Mania’s Arcania

Today we have a request from a dwarf hunter named Dalader who has recently tamed a white lion. Dalader writes:

I would like to have a sensible name that would sound cool with a dwarf, maybe something about dwarf and lion lore, maybe you can mix names around so that they sound they go with the ‘WoW time period’, and make it so that they don’t sound silly at the same time. Just so you know, I do not RP, well not on WoW anyway, but I like the names people can use in RP servers, so nothing recent or silly, proper names, mythical or about lore. Thanks for reading and let the name creating begin!

Today, for your reading enjoyment, we have another set of WoW blog posts that I have enjoyed and recommend:

• 35 Yards Out: Trophies of a Hunter – After reading this, I started to go through my bank to see what kinds of trophies I’m still holding onto. But then the sheer amount of stuff I own got to me and I had to go have a lie down.
• Aspect of the Capricious: Playing Catch Up – Firewing Point is a favorite pet leveling spot for a lot of people. This illustrated mini-guide has some helpful tips. (I particularly liked the comments on the big pic: “Not these guys; they suck!”)
• Big Red Crab: How Important is Claw? – BRC, one of my favorite new blogs, takes a mathematical look at Claw for crabs. I’ve often suspected that crabs are saved from ignominious failure primary because of their access to Claw, so it’s nice to have graphs.
• Scattered Nightmares: Sadie – Nomakk shares the story of his in-game pet illustrated with out-of-game pictures. At first I was a bit surprised, but I think it works really well for this cat.
• El’s Extreme Anglin’: New Movies – If you know someone who’d new to fishing in WoW, point ‘em here!

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The Midsummer Fire Festival has started! (Well, I think it started yesterday but I’m a bit slow.)

Last year I pretty much ignored this event. This year, however, I decided that I wanted a Captured Flame non-combat pet, and possibly also a Brazier of Dancing Flames. So off I went to Orgimmar to do … whatever it was I supposed to do. I started with the event guide on WoW Wiki.

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Ket Shi is one of Petopia’s most reliable contributors of data, but this time he is looking for some help himself. His hunter Fursecutor needs a name for a new pet sporebat!

Turns out I am in need of a name for a new pet! I’ve always loved how spore bats looked, but I’ve never had a reason for my hunter Fursecutor to use one. However, when I heard a rumor they may be getting a focus dump, I rushed over to Zangarmarsh right away to get a blue spore bat, and I’m currently in the process of getting her to level 70.

I’m stumped on a name, though. I’m not interested in silly names or drug references, which was all my guildmates could come up with. I’m assuming the spore bat is female, so I’d like a more serious feminine name that’s a little more exotic.

Serious, feminine, and exotic — we can do that!

I finally managed to get onto the 2.4.3 Public Test Realm long enough to do some simple testing and site-seeing. (I’ve posted what I learned about level 30 mounts over on Warcraft Mounts, so I won’t repeat it here.)

But more than anything I wanted to get a look at the changes to Growl — namely this patch note:

Growl: Pets will no longer generate additional threat from this ability based on attack power buffs cast on them. Attack power buffs on their master will still indirectly increase the threat generated by the pet’s Growl.

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This edition of the WoW Public Test Realm has some interesting differences from most PTR sessions. If you keep up with PTR news like I do, you’ve undoubtedly run across these notes already. But even if you’re not a PTR junkie you may want to check this one out.

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I’m trapped in my own personal version of hell (Logan Airport), but at least I have patch notes to look at! And for a minor patch, there sure is some interesting stuff in here, including … level 30 mounts?! Where did that come from?

Random highlights follow.

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Final Name: Magitail

I don’t think we’ve had a Name That Pet request for a warp stalker before, which is odd considering how much personality these little guys have. So today we welcome our inaugural warp stalker request from a Blood Elf hunter called Lunania.

Lunania writes:
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Faeldray over at Petaholics Anonymous is working on a pet name generator (to go along with her excellent character name generator, affectionately known as PANDA).

The generator isn’t complete yet: Faeldray is looking for some help figuring out the best way to set up the naming categories — whether in silly and serious categories for each family, or by name origin (like Chinese names, fantasy names, etc.), or by some other method entirely.

If you have an interest in pet names (and it seems that most of us do at one time or another), please swing by and answer her poll on the matter. Thanks!

I was browsing the WoW forums real quick tonight before turning in (this contract thing has me up abominably early in the morning!) and noticed that the Public Test Realm forum is once again available (and has been wiped clean). In addition, copying a character from the live realms to a Public Test Realm appears to be operational, and you can download the PTR client as well. However, the PTR client is still an old build for the moment, and none of the Public Test Realms are actually up yet.

Still, being the PTR junkie that I am, I am very interested in all this activity! I just hope it’s all ready to go by the time my plane lands tomorrow night.