I recently hooked up Google Analytics to both this site and Petopia. Google Analytics does some basic tracking of how people use a site — for example, it can tell you how many people have looked at each page of a site and how long they spent on it. The numbers are interesting, although perhaps not so useful for me as they might be for some sort of web mogul. *grin* But I have noticed a couple of really fascinating factoids hiding out in the data.
For instance, what’s the most popular hunter pet right now? Well, it depends on how you define popular, I suppose. But I can tell you that the most popular individual pet page on Petopia belongs to the Ghost Saber. The Ghost Saber page (not the Gallery, but the pet page itself) is the 9th most popular page on Petopia so far. The Ghost Saber Gallery is #19 most popular page. Add them together and the Ghost Saber would actually come in about #7.
Well, that makes sense. I’ve plugged the Ghost Saber a good bit recently, and I know a number of other people have been talking about him also. So what’s the second most popular individual pet? Maybe Hawkbane or a scorpid? Or a windserpent? Nope! It’s that old trusty classic, Humar the Pridelord, coming in at #12. (He’s #11 if we include the page for his appearance, which is fair since he’s the only black lion in the game.) In fact, as you might expect, cats are disproportionately represented in the top 50 pages, although the usual suspects (boars, ravagers, scorpids, windserpents) all make an appearance as well.
So what’s the least popular pet in terms of page views on Petopia? It’s hard to say for certain since most of the low hits are typos or old links that have changed. (I didn’t realize what a problem I caused when I switched to .shtml pages!) But it looks like it’s the Webwood Lurker, a level 5-6 green tarantula from Teldrassil. I wouldn’t have guessed
My fave pet in the game has to be the netherrays. Yes most are caster, yes they onyl become available after 60 but they hit like tanks, are simple to feed (raw meat from just about anything in outland keeps them more than happy) and the bonus spell damage they seem to give casters in the group make me a well sort after hunter. The caster pets used to be not wanted but since the change to how its read, my netherray currently has +134 spell bonus, make nice reading for a mage that normally critts for 2k to crit for almost double that with my pet around. Add to that they are pretty much uniquie skins for all of them and you couldnt, imo, find a better pet in the game
I think Humar the Pridelord is the best Pet in Wow with his att speed of 1.00 he rivals Raptors for best Dps and he looks great being the only Black Lion in Wow not to mention that there is a line to Tame him on my server (Nazgrel) there is almost always one or two Hunters camping out under his Tree in the Barrens