Alrighty, so here's my report on the Tan Bat model.
To make the challenge more interesting I chose to go after the Shadowbat from Karazhan.
Since I'm lazy and still haven't bothered to complete the questchain for the key, I simply flew up and dropped from my mount to die on the doorsteps. Much easier than before when you'd usually have to aggro a bunch of the ghosts and stand there while they slowly knocked off your health. x)
A quick run to my corpse later...
I slipped through the bars...
Rezzed on the other side...
And was in! I made my way to the room off to the side and Camouflaged. I tiptoed around the spider mobs and made my way to the bat area.
There was a group of them just through a doorway, but there was a single mob that would occassionally patrol out. That was the bat I was after.
I dropped my freezing trap