Anyone else disappointed by the new 4.2 rares?

[Worba]

However, I will enjoy sitting and watching jagoffs try to grief hunters by killing the rares, only to be one-shot, melted, or eaten alive.

That alone makes them awesome.

[Dolias]

already 3x more rare pets in Cata than Wrath
I can't complain really.

just think, if this course model is a hit in 4.2... you could see 8 more rares in 4.4
seriously, this is THE hunter xpac

[TygerDarkstorm]

just think, if this course model is a hit in 4.2... you could see 8 more rares in 4.4

This is what I'm hoping for. Not necessarily 8 new pets every patch, but this setup paving the way for future pet challenges where they might even be more inclined to give us brand new models/skins. I feel that this one being given in 4.2 is a testing grounds, so to speak.

[Royi]

just think, if this course model is a hit in 4.2... you could see 8 more rares in 4.4

This is what I'm hoping for. Not necessarily 8 new pets every patch, but this setup paving the way for future pet challenges where they might even be more inclined to give us brand new models/skins. I feel that this one being given in 4.2 is a testing grounds, so to speak.

That would be lovely

I'm not a fan of spiders so even though they have some neat neon legs, i'm not going to rush out and tame them. I may end up going for one or two with the unique tame mechanics, but I'm a bit sad that 5 spiders and 3 spirit beasts at the 8. If you're a SV hunter who doesnt like spiders, there really isnt a draw for me here. Oh well here's to hoping for 4.4!

[MajorThor]

1: A Fire Fox ( i mean come on, how cool would that be)

Not to detract from the upcoming special tames, but since you mentioned it... I'd love to see (someday) a spirit beast rendition of the japanese 9 tailed fox. It would be a challenging project for their artists to give it the "Blizzard Look", but if they pulled it off I'd be ecstatic.

Kybuui-kun!!!!!

[Kalliope]

The really cool thing about this experiment is that it's all neatly organized. We get a set of SBs and a set of spiders. It just looks pretty from a design standpoint.

While on the one hand, mixing it up a bit would have been good in other ways, I actually really like what this turned out to be.

[Gelannerai]

just think, if this course model is a hit in 4.2... you could see 8 more rares in 4.4

This is what I'm hoping for. Not necessarily 8 new pets every patch, but this setup paving the way for future pet challenges where they might even be more inclined to give us brand new models/skins. I feel that this one being given in 4.2 is a testing grounds, so to speak.

Yeah, that's pretty much the way I'm looking at it as well. They may not have wanted to over-extend themselves on creating brand new models/skins on an unproven game mechanic. Looking at it that way, we should definitely support the effort even if we aren't all that enthusiastic about the selection of pets presented this time around. Plus, Deth is growing on me...........

[TygerDarkstorm]

just think, if this course model is a hit in 4.2... you could see 8 more rares in 4.4

This is what I'm hoping for. Not necessarily 8 new pets every patch, but this setup paving the way for future pet challenges where they might even be more inclined to give us brand new models/skins. I feel that this one being given in 4.2 is a testing grounds, so to speak.

Yeah, that's pretty much the way I'm looking at it as well. They may not have wanted to over-extend themselves on creating brand new models/skins on an unproven game mechanic. Looking at it that way, we should definitely support the effort even if we aren't all that enthusiastic about the selection of pets presented this time around. Plus, Deth is growing on me...........

Exactly! If this idea doesn't work out as well as they had hoped, then it would almost be a waste of new models. Blizzard's been known to use WoW as a sort of guinea pig for their ideas, which makes this a good way to implement the unused Gondria skins and whatnot instead of new models, although, to be fair, that spirit beast owl is a sort of new model/skin (it is actually different from Olm).

Now, if they continue this trend of neat taming methods and just keep reissuing old pets, I'll be upset. I would have loved to see more variety in this go around (5 spiders is a lot), but I'm not complaining. I'm glad they're doing this for us hunters and I look forward to the future of challenge taming.

[Kalliope]

We're running out of unused models, thanks to Noah's efforts. When that happens, everything will HAVE to be new!

[Gelannerai]

Yeah, if this is just the learning phase, then the pet selection is forgiveable for the most part.

