Yesterday, another spirit beast appeared in the Cataclysm beta.
See, this is what I mean. I planned to log into the Cataclysm beta yesterday to finish rounding up the data on common pets so I can merge it into the Petopia database, but two minutes after I logged in the server came down for maintenance.
Okay, fine – the pets will still be there when it comes back up. And they were – and so were another five-ish pet looks to tame. I just can’t keep up!
But while some of the new looks are really exciting (blue dragonhawk, yellow two-headed vulture), the big news of the day is Karoma the Wolf Spirit.
Karoma is a level 85 Spirit Beast from Twilight Highlands. Wain found him in the southern part of the zone but we don’t know yet if he might have other spawn points.
Like all spirit beasts, Karoma is an exotic Ferocity beast with the skills Roar of Courage, Spirit Mend, and Spirit Walk. And like the other spirit beasts, he is neutral (yellow) until you attack him or try to tame him. [Edit: Karoma seems to be scrappier than the other spirit beasts - he starts out as hostile instead of neutral.]
Yes, the ghost wolf has returned! As a spirit beast, but hey – you take what you can get. At least you can tame this look again!
The first question I’ve heard from almost everyone is: Will the original ghost wolves, the Grimtotem Spirit Guides, be turned into spirit beasts?
I Am Not A Blizzard Dev (IANABD) but I am extremely doubtful that Blizzard will change the existing ghost wolves.
[Update: Characters with an old school Grimtotem Spirit Guide who copy their character to the beta do indeed still have a Wolf and not a Spirit Beast. Rikaku was generous enough to provide a screenshot of her Grimtotem Spirit Guide on the beta realm.]
A quick shot of history for those who are unfamiliar: Way back in November of 2007, Blizzard updated Dustwallow Marsh, including Grimtotem shamans that summoned a ghost wolf called the Grimtotem Spirit Guide. The Grimtotem Spirit Guide could be tamed – assuming you had the right equipment and help and whatnot, since they only existed for a couple of seconds.
Anyway, at first Blizzard said that they were going to leave the Grimtotem Spirit Guide tameable … and then they changed their minds. They replaced the Grimtotem Spirit Guide with an untameable Grimtotem Spirit Wolf in the wild, but they left those hunters who had tamed a Grimtotem Spirit Guide alone. Thus the ghost wolf became the classic retired pet, the measure we use to judge all subsequent retired pets.
My many thanks to Wain for finding and sharing this spirit beast, as well as for the screenshot above.
This will be interesting. Although there are not that many Grimtotem Spirit Guides as pets (a nice rarity I missed out on), would this mark the first time for the same model/skin being used in 2 different families? I know the other spirit beasts share models with other families, but this will be one of those instances where you won’t be able to tell if the pet someone has is a spirit beast or wolf.
Nope, not the first two-family look – we already have the Dark Brown Crow/Owl which is represented in both the carrion bird and bird of prey families.
Nothing can say how happy I am about this. This wolf skin was one of the main reasons I wanted to come to wow. By the time I had gotten a workable computer they had replaced the tamable mob and from then on whenever I would see someone with it I would sob inside.
It is my absolute favorite pet skin in all of wow and I will be camping him upon reaching 85. I will sit there for hours and just wait. This has made my day.
…..two spirit beasts at ones…..the wolf here and Ghostcawler.
This is a very interesting turn of ghost wolf history. It’s kind of a shame that they made it a rare spawn though (nooo more camping?) However, this was always a sore spot in hunter history, so glad theres a new chance to obtain this skin.
I am praying that they do not remove the ghost wolves that people have already tamed. I would miss my Lennon.
I updated the original post, but at this point when you copy a character with the old ghost wolf over to the beta you still have a ghost wolf and not a spirit beast. So that’s looking pretty encouraging. ;)
Oops, I forgot to mention in my original post that unlike other spirit beasts, this guy was aggressive from the minute I saw him as a red blip on my map. He attacked me before I could start taming, when I was just trying to get a pic.
I’m not sure if this is deliberate or a mistake. As you pointed out, all other spirit beasts have been neutral.
I’ll go update my post now.
Thanks for the info, Wain! I updated the post. It may be trivial, but I am interested to see if he ends up like the others or special. ;)
This makes me so unbelievably angry. The time i took to tame my unique spirit wolf is going to be washed down the drain. Thanks again, Blizz.
