WoW Petopia Community

As I said, the intelligence of raptors is a big debate. There is evidence for both sides. Chimaera and Wind Serpents both have never spoken in WoW, nor do they have the intelligence to do so. And according to Wowpedia, Evalcharr doesn't send out a zone-wide taunt when he spawns. Doesn't say if he ever did.

I think that skinning Yetis was just a Vanilla mechanic. You could also skin Worgen prior to them becoming a tamable race.

I'm just going to leave these right here:

Like hippogryphs and gryphons, wyverns are intelligent creatures — as smart as any humanoid. They speak Orcish and Taur-ahe, and are capable of learning Common and other languages.

That's from the WoW Wiki.

A wyvern, also known as a wind rider and war rider, is a sentient wolfish-lion with bat wings and a scorpion tail native to Kalimdor. They can speak and understand Orcish and Taur-ahe Wyverns are today considered sacred by both orcs and tauren.

That's from WoWpedia. Both give the indication that the species as whole had the ability to learn & speak a language. Not a single creature talking to a druid or a druid talking to it /them. The part of their being sacred fits along the same lines as the dread ravens with the Arakkoa.

I've also ignored nothing. I just don't agree with that certain creatures can be adjusted to be made tamable when a like creature isn't.

Honestly. We have differing opinions which is fine. But I stand by what I said & will continue to do so. Like you said. Its their game. They can, have & will continue to do what they want with or without reason, whether it's in lore or not.

Vephriel wrote:The python argument has always confused me when they are used as LARGE hostile mobs in multiple places.

I know right?!? That was (especially in terms of the timeless isle) a case of "or be cheeky and get away with using (design/development team)"

At the time, some of the design crew had a field day and added in all the shiny new battle pets (which to be fair looked amazing, even at higher rez) that were just added in the previous patch, as LARGE hostile mobs. Sadly, they were never intended to be used as such during creation, and hence still lack may qualities (animation mainly) required to be a hunter pet.

And yes, my goodness would I love a Python as a pet, it's on the top of my "wish I could tame it" list.

Wowwiki is, generally, considered a bad source, seeing as it is usually not kept up-to-date and you do risk getting a virus by going there.

Did you check the references that say that? The first reference is to the quest I mentioned before, in which we don't actually see the Wyvern speak. When you turn in the quest, the Tauren Druid says, "The great Heartrazor is a majestic creature. He has told me of his gratitude and fondness for you, <name>." Since it is from a Druid, he probably used his own abilities to communicate with the Wyvern. Outside of that, there is no other mention in WoW about Wyvern speaking. They can understand Orcish and Taurahe, as suggested in the Traveler book. But what can also understand languages? Gryphons and Hippogryphs, yet they are not sapient species.

Yes, they are sacred to the Orcs and Tauren, but the Orcs and Tauren also haven't stopped them from being used as companions and mounts, so long as you respect them. The Arakkoa have never shown such with the Dread Ravens.

You have expressed that you do not care for the lore or any lore reasons, since Blizz has bent or changed it in the past. It is true, they have, but it is still their lore. You can't ignore the lore which is currently in place. Blizz could definitely change it, but the lore is still there. I am not against us having tamable Dread Ravens or Kunchong, so long as there is a lore-friendly reason and method as to why we are able to get them, other than just "Dread Ravens are now apart of <Beast> family".

Thanks for the info guys! Guess this means there IS a small chance of the Unicorn / Scythe horns / Manarunners (whatever you want to call them) becomming tamable.

It seriously broke my heart when it was discovered none of them were tameable. Maybe I should try drawing ultra violent unicorns killing things with hunters and twitter it. Lol.

I do want pythons, but my number one want is dat purple and pink kitty.

Oh, I could definitely see the Scythehorns becoming tamable at some point.

Talihawk wrote:Guess this means there IS a small chance of the Unicorn / Scythe horns / Manarunners (whatever you want to call them) becomming tamable.

To be honest, I see very little reason for them not to be in the future. My biggest trepidation originally it's seemed like they didn't want to go down the "working animal" as pets as they never really did at the beginning.

