New Expansion Theorycrafting

[Kayb]

Felwood? I can see CoreHounds being added to that zone. Is Omen (lunar festival) tamable?

[Ryno]

Felwood? I can see CoreHounds being added to that zone. Is Omen (lunar festival) tamable?

Omen is considered a demon, so no. But the core hound with an identical skin in Azuremyst is considered a beast. The Kurken! That's it, forgot the name for a moment.

Bright blue core hounds would be cool. Or yellow ones, hehe. Following the OL color theme for various beasts of course.

[Vephriel]

I've always wished that the Drakeadon was tamable alongside other Core Hound types.

[Jadvya]

Gryphons can only be found currently in the Hinterlands and are friendly to Alliance players. Blizzard could make these creatures a Horde-only tamable pet to counter-balance the Silvermoon Dragonhawk that is restricted to Alliance players only. A unique Horde-only tamable pet, woohoo!

That's hardly fair to us Alliance, though; the Silvermoon Dragonhawk skin can be tamed by Horde too, in the Botanica and Tempest Keep. If they had let us keep our Sunreaver Dragonhawks with the mount skin, that would be a whole different kettle of fish... But since those are now unobtainable too, still unfair. D:

I'm holding out for hydras, basilisks, dogs, silithid wasps, python-model snakes, kodos, cletfhooves, talbuk, zhevra, that type thing.

[Ryno]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Blizzard is shying away from class faction special things. Look what they did to priests spells.

[Kayb]

it would suck to have some beasts be tamable only to one faction.

one top of new beasts, I wouldn't mind seeing some of the existing ones be given some new skin sets too. warpstalkers and sporebats as an example have very few color options, while some other beasts have heaps.

[Nikrosnil]

I'd say:

Foxes (hopefully)
Giraffes
Zhevras
Stags
Snakes (Larger ones. I actually don;t care about this pet though, I hate snakes. xD)
Wyverns
Gryphons
Dogs

I also think there will be some new fiery type pets.

[Nanotrev]

I've tamed Gezzarak the Huntress in the past on my main hunter, but I'm still left wishing that even though I like being one of the only hunters on the server with her if not the only active hunter with her, I'd still like her to be tamable again. It really seems odd to only give a pet family two tamable skins. There are more warp stalker skins than just two as we all know but I guess the Horde stable-master is the only one who can tame the green warp stalker from the Arcatraz. There used to be a red warp stalker skin in the Blade's Edge mountains. What ever happened to him? Couldn't they have at least left a few around and not wiped them out in a patch? How about more Silithid skins? I think Blizz must have some sort of mass addiction to cats because compared to any other family I'd say from memory that they must have the largest variety of pet skins available.

[Kayb]

well thats more because cat irl have so many varieties.

but yeah, plenty of existing beasts need some new skin

[Fael]

I finally got around to uploading some more photos from my camera and I wanted to share the monkey picture. Since the forums have been updated I'll post the images I had shared previously as well.

In the summer I attended PAX which had the worgen and goblin starter zones to try out and I had noticed a few new creature models. Two of them came from the worgen zone, foxes and dogs. From the goblin side there was a new monkey model. There is no proof anywhere that these will ever be tameable and Blizzard could always just pull them from the game if they wanted to, but new beast models are such an exciting thing that I wanted to give others an opportunity to see them.

Foxes
I loved these guys! They were very foxy looking and moved around quickly so it was tough to get a good image. They were yellow mobs and would fight back if you attacked them. I wouldn't think of them as critters since it was an actual fight and not a oneshot kill, as well as them being ranked a level other than 1.

Fox 1, Fox 2, Fox 3.
An extra image to show the fox has a level higher than 1.

Dogs
The dogs were labeled as Gilnean Mastiffs and were big and imposing. The ones I saw came in three different colors. They were friendly green mobs however, so how they could be tamed is hard to say. It's possible that there could always be wild dogs or perhaps enemy dogs such as the Warhounds in Shattered Halls. A hunter with a dog is too good pass up so I'm sure they'll think of something! I got shots of them from different angles:

Tan, Brown, Silver.

Monkeys
The monkeys were both cute and kind of ugly, although the ugliness could just depends on you I suppose. Their eyes were round beady things that contrasted sharply with their faces, they had prominent fangs and liked to leap around the place. Features that helped distinguish them from the apes are their more slender bodies, long thin faces and the fact that they have long curved tails. Their appearance makes me think of some kind of macaque hybrid, with a bit of chimpanzee mixed in. I wasn't able to get a great picture unfortunately as I had less time on that day and the color really didn't turn out very good. I felt bad about not doing the monkey justice so I also found a couple of videos that give you a better idea of the model.

Overhead View
Video 1 - Go to 4:20 into the clip
Video 2 - Go to 2:25 into the clip, this one gives a much better idea of the face.

Old Models
There were pterrordaxes that were flying around the goblin zone, they would be a welcome new pet to me.
There were also Outland raptors wandering around and I can only hope those might be placeholders. I don't understand why there'd be something from Outlands there.
The only other animals I can recall in the worgen zone were sheep and horses... I think if any horse-like creature stood a chance of being a pet though that'd be a zhevra.

