Mania’s Arcania

Every year about this time I suddenly have this intense desire to go to BlizzCon. A week ago I wasn’t at all interested, and now suddenly I am. Unfortunately, tickets are sold out so it seems fairly unlikely that I’ll be able to attend. And it’s a particular pity this year since I’m only a two-hour drive away and I don’t have a full-time job to interfere.

On the other hand, if I were at BlizzCon it would be difficult to keep up with all the news coming out of BlizzCon. Ironic, but true. From here I can more easily filter through all the reports to find out what’s going to affect my beloved hunter pets. And to be fair, I did expect to have relocated to Florida by now. (In fact, since we haven’t moved yet we’ve caused some trouble for ourselves — my husband and I are blowing our yearly vacation on a trip to DragonCon in Atlanta later this year, but now instead of being a long but feasible drive away, it’s a whole continent (and an expensive flight) away.)

But that’s all rationalization. The fact is that I suddenly really want to go to BlizzCon — to be immersed in the excited, geeky crowds; to be surrounded by people who understand my stupid Ghost Saber jokes. *sigh* If I were smarter I would have foreseen this and bought tickets back when I didn’t want them. Ah, well. Maybe by next year we’ll have moved back out this way and I can go then.

According to Hortus on Blizzard’s Test Realm forum, they have opened up pre-made character copies for the 2.2.0 PTR. That means that instead of (or in addition to) copying your own character to the Public Test Realm to check out the changes, you can also copy a pre-created level 70 character with an assortment of equipment. This gives you a chance to test changes you might not otherwise be able to, and ensures that the PTR will have a healthy population. Just remember to report any bugs you find!

I’ve been trying to figure out the intricacies of hunter pet loyalty for many weeks now. It’s slow going, in part because building up and losing loyalty takes so bloody long. I haven’t gotten very far with it yet, but I have found out a couple of interesting and possibly useful bits of related information that I wanted to share.

First useful bit: A just-tamed pet that is never fed will stick around for 30 minutes before it runs away.

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I got a late start today — we lost net for much of the morning — and although I often write up a post the night before in case I get up late and can’t find any good news to comment on, I was too busy last night watching the first season finale of Torchwood. So I am scrambling to post this morning … well, afternoon now.

But yesterday I ran across an odd little page on the Blizzard WoW site and wanted to share. It’s hidden under Player Interaction in the Game Guide, and it’s all about How to be Nice. Useful advice!

Blizzard also has a nice page up on the flying mount choices in the game.

Incidentally, I’ve had less time than I’ve wanted on the 2.2.0 PTR so far, so if you’ve noticed anything new or interesting for hunters or their pets there, please drop me a line. Thanks!

Innate skills — skills that a pet already knows when it is tamed — are by and large active skills. This is just how it’s been since the beginning: some creatures innately know some active skills; hunters tame those creatures to learn those active skills; if you want a passive skill you go to the pet trainer.

Of course, this categorization isn’t completely accurate. Pet trainers also teach Growl, which is an active skill, and in the beginning that was all they taught since there weren’t any passive skills. (Remember when there were just four pet skills, period?) But regardless of accuracy, this is still how we hunters tend to think about skills: active skills are learned from the wild; passive skills from pet trainers.

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Today I thought I’d continue the thread I started a week or two ago with Taurens and talk about what pets I plan to level up with members of the Troll and Orc races. (As I mentioned in response to a comment on the overall summary of my plan, my main goal is to spread my characters out among the newbie areas so I don’t have to repeat too much content — and that’s why Trolls and Orcs get treated together here.)

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In what novel does the Bursar first go positively bursar?

Petopia has the honor of hosting a great new pet resource: a Visual Pet Skill Calculator made by Draketh of Moonglade EU. As you can see from the screenshot below, it looks quite a bit like a character talent calculator. Very stylish!

Edit: The Link to Build function is now operational, thanks to some quick work by Draketh to fix my mistake. :> Sorry about the delay!

Sad news for hunters in Patch 2.2.0 — dismiss taming is broken on the Public Test Realm. Or fixed, depending on how you look at it. But it’s fixed in a fairly annoying way right now, so I’m calling it broken. *grin*

Dismiss taming, which we initially found shortly after Patch 2.1.0 went live, means that you can dismiss your current pet (instead of abandoning it) and tame another one. Your dismissed pet is sent back to the stable, whether or not you have space for it, which can sometimes cause issues. This is fairly convenient since you can tame that rare pet you run across while out hunting without losing your loyal companion and without having to run back to town and possibly losing the rare.

On the PTR right now, you can dismiss your current pet and start casting Tame Beast on a new pet, but when the 20 second channel for Tame Beast finishes you get the message that “You have too many pets already.” Previously you’d be unable to start casting Tame Beast, which seems like the more appropriate behavior here.

Personally, I’m still hoping that this is part of an eventual change to taming that slipped live early and which someone has hacked a quick stop into until the rest is ready. But I’m afraid that that is a faint hope.