I do have a question though, and I'm not looking to stir up any animosity, but I keep seeing people say that these aren't re-skins. I'm curious what people do consider to be re-skins if these aren't.

[Ziarre]

Possibly something that's created after the original.

[Gelannerai]

Possibly something that's created after the original.

Ah, ok. Palette-swap would probably be a better term then.

[Worba]

Just speculating, but I've had the growing sense that the cost / effort involved in developing, testing and implementing a new model, may be fairly extreme... moreso than one might think.

For example...

1) Several of the most awesome creatures from the cata concept art, read: spiny raptor and Volcanoth, never made it to production. Now I can sort of see replacing the Volcanoth with the ancient fire turtle - even though it's not really a new model, the fire turtle is quite visually impressive... but the spiny raptors? There is no reason to recycle outland raptors for that role when they already had such incredible concept art for it - unless the new model entailed a lot of work (by "a lot", I mean "to the point that it would rob significant time away from more important things like balancing, debugging and such" - this is not to be taken as suggesting any lack of will or devotion on Blizzard's part!) .

2) To-date all models seem to have been designed primarily for use as NPCs, and secondarily if at all as hunter pets. Again, note this is not a complaint - I'm absolutely fine with this, as a hunter player, just noting that at least from the pattern thus far, it seems as though one class by itself has not been enough justification for developing an entirely new model.

Could be wrong - like anyone else I'd love to see new models, particularly models-just-for-us-that-devour-griefers, but until proven so this should be kept in mind when Blizzard adds existing models with new skins.

Actually Wain, if you're reading this, could you please ask Noah if this theory is anywhere near the mark? This is something I'd love to know about.

[Derax]

Got a question.. What is the chances that they are just place holder models? I can see blizzard tossing in these guys with teh recolored ones to test out the taming challenges and not wanting to ruin the surprise of the new models?

[Kalliope]

I believe we've heard through the grapevine that they're not placeholders. The numbers actually match up perfectly with Madexx's too: he has five colors total, three that aren't found on common models (since black will be available next patch - hi Dante!). Three unique, two "upgraded" commons. Plus, Skitterflame and Anthriss have more personality than the common spiders of the same color, much like the Madexx colors.

[Neurotoxinx]

I can't say I'm disappointed - I want three out of the eight, that's not too bad!

I was upset initially, but then I got to looking at them. The spiders are cool brand new models (I think they're new, at least?). The owl is awesome. And I like the reskins of Gondria a lot. Some more variety would have been cool, I agree. Iunno - some magma scorpions would have been cool instead of so many spiders, maybe. But I'm plenty happy with this.

[Kalliope]

Yep, these lava spiders have never existed before. And Ban'thalos's wings have their really cool shiny trail effect that no other owl has!

[Ickabob]

Why do most of the rares have to be re-skins of the same mobs? The bird is nice but its just Olm 2.0, the spiders are neat but aren't there common versions of the new lava spiders? The new "gondria's" just seem lazy, I hope this isn't all Blizz has up their sleeves. Why couldn't one of the spiders look like Beth'ilak or maybe replace one of the cats with one of those awesome new hellhounds? Like others have said, hopefully now that these are out of the way, Blizz can give us some truly unique skins for rares. /end rant

[Nubhorns]

I need to set up a post macro that says "They're not being lazy, they're giving us skins that we asked for.". I hate that word when it comes to Blizz - Noah and the rest have been working very, very hard to get us what we want and when it rolls around people call it lazy because it's not 'brand new'.

I hate to resort to this argument but if you honestly think it's lazy, design, model and animate your own pets while working on a major content patch and do it while knowing very well that a bunch of people are going to find something to complain about no matter how hard you work. :P

As for the spiders, I've narrowed it down to the "Where are we? Firelands. What's in Firelands? Scorpids and spiders, pretty much. Let's put in rare spiders in skins that are otherwise unobtainable!". There will be times for cats and wolves and new skins and unicorns and things everyone wants in due time, I'm sure. We just have to be patient. ;)

[Novikova]

I might grab a spider for the first time ever for one of these fellows. Granted, I expect them to be horribly camped the first few weeks so I may do lazy loops or peep in at weird hours (lol second shift).