[Suggestion for the Website] "Endangered Pets" Section

[Beviah]

Hi Petopia,

Long-time lurker here, I've been playing this game for quite a long time, and my hunter was probably one of my most memorable characters. One of the most bitter memories I've ever had of my hunter is missing the Spirit of Koosu by one day. It's something that is very saddening (I love that pet, and would do a lot to have it) - and this is a result of me not being more involved with the hunter community, thus, I played myself.

Hence why I'm here, I want to make a suggestion I feel this site needs. We have very perceptive and intelligent people within this community. I want to suggest there being a more obvious (if there is one) "Endangered Pets" section of the website, directing tamers and collectors to "endangered pets", I.E: Koosu, Silithid Swarmers pre-cata, Grubs, etc. The idea is, we minimize people "missing out" on pets. What do you guys think?

[SpiritBinder]

Hi Beviah, Welcome to the forums

While I think it is a rather neat idea, it also comes with a lot of irregular and sporadic information.

Some of the issues are that we are nearly never informed about if/when a currently tamable pet is going to become untamable.

Grim totem Spirit wolf.
The community was actually addressed regarding this tame by blizzard. The blizzard poster Issuntril claimed that Grimtotem Spirit Guides would be left tamable, but then the ability to tame them was removed in a hotfix on the 1/14/2008 with no warning.

Spirit of Koosu
The ability to tame the Spirit of Koosu, along with the spirit croc and hydra where actually in game for some time compared to unintentional tame. It was the fact that one had to be at max level and have the correct daily that made them harder to obtain. There was no mention of them every being on blizzards radar, but simple quietly hotfixed, so was very hard to know if they were endangered or not.

Garwal
Now this guy was surely a very unintended pet, the 1st humanoid pet. Yes it was guaranteed to be made unavailable, but what we didn't know was that it was going to be gutted of stats making it all but useless, and then they forced it to reset into it's original (intended) white worg form. So even if you manged to tame it, there was no grandfathering (and it made even more sense once worgens were announced at blizcon some time later)

Silithid Swarmers, Grub
With the pattern of special cases being found, hotfixed, and grandfathered... yes this one would fit the possible "Endangered Pets" list. However at the time, we had also experienced a few very random "Sure, why not" from Blizzard. In the Alpha and Beta of MOP, people discovered and tamed porcupines and silkworms. These two model they never intended to have as tamable models. But with a little feedback from hunters at the time Porcupines were actually added as a new family and the silkworm grubs added to the worms family?!? Myself personally, I think the the silkworm grubs look fascicle as a hunter pet, like a stuffed plussie toy or animated children's show. The Swarmers/grubs look vastly more suitable as a hunter pet and to be added to the worm family.... but alas, they were in fact hotfixed.

Baby Direhorn.
The ability to tame these was available for about a week before they removed, and that was if you were in the know. While they are still a beast, they do look overly comical at their extra large size while tamed.

Finally a couple of things... While some of these prior retired pets required little effort to tame, some of them required extreme use of game mechanics to the point of borderline exploitation. It can be a very fine line at times. And while here on the forums we tend to be more open minded about these topic and the conversations, as a fan site, we will always do our best to uphold and maintain the integrity of the game in the way blizzard would most like want us to.

Other pets that have been retired (oily wolves, diseased bears, etc) have been done so via collateral damage due to people using similar methods to tame pets that gave excessive in game advantages, increasing DPS... essentially cheating the system. This is something that we will never support here at Petopia.

Also Blizzard are also becoming more and more thrifty with making sure that unintended tame are even less likely to happen. They don't like having to hotfix away things that people like, they would prefer to not have them tamable in the 1st place to save disappointment and confusion.

That said, you best source for unintended tames would be here in the forums. If any were to be found/rare/etc. I've yet to come across any other place that has it's finger closer to the pulse... in fact I believe this topic may even peak your interest http://forums.wow-petopia.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=24612

Unfortunately, with the complete randomness of, if and when something is found, and then if and when it gets removed or even completely reverted, it really makes having a section dedicated to it on Petopia rather hard. Best bet is to keep a keen eye on the forums for now

[Beviah]

Thank you very much for the information. I'll keep a close eye out.

Unfortunately things like this are very random and it's hard to stay on-top of it, I'll do my best to contribute as much as I can.

[Wain]

I think it's a worthwhile suggestion, thank you And you did get me thinking about it, but I have some reservations and probably won't implement it. :/

Essentially two things come to mind:
- as SpiritBinder said, these things are rare events and are fixed quickly, so someone is far more likely to pick it up on the board here and probably far less likely to keep checking a page that would be updated maybe once a year.

- the second issue is that while we're happy for "catch it while you can" posts here, these things are usually something Blizzard doesn't want tameable and it looks bad if we're officially encouraging people to grab them. It's probably better if it's kept informal here.

[Beviah]

I think it's a worthwhile suggestion, thank you And you did get me thinking about it, but I have some reservations and probably won't implement it. :/

Essentially two things come to mind:
- as SpiritBinder said, these things are rare events and are fixed quickly, so someone is far more likely to pick it up on the board here and probably far less likely to keep checking a page that would be updated maybe once a year.

- the second issue is that while we're happy for "catch it while you can" posts here, these things are usually something Blizzard doesn't want tameable and it looks bad if we're officially encouraging people to grab them. It's probably better if it's kept informal here.

Thank you for your response Wain. I'll just keep a closer eye on the forums in hopes that something will come up, is it more reliable to check this subsection or the general Hunter thread? Also - would you guys happen to post this information on Twitter?

[Quiv]

I've missed a couple tame this way, the most notable that bugs me is the baby direhorn and the grubs. There needs to be some world wide alert system that alerts all hunters when something is discovered, like sending out messaging owls or something

[Beviah]

I've missed a couple tame this way, the most notable that bugs me is the baby direhorn and the grubs. There needs to be some world wide alert system that alerts all hunters when something is discovered, like sending out messaging owls or something

LOL that's what I'm saying, I'll just have to pay closer attention I suppose