Kail: I can certainly understand your disappointment about the ghost wolf appearance. On the other hand, your wolf is still unique even if the look isn’t. Your is a wolf that you can use regardless of your spec, whereas people who tame the spirit beast will have to be BM.
Something else that’s interesting to note (that may change) is that Ghostcrawler and Karoma are both rares, but not rare elites. This makes them both different from the other spirit beasts. :D
Nice, we will need bigger stables!!! :)
Not really happy about this, because it may mean that either the spirit beast’s skin will be changed (unlikely) or the ghost wolf’s skin will be changed (more likely), unless Blizzard specifically put this in to give back the ghost wolf. In a way, I’d be relieved to hear that was the case…
Also not happy that a true rarity in the game (in and of itself unusual these days) will be given out again, but I do know that’s a lost cause. Blizzard prefers giving the majority access.
Both happy and a tad sad. Happy couse my other hunters and other players can tame this skinn again. sad cause well…my grimmy will be a tiny bit less special in looks XD but thats ok. he is a wolf and not a spirit beast.
Yes im a bit selfish(like many others with retired pets are) when it comes to my ghost wolf (and gezza) we put great effort in getting it and now the same skin is another “camp the spawnpoint pet”. but oh well. im glad there still will be a difference between old grimmy and this new one.
I am wondering if that means that there will be 2 spirit beasts from now on at every patch…
Hmm… Skoll with Spirit Walk on still looks better in my opinion. Mania, do you have a twitter account?
What is rarer than a spirit beast? Think about it. I have 99 mounts and tried several times to get those loot mounts to drop. I think I got 2 pretty rare ones(TLPD and the white polar bear). I’m farming ZG, Kara, Heroic UP, and Anzu almost as much as I can yet I have 3 spirit beasts (found all 4 before expanded stable), Aotona, and King Krush.
I’m an owner of the real spirit wolf and I have to say this really upsets me. After all the fuss over it when it was here before and the making it look as if the people that got one were going to have something actually unique you go and do this? Fail bliz you’ll do anything to make ppl keep playing so you can make a buck
I tamed Karoma today at 59.64 in the Highland Forest (Twilight Highlands).
hehe, kinda find this ironic, not only has the ghost hydra tamed before now a pvp useful pet with ankle crack, it’s now the only unique pet look besides the slime for retired pets IE: a model that cant be tamed anymore. thus aside, sorry for all those spirit guide owners, hope they dont get changed any.
I’m happy that this was put in. I was one of the people who got excited when I found out about the ghost wolf, got all the gear together to be able to go tame it, and then got my group set to help me out on a Tuesday afternoon.
You might be able to guess which Tuesday that turned out to be, because I don’t have the pet. This skin has been that one thing that has haunted me from TBC – I was set on getting it, I got everything together, and blizzard pulled out the rug from under me. At least now I have a way to get this skin, even if it’s not quite the same as what I tried for those years ago.
I found her today and really wanted to tame her but i was too low level. 116K HP is insane, but i’m looking forward to taming her soon
I finally tamed this beauty after a 3 day camp. Actually I was quite lucky I stumbled on Sambas (new lion skin) first while scouting around and according to one of my guildies Karoma shares around the same spawn time as the lion does. And after a three day camp I was getting undeniably edgy.
half an hour later and I found Karoma on another scout luckily in an area with no other mobs lucky me.
He’s gorgeous and I was shaking as I tamed lol.
Also I can understand that some Vanilla WOW veterans are unhappy about the fact that this skin is now avalible again and I sympathise. But the way I see it like its been said Karoma is a spirit beast and not a normal wolf XD
i logged last night after camping him, and when i logged on this morning to find a guildy had killed him 10 mins before, at the spawn point i had logged at to see what it dropped. SO PISSED. then i came back 7 hours later and whada ya know, hes back, and someone else kills him, and i find the body. i will be trying after another 7 and will post what i find.
I’d been dying to get my hands on a Spirit Wolf since I found out about it, but it came before I even began playing. I definitely understand the anger by the old school pet owners. I have a friend who’s got an Original. I think it would have been better for Blizzard to give Karoma a color change to differentiate between the two. That way those of us who weren’t around for the real deal could at least have something like it, and those who value the rarity of their companion would still stand out a bit.