But as of more recently (especially when they added stags for me) the playing field changed. Then with the most recent additions of Gryph/Wyv/Hips and Mechanical sheep (#eyeroll) all bets are off in my mind.

Just add Equines as a family, Pop in those Scythe horns, throw in the vanilla Horses too, some Zhevra's, hell could even sprinkle in some rare spawn Windsteeds for giggles!

I don't know, I find a lot of their reasoning inconsistent. They obviously don't have a quality control checklist that a new pet family has to meet before its tameable. They've delayed pets because they couldn't find a family for it to fit in, yet they have families for single pets with few skins for years. They say they wait for the "right time" for something to happen (an excuse used in many other areas) yet we seem things added that have no apparent connection to the content or lore or game mechanics or systems. Their reasoning is far from consistent, and they can add pets/families for any reason they want to. While it is fun for us to jostle around deep philosophical reasons why beasts should or should not be tameable, they clearly don't need near that level of thought or justification to make a family or add pets.

I imagine theres also internal things that none of us could ever know about as well, but at the end of the day, they can do what they want for any reason they want, and that would be that. That can work in our favor and give us cool pets out of the blue or work against us and delay good pet candidates indefinitely.

Valnaaros wrote:Other reasons are lore-based. Dragons, Proto-Drakes (to a lesser extent), etc. are sentient. Some beasts, like the Dread Ravens or the Kunchong, are revered by the Arakkoa and Mantid respectively, and would not be happy with us taming these beasts (the mount and pet versions aren't considered canon).

I'm fairly sure Dread Ravens, Kunchong, Skyscreamers and maybe Cloud Serpents are just a matter of time, rather than a cultural limit. I mean, I'm fairly sure most Night Elves wouldn't enjoy an Orc taming a Hippogryph. Silithids were also first made tameable in WoTLK. Sometimes they just wanna keep things untameable so they have some older types of beasts to make tameable in later expansions, like Kodos and Mushan in Legion.

Heck they could stick the Scythehorns in with the stags or the spirit beasts.

I feel they ought to just give in and let us have pythons, as after all, it's been mentioned that marsuul don't open their mouths either.

And frankly, I don't care, they're adorable fungus weasels anyway.

Qraljar wrote:

Valnaaros wrote:Other reasons are lore-based. Dragons, Proto-Drakes (to a lesser extent), etc. are sentient. Some beasts, like the Dread Ravens or the Kunchong, are revered by the Arakkoa and Mantid respectively, and would not be happy with us taming these beasts (the mount and pet versions aren't considered canon).

I'm fairly sure Dread Ravens, Kunchong, Skyscreamers and maybe Cloud Serpents are just a matter of time, rather than a cultural limit. I mean, I'm fairly sure most Night Elves wouldn't enjoy an Orc taming a Hippogryph. Silithids were also first made tameable in WoTLK. Sometimes they just wanna keep things untameable so they have some older types of beasts to make tameable in later expansions, like Kodos and Mushan in Legion.

I don't think we will ever see drakes or cloud serpents tamed mainly due to dragons basically being able to become human in form and cloud serpents would kinda sorta be in the same family (and the size issue too tbh). The others I think theirs a good chance - things being revered creatures doesn't seem to matter too much to blizzard if we can have Hippos and gryphon's etc.

I'd really like them to fix some of the animations first before giving us a bunch of new stuff. I hate how the Gryphons hover - I wish they could run on the ground like the spirit beast one does or even have them fly beside you on a flying mount if the buggers don't want to land lol. My wish list is really for that and more armoured pets - I love love armoured pets! Like the dinos on the Thunder Isle

I'm late to this discussion and most of the reasons have been covered already.

I suspect, as many of you have already guessed, that there's no hard rule or plan, it's a little random and relies on what works at the time, some whim, gut feeling, and what the area designers want to use for artistic / story reasons. Hunter pets usually aren't the first thing on their minds when populating areas (rightly so!) and sometimes we just get what we get. When Jeremy and crew (and other wonderful Hunter-friendly designers too!) have time they very kindly add to, or modify, the situation to give us more things, and more colours of things, but in the rush of production that can't always be the case.

As for colour variety, sometimes they like to save one or two for special uses, other times I suspect it's chance. There have been occasions when the vast majority of instances of a model have used just one colour and in those cases I have a strong suspicion they were the result of "we're in a hurry so let's copy this existing version and maybe worry about colour later if we have time". And when it approaches deadline they rarely have time to go back.

I suspect that more edgy kinds of creatures are also a matter of whim, or consensus by the team at that particular point in time. Like, we got shale spiders in Cataclysm but they've avoided adding any strongly-elemental creatures since. Maybe the evolving teams no longer agree on elemental beasts, or maybe they just wanted to be nice and give us one but don't want to go overboard.

Creature sentience/sapience is also a matter of interpretation. Clearly there are powerful, intelligent creatures in beast form and they don't represent the species as a whole. But we've also witnessed regular beasts acting more human that you'd expect from a wild creature, for the sake of story. For example, if we'd taken Tooga (and his wife, Torta) as representative of turtles then no turtle would be tameable. So it's difficult to make a hard judgment on one or two instances.

Oh, and caterpillars and porcupines were accidents that the designers decided to let us keep because they were being nice. It would be polite to avoid using them as evidence of inconsistency, or as leverage Designers become scared to ever relax the rules if they have to second-guess how their actions are going to be used against them.

@Castile In WoW, Hippos aren't revered by any group or race, and Gryphons have a long history with the Wildhammers, but aren't necessarily revered by them.

@Wain I agree with almost all of what you have said. But just as a small point, it is believed that both Torta and Tooga are descendants of Tortolla, who is a Wild God. That would also make them Wild Gods, if not as powerful as Tortolla.

Valnaaros wrote:@Wain I agree with almost all of what you have said. But just as a small point, it is believed that both Torta and Tooga are descendants of Tortolla, who is a Wild God. That would also make them Wild Gods, if not as powerful as Tortolla.

Yeah, but that's been added since. Going by the evidence presented at the time (pre-Cata) one could make an argument that turtles are sapient and shouldn't be tameable when clearly this wasn't the case. My point is that it's dangerous to use any couple of clever creatures as an argument that a whole family shouldn't be tameable.

Valnaaros wrote:@Castile In WoW, Hippos aren't revered by any group or race, and Gryphons have a long history with the Wildhammers, but aren't necessarily revered by them.

I respectfully disagree. I'd say the bond that the Wildhammers have the gryphons and the Nightelves have with the hippos would be on par as how the mantid see the Kunchong and how the dread ravens are to the Arakkoa. Point being I don't think their current 'status' with those groups would exclude them from being tameable in the future.

@Wain Depends on the individuals. In the vast majority of cases, remarkable beasts with immense intelligence are either Wild Gods or were altered in some way, such as the Raptors in Azshara.

@Castile My mistake. When you said Hippos, my first thought was of the Hippos on Draenor, not Hippogryphs. Yes, Hippogryphs do have a very close bond with Kaldorei, as do Gryphons with the Wildhammer. However, they do not revere them the same way as the Arakkoa do the Dread Ravens -- who they view as the children of their God, and the Mantid with the Kunchong, who are actual members of their race, are vital to their cycles, and produce the resin needed to build their homes and feed their young.

Yeah, but then the orcs have wolves, etc. If we race restricted critters or restricted tames based on special connections, we'd lose a lot of tames.

They are a symbol of the Orcs, yes, and the Orcs have befriended many of them. But they do not revere wolves, outside of Goldrinn/Lo'gosh. They do not view them as sacred beasts, as children of a diety, or as a major part of their society. They are important to orcs, yes, but they aren't nearly as important as the Kunchong are the Mantid.

I'm not against Dread Ravens or Kunchong becoming tamable, I'm just wanting for it to be done right. Have a small questline where we earn the right to have them as companions, rather than just "in 8.0, you can now tame Kunchong and Dread Ravens!"