Mania’s Arcania

The comment thread for the last Petopia update and my GMail inbox were both filled with reports of a new ghostly wolf in Dustwallow Marsh yesterday. I haven’t been able to get down there yet myself, but apparently this ghost wolf is summoned by one of the Grimtotems — but is not classed as an NPC’s pet and so you can start the process of taming it. The problem? It dies after just a handful of seconds regardless of damage, and since Tame Beast lasts 20 seconds you can’t finish taming it before it dies.

[UPDATE: As of 01/14/2008, Blizzard has announced that this creature can no longer be tamed. This reverses their previous comments on the matter.]

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Hortus has posted a 2.3 Known Issues list on the WoW Bug Report Forum. As he says:

This is a list of issues that have been reported to us and will be fixed in upcoming patches. This is not a complete list of all reported issues. Issues that are still being researched are not included in this list.

So if you have run into an issue that’s not on this list, post it to the Bug Report forum and let Blizzard know!

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Petopia was updated today for the following Patch 2.3 changes:

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Mugungo from Dunemaul wrote to me this week to let me know about another good spot for level 70s who are trying to bring up a low-level pet.

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In case you can’t tell, I am frantically trying to catch up with the most important news from Patch 2.3 after being away from home for 9 of the last 13 days. Therefore you should expect randomly-timed posts for the next few days as I stumble across interesting tidbits.

The patch notes can be found in the regular place, of course. But I’m sure you’ve read them by now.

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Gettokiwi of Stormreaver wrote today to let me know that the quest “Shy-Rotam“, which summons Shy-Rotam and (indirectly) Sian-Rotam is now available to Alliance players as well as Horde players.

Previously if an Alliance hunter wanted to tame one of these gorgeous cats they had to find a helpful Horde player to start the quest for them — or hijack a Horde player’s quest. But now Alliance can do it for themselves! In addition, both Shy and Sian are no longer elite (although they do both still have a wicked fear ability).

I’d been resisting adding some sort of script to do fancy item links (like this) to this blog. I don’t link to that many items — not like some people! — and anyway it seemed like a lot of work.

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It’s sad, really. I have all this work to do — the contracting gig is taking off and I have two very interesting and lucrative contracts on my plate, plus a horde of work on Petopia to catch up with this last patch, plus way too many comments and e-mails and blog posts to read through — and yet all I can do, it seems, is play.

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While I’m on a plane back home today, I’m going to take Messyah’s suggestion and ask you guys what kinds of pets you have. Tell us your pet’s species, name, when you tamed it and why you love it!

I’m headed out again, on a plane to San Francisco in just a few hours. I had intended to spend this morning responding to a bunch of the great comments you guys have left in the past week, but to my utter disgust I woke up this morning with a migraine. (It took me a while to figure out I had an aura going on — I thought I was just bleary-eyed from waking up!) It’s beginning to fade a bit now, but I I’m still taking regular breaks to lay down and moan.

Anyway, I expect this trip will be just as busy as the last one so I went ahead and updated Petopia for the Patch 2.3 launch a few days early. Hopefully that won’t confuse too many people. *grin* I’ll be back Friday, and I’ll do what I can in between to keep up, so go ahead and leave comments or e-mail me if you see a mistake or learn something interesting.

Now back to trying to pack for this trip with all the lights off and my eyes mostly closed …