Patch 3.3 is going live today. The big news for most players is probably Icecrown Citadel, which seems to have something to do with the Lich King. But there’s lots more of interest, from the long-awaited built-in quest mapper to a new fishing tournament.

Most exciting for high level Beast Mastery hunters is the new Spirit Beast Arcturis, who happens to look like a ghostly druid bear but is, in every way, a proper Spirit Beast. (That’s him to the right.)

We are also seeing what is perhaps the first impact of the upcoming Cataclysm on the creatures of Azeroth as diseased wolves invade Elwynn Forest and the Thistle Boars of Teldrassil shed their pretty orange fur for a new grey look.

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We know that the upcoming Cataclysm expansion is going to literally tear our virtual world apart. What we don’t know yet — and what many of us are worried about — is how the changes to the world will affect the existing wildlife, namely the beasts that we can tame.

But I thought it might be fun to speculate a bit. In this post I’ll make some guesses about what pets may be in peril in Kalimdor. Later I’ll take a poke at the Eastern Kingdoms as well.

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As I was showering today, I got thinking about the current problems with the hunter class in WoW. This is a perennial topic for any class, of course, even when there aren’t any major problems.

And as you know, I am not much of a power player, so my notion of problems is rather more limited in scope than many hunters, despite the frequent attempts by my loyal commenters here to enlighten me.

At any rate, I decided that I am personally pretty satisfied with hunters right now — as I usually am — with one exception. And that exception is the Spirit Beast family.

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Thanks to safrienaer, we now have a lot more information on the ‘spectral bear‘ — the potential new Spirit Beast that showed up in the Patch 3.3 data files a few builds back.

His name is Arcturius. He is, indeed, a Spirit Beast — complete with all the Spirit Beast skill, including Prowl. Like other Spirit Beasts, he is a non-aggressive rare elite. Unlike them, he’s only level 74.

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