I’m still trying to catch up with recent news — so it’s likely that you, my dear readers, know more about these things than I do — but nevertheless I wanted call out some of the more interesting bits of info that have shown up in the comments here and in my e-mail recently.
Today let’s talk about summoning effects: It seems that all pets have lost any special summoning animations or effects they may have had. This means that Arikara the wind serpent no longer appears in a poof of dust, and Gezzarak the Huntress, warp stalker extraordinaire, no longer sizzles into being with an impressive flare of light.
Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot more to say here. The fact that these effects carried over from the wild state was probably unintentional, Blizzard changed something that fixed that carry-over … and that’s that. Our chances of getting the effects back in the future are probably pretty low.
Then again, I never thought we’d see more color-changing pets, and yet we still have Rip-Blade Ravagers and WotLK added several more color-changing worgs and worms.
[edit]
As scott pointed out in the comments, this also affects the Vicious Teromoths of Terokkar Forest. These moths come from the Cenarion Thicket area, where a Strange Aura lowers your stats and gives you a sort of greenish-blue vapor glow.
Previously, Vicious Teromoths would apply the visual part of this aura (but not the actual debuff) whenever they were summoned after they were tamed, making them the only greenish-blue glowy moth with green wings in the game.
Now, confined to their unaltered colors, they have green wings with a red body and no vaporous glow.
Are there any other vanished summoning effects that I missed?
Woah, so much anger.
I think Nachtwulf’s point is that the large number of negative bugs they did fix share a common origin with the loss of the special summoning quirks. And it’s better that all those negative bugs are gone than your favourite summoning effect remains. Maybe they’ll add special exceptions to the code and put them back if they can spare the time. Does it make sense that the summoning effects that were thematically the result of some spell persist on a tamed pet every time it shows up? No. Should you feel some entitlement to them? No. Should you therefore get angry that a bug you enjoyed for so long is gone? No. Would it be fun if they added them back? Well, yes. I loved that my wind serpent appeared in a clap of thunder, but I know why it’s gone. And I also love the fact that I have a wind serpent pet far more than I care about the 1 second sound effect when I summon it. The quirks are just a few tiny sprinkles on the icing of the cake.
Only a little anger, really, about the unique snowflake thing. Otherwise I just said it was s shame, and it aggrivated me. I said I was tired of having things removed that were fun. Not once did I say I was angry, or that I felt we were entitled to anything.I said that the little quirks themselves were thing that hunters enjoyed, and Blizzard KNEW that. When it’s a side effect of bug fixes, thats one thing. Things come and things go, and I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen a lot of come and go. But as I said, when it is an accepted thing that the fanbase enjoys this or that, and then it gets removed with little or no reason, or a bad reason, then yes I feel like the fanbase has a reason to be angry.
Something else, Wain, is that this is, in fact, a little thing. I will admit that right out of the gate. The thing is, it’s little thing, after little thing, after little thing that is being removed. One or two little things, that’s fine, sure. But I think the summoning feature was one of the last quirks hunter pets had left that was a positive, non-harmful one. Now we have color changers, the barking dogs, and…..what? And honestly, don’t expect color changers to stay. If I had to wager, I’d say that Blizzard is going through, code by code, and ‘fixing’ things. Not just for hunters, though I think they’ll be the most obvious fixes due to their rather obvious nature.
For the record, no, I don’t think the summoning effects had anything to do with the bug effects, since the bug effects were occuring on pets far and wide, and not just on those specific few. I DO, however, think Blizzard was ‘straightening the code’, so to speak, and that was why it got chopped. It doesn’t ruin the game or anything, I just think its sad.
At the end of the day, it comes down to this for me: There are things that hunters have spoken out about, en masse, that they said they enjoyed or were fun. Harmless things, things like the ghost wolf, things like summoning effects, things like the ghost croc/hydra/slime, things like several other pets that were removed or reskinned. These were things that the fanbase, the players, enjoyed. These were things that could have been ((Or in the case of the ghost wolf, HAVE been))fixed and yet instead of doing so, were removed entirely. Am I saying that we were entitled anything? No. Am I saying that Blizzard should pay attention to at least a part of the joys of the hunter community? You bet your ass I am. I don’t WANT anything ground breaking. I don’t WANT anything that’ll make me or my pet ‘the best’. I WANT little personality quirks. I love the barking wolf, for example. I enjoy the color changers, I thought it was and is great for people who have ghost wolves. But little by little, those quirks are being taken, and replaced with things like a single pet in a pet family that’s a rare spawn on a stupid spawn timer and placement. Who looks like an ((Admittedly cool)) cat. I realize it’s two now, but that doesn’t change the fact that all to often, I feel like Blizzard doesn’t know what it’s community is looking for.
Sometimes it’s to fix bugs, but other times, like with the ghostwolf, it wasn’t to fix a bug at all. When they made the ZG pets unfeedable so they’d run away, that also was NOT to fix a bug. When they changed the succubus summoning quest to stop warlocks from being able to choose their demon’s name, that ALSO was not to fix a bug.
They don’t like players doing unexpected things that they did not anticipate.
I guess what annoys me the most about these so-called “bug fixes” ie, the colour changing pets and the supposedly “untameables”, is that Blizzard was aware of them long before they fell under the category. But in their foresight, only remove them when they are “popular” discussions on the hunter forums.
Them saying the Ghostly Hydra, Slime and Crocolisk from “A Cleansing Song” quest were never meant to be tameables is the same as saying any gold elite beast shouldn’t be tameable either. Yet in hindsight, “Hunters can tame all sorts of beasts” becomes…somewhat limited in scope due to that reasoning.
Let’s take the most stupid removal from past date to now – Araga’s tailstripes. She was meant to be visually different from the other mountain lions – the single most unique feline skin ingame (she still is, but lacks the ‘mysteriousness’, all she has left is a darker mane). The cat that was, in all honesty, the “Mystery Queen of the Highlands”. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, I’ve seen and heard plenty of stories down the grapevine in regards to Araga, but the one story that sticks out the most is that a WARLOCK complained about the cat’s tailstripes and they were subsequently, and almost immediately after that said crying, removed.
Blizzard listening to high pitched bitching. What else honestly should be new? [/ end sarcasm]
I think what angers me so much in regards to Araga is that she is now treated like every other rare cat – a killable rather than a tameable. I tracked her across four servers and six guilds; a three and a half year feat on my end (simply because my luck has sucked…), because I preferred a singular unique skin as opposed to yet another Rak’Shiri or Humar in the raid. These days she is constantly mistaken for Broken Tooth, which is an annoyance in itself. Some days I honestly cannot be screwed pointing out the difference between the two cats because people have a tendancy to be completely blind AND stupid about it.
I tend to somewhat pride myself in being the only Ally hunter, dwarf female at that on Saurfang, to have bothered with catching Gezzarak. This in itself is to me a personal achievement. The lightning effect made her a very nice bonus – a unique little way to somewhat make myself predominantly hated by other hunters who only found out about the fix AFTER Blizzard slammed the untameable lock on her. Her unique skin sets her apart from the abundance of green and white warpstalkers.
I found it quite personally satisfying to be in PvP and be rushed by a caster looking for easy honor…only have my pet summon behind said caster in a bolt of lightning and lay some smackdown. Oftenmost eliciting a yell of “WTF IS THAT?!”. Made me grin everytime. Yes, I’m a sad little dwarf, I admit that XD
But my query still remains – “What exactly was the lightning effect bugging to have warranted the “fix”?”
Which now brings me to the obvious lack of thought in regards to the Blighthounds. Fixed the run animation bug, which was nice – no more lagging and resummoning on moving fights like Grobbulus…but what exactly is the swim animation? The same bugged version of the run animation prior to the “fixing” *cough* A step backwards in that regards, really. That or just unadulterated laziness.
I’m happy that we get a large range of beasts to tame. That’s not my issue. My issue is when a little quirk comes up in a pet that makes it a unique and special tame (and to my end of the scale, a unique personality), it’s treated like a damned bug that needs fixing.
In all, I still have Araga (Amenti), Gezzarak (Nightshade) and my Blighthound (Bephelgor). I have no intentions on ever dismissing these three. But the little quirks that made Araga’s skin the most unique and Gezzarak’s the difficult tame are gone. And with it, that sense of achievement at being a somewhat “different from the rest” hunter.
Not everything should be a “bug” to “fix”. That’s just my two cents.