Mania’s Arcania

I woke up this morning just a few minutes ago (and yes, it is morning for me!) to 18 new e-mails in my inbox, most of them about this post from Ghostcrawler on the WotLK Beta Hunter forum:

There are 2 additional slots in the stable.

Integrating hunter / warlock pet management into the new mount and companion UI has certainly come up already. Let’s give the new UI a whirl and see if it works and then we can consider if it makes sense to integrate the stable or anything else into it.

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When the new beta build went up Monday night, I was able to check out the pet talent changes pretty quickly. But I slacked on re-checking all the family skills. (There’s so many of them now!)

Luckily, you guys don’t slack as much as I do. :> In particular, Ilyara of the guild Ostarim Tel Niasa from Earthen Ring EU and Zepnic the Hunter both sent me a treasure trove of changes with the beta pet skills. And Stranger let us know about changes in a comment here as well.

Here’s a quick run down of what has changed with beta pet skills. (Oh, and I also updated Petopia with this information this morning.)

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Final Name: Kisa (And see the end of the post for a new picture of Evandelle and Kisa.)

Today we have a real rarity to name: the beautiful and elusive lioness Araga! Evandelle, a young Draenei hunter from the Blackwater Raiders realm, writes:

I have just tamed this beautiful lioness, and I plan on never getting rid of her, EVER, so thus, I need the perfect name!

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Ghostcrawler is the Blizzard poster who shows up most often on the WotLK Beta Hunter forum, especially in regards to hunter pets. It sounds like she has a lot of responsibility for designing the pet system. (I wonder if she’d be willing to trade jobs with me … although honestly she seems to be doing a pretty good job herself.)

Anyway, she posted several times this morning with some good information-rich comments, so she gets a post all her own to round them up.

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I’ve updated Petopia with the pet talent changes we saw in last night’s 8681 beta build. I’ve also tried to clean up the pet talent section and make it a bit easier to read. The graphical charts will be coming back as soon as I get them updated. But let me know what you think of the organization for the moment.

I also cleaned up the family skill section a few days ago, and this morning I added the devilsaur family skill. (For now, I am just treating devilsaurs as a new family.) Devilsaurs are also on the new pet page as well. I still have more pets to add and/or modify based on info sitting in my mailbox right now. That should keep me busy until lunch. *grin*

Now *this* is a pet!

Mind you, Kaet is a dwarf, and my new pet did shrink quite a bit … but still — that’s one tall lizard.

He’s got a couple of problems, though. He doesn’t have a proper run animation — he just walks really fast. And he kept his heavy thudding footsteps (although thankfully he doesn’t actually shake the ground when he walks). He has a roaring animation he does when he’s sitting around idle, but it has no sound … so it rather looks like he’s coughing up a hairball.

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The Wrath of the Lich King beta realms have now been updated with build 8681.

There’s almost nothing new in the patch notes, except a note that the Calendar feature now works, and explaining the changes to mounts and non-combat pets that we heard were coming last week. (The calendar is neat: it shows in-game events like holidays and the Darkmoon Faire, and allows you to add your own events as well.)

But that’s not all the changes, of course.

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Nimizar let us know just a bit ago that Ghostcrawler, the Blizzard poster who seems to post a lot about hunters, has posted more details on exotic pets — and especially what happens when you respec the 51-point Beast Mastery talent — over in the WotLK Beta Hunter forum.

Ghostcrawler posted:

The exotic pets will be different from normal pets. Ideally they might even be a little bit better, but we’re very hesitant to make them too good lest we see every hunter stampede over to the BM tree. Pets are supposed to be something important to all kinds of hunters, and the BM tree already offers some amazing pet buffs and synergy. We just don’t want to overdo it with this talent. :)

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Today we have a request from the Tzeporah, a very young Draenei hunter (level 11 when she sent in the request!) from the RP realm of Moon Guard.

When the Exodar crash-landed into Azeroth about a year and a half ago, the devastation of the loss of the Draenei’s people and the havoc they wreaked on the surrounding ecosystems weighed heavily on the new citizens of Azeroth.

Tzeporah, being quiet and keeping mostly to herself, didn’t make a lot of friends to lose; and she had no family to call her own before the crash. Although the sudden landing was jarring, and she now had to learn a whole new planet of lore, customs, races, languages, flora, and fauna. This was an exciting prospect to her – but first, she needed to regain her strength and help where she could around the crash site.

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I’m sure many of you have already heard about this, but the folks behind the Twisted Nether blogcast have set up a Twisted Nether Wiki of WoW blogs and utility sites. Next time you need something to read, just head on over and take your pick from the smorgasbord of WoW goodness.

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