull it out (still no comment), and wait for Willy to do his eyebeam thing. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it happen yet.Of all the noncombat pets in the game, do you call just one your own or do you have a bunch that you rotate around? Which one do you use most often?
A friend for life, or pet of the week?
00hshiny is asking a question about what Hunter pet to get for raiding on WoW Ladies, but something even more interesting struck me about her situation: she's made it all the way to 67 with a pet she's had since the beginning.I know it happens (my friend went all the way with his first pet), but I've leveled one Hunter and am now working on a second, and I can't imagine leveling all the way up with just one pet-- it would get too boring after a while! Hunters, have you done it?Of course you'd need to train other pets at some point, just to get more skills. And it's very common for Hunters to reach 70, and then get different pets for different activities-- a PvP pet vs. a soloing or raiding pet. But I wonder exactly how many pets Hunters actually play with (as in, fight with enough to reach the highest loyalty levels). BRK apparently changes pets all the time, but what about the rest of you Hunters? How many pets have you had, in terms of actually using, not just taming for learning skills, from 1-70?%Poll-3004%