[Danielfboone]

1. Pets will get even more equalized

Yes, that's true. Someone (Blizzard employee) even stated it before. Most propably the three pet types will be merged and every pet will get the same skill tree. However, this tree will most likely have every talents you need to build a good pet for every purpose. The really hard news is: They may even remove the pet race skills and put (some of them) into the pet skill tree. However, maybe we as hunters will get also a new end talent that will replace the skill trees of our pets with an other upgraded tree. Just think about the normal spider "web" ability being in the normal non-beast mastery version while it will be replaced with the silithid version in the upgraded one. Of course you won't be able to make a pet with the devilsaurs ability as well as the wolf ones and thunderstomp, but most propably you'll be able to design your pet quite as you like it to be.

Yes they did say that pets would Maybe be more normalized but I highly doubt it would go that far.

On a lighter note--There won't be any Undead Hunters taming Wolves after the first one has his pet run off with his femur and bury it

[Ryno]

I don't understand why there'd be something from Outlands there.

Kinda like the OL raptors and wind serpents in Zul'drak. GG Blizz.

[Danielfboone]

I don't understand why there'd be something from Outlands there.

Kinda like the OL raptors and wind serpents in Zul'drak. GG Blizz.

Not so far fetched seeing as how OL is where the Orcs originated. So maybe they brought some of the beasts from there as pets.

[Saturo]

The drakkari had no encounter with the orcs before WOTLK, and the orcs would'nt bring raptors anyway, they'd bring Worgs.

[Tahlian]

it would suck to have some beasts be tamable only to one faction.

Well, there are certain instances of this already in-game, really. Spot, the barking wolf in Theramore, is friendly to the Alliance and therefore can't be tamed by Alliance hunters...but is hostile to the Horde and therefore can be tamed by a sufficiently enterprising Horde hunter. However - a wolf with his exact same skin and barking behavior can be tamed in Mulgore...so it's not like there's any particular way to identify Spot as being in any way "special" once he's tamed. There is also the bear pet in Tunka'lo village in Storm Peaks that, I believe, is tamable by Alliance hunters only as he's friendly to the Horde, and the boar pet in the ice dwarf camp in the same zone that's only tamable by Horde...if you can survive the experience.



I can't say as I exactly mind the instances of faction-only pets...what I mind is the disruption the taming attempts tend to cause, with flight-masters, quest-givers, and other NPCs aggroing on the taming hunter, causing zone alarms to go off if/when said NPCs die. But that's just me...I'm a bit of a pacifist at heart.

Who knows what they'll give us in Cataclysm? I certainly wouldn't mind one of the mastiffs. >.>

[Danielfboone]

The drakkari had no encounter with the orcs before WOTLK, and the orcs would'nt bring raptors anyway, they'd bring Worgs.

That's a big assumption to make. They'd bring Worgs to ride most likely but as pets I think they'd bring whatever they fancied.

[Saturo]

I think you're forgetting one thing, at this point the Orcs were "all" warriors and warlocks. If you look at WC1 you won't find any hunters, you'll find locks, grunts and so forth. They rediscovered their hunter ways during the third war, when they had allied with the darkspears.

Besides, the orcs wouldn't go near northrend. They would have no reason to invade it. Northrend was practically deserted until the Lich King crashed down there. If it wasn't for him, northrend would be pretty much abandoned.

[Bulletdance]

There are plant things in the goblin starter area it's an unlikely possibility, but it'd be neat if we could get them some kinds of venus fly traps or something.

[Danielfboone]

I think you're forgetting one thing, at this point the Orcs were "all" warriors and warlocks. If you look at WC1 you won't find any hunters, you'll find locks, grunts and so forth. They rediscovered their hunter ways during the third war, when they had allied with the darkspears.

Besides, the orcs wouldn't go near northrend. They would have no reason to invade it. Northrend was practically deserted until the Lich King crashed down there. If it wasn't for him, northrend would be pretty much abandoned.

Never played any of the Warcraft games before Wow but It doesn't matter. They wouldn't have to be Hunters to bring beasts with them. Maybe as livestock if nothing else. Northrend was far from abandoned before Arthas got there. How about the Vrykul and Tuskarr and the Frost Giants etc., etc.? My impression of the Orcs is that they will invade and try to conquer anything they find out about. The lore doesn't tell us everything and it changes at Blizzard's whim anyway . The new archaeology profession might dig up all kinds of things and change theories about everything.

[Saturo]

I didn't mean the northrend part like that, I really wrote it wrong. What I meant was, that it was practically deserted by the rest of Azeroth.

Still, even if the orcs brought raptors, they wouldn't have gotten them to northrend. Northrend was deserted by the non-native races anyway, and the frost giants didn't play any role in any of the great wars yet. It's unlikely that the Horde even knew about northrend, some forsaken and some elves might know about it, but why would they run around telling people. It would be like running trough stormwind yelling "IM WEARING A HAT LOLZ". Nobody would really care.