WoW Petopia Community

So I was recently browsing through various "Show Off your Pets/Xmogs/Screenshots" threads here on the forum, and I realized that we, as a community, don't really do any sort of get-togethers, events or screenshot threads for holidays or other special occasions.

Therefore, I hereby proclaim that every Thanksgiving shall be celebrated here on the forums in the form of "Pardon a Tallstrider Day!" Which I expect to be promptly and inevitably forgotten within the year by myself and all participants.

The rules are simple:

• Tame a Tallstrider and share your stories and experiences with it. It can be a Tallstrider you've tamed in the past, as this is a Show & Tell thread.
• Give a reason why you decided to "pardon" that specific Tallstrider, as opposed to another similar Tallstrider (e.g. pardoning a Deviate Plainstrider over Mazzranache).
• I know people can be very busy during Thanksgiving week, so you don't have to tame one or make a post about it on Thanksgiving. The sooner the better, though!
• Don't have a stable slot to spare? Roll a new hunter!

Now, time to get this ball of stuffing rolling!

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Back in vanilla, I tamed an Ornery Plainstrider and leveled him to 60 manually for kicks. Tallstriders weren't the greatest pets at the time, but Ornery Plainstriders had a faster attack speed than the rest of their kin, giving them a slight edge in PvP. I have a lot of fond memories farming the Disgusting Oozeling minipet and taking on Stratholme with him at my side, in addition to all the Alliance I humiliated in battlegrounds.

I even drew a picture of him and Jez back in middle school, back when I was rocking that sweet Beaststalker set, and I recall the drawing itself wasn't too terrible, though it has either been lost to time, or is collecting dust in some unknown region of my storage unit.

Of course, when TBC came around and pet attack speeds were baselined, I abandoned him in favor of cooler, more useful pets.

And now, with the addition of abilities for every pet and re-inclusion of differing attack speeds, I figured it was as good a tame as ever! So here he is again at my side, in all of his ornery glory: Peck!



Now go out there and pardon a Tallstrider today!

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Jezpalimu, 120 Troll Hunter & Kent, 120 Human Hunter
"So many pets, so little tame..."

I've been leveling a tauren and her only pets are tallstriders, so this is perfect! I have one of each color now, all named after herbs. Here are Briarthorn and Earthroot, with minipet Sungrass. In the stables, there are Steelbloom (orange/turquoise), Silverleaf (white), Mageroyal (pink) and Swiftthistle (green/purple)
I was not initially going to even keep the tallstrider starter pet, but somehow it grew on me, until I realized that I needed to roam the plains with a flock of tallstriders. My tauren is an herbalist, so she named them all after herbs because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

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Flight Rising Lair

Aww, cute idea! I'm not sure when or why we moved away from sharing stories like that, it used to be a big part of the community here (and I'm just as guilty of this). Either way, happy to see more threads like this pop up!

Here's my tallstrider gang:


Kevin was the first and only tallstrider I ever really bonded with. I remember there was a time when the purple model wasn't tameable. I can't quite recall when that was changed, but I went out to grab a Lost Torranche the moment I could since I'd been eyeing those mobs for years in TBC. I just loved that there was this isolated island full of big purple tallstriders out there.

I named him partially out of inspiration from the Up movie, but also it just seemed to fit him. I was thrilled when we got the matching mount and minipet too!

And for a blast from the past...
Apparently this screenshot still exists from almost 9 years ago! When I first tamed him! I'm surprised these photobucket images are still active...


I'm looking forward to seeing him with his updated model in 8.1, I think I'm going to like it a lot!

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• Flight Rising lair

Aw this is amazing! I'll have to find a pic later but she's in my sig too - Emerald (or Emmy) the Clutchstrider Mother is one of my original pets on my tauren hunter from Vanilla. I just loved her on sight and had to have her. I remember taming her was really hard at the time as she was a rare that hit like a truck and her chicks would attack you too so my alliance warlock friend came to help by killing the chicks while I tamed her!

She'd go to every raid with me and when I tried to bring a more useful pet my raid team would tell me off because "the chicken is your pet!" haha! They loved hearing her screech into battle

Love you forever Emmy <3

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Battle for Azeroth
Balance Druid ~Sakurie~ , BM Hunter ~Castile~, Prot Paladin ~Tsurani~

Dangit. I'm gonna have to get a screenshot of my tallstrider when I get home, but I couldn't resist responding now.

You've obviously got good taste in names. Peck is the name of my pink tallstrider that I tamed back in Vanilla. I saw him while questing in Mulgore and just had to tame him. I had to log onto my warrior main, send my lil lowbie hunter some gold so that he could buy his 3rd stable slot, then go out and find that bird again. He beat the stuffing out of me while taming, so he was named Peck.

Peck was always the first or second pet I'd get to max level when a new expansion came out (until pets started automatically leveling to match the hunter). I've still got him and he comes along for raids now and then, even if one of the tanks hates 'that screaming baby sound pet.' Heck, he's even got his own little mini-backstory.

EDIT: Well, looks like I do have some pics of him available after all.

One from olden days:



And some artwork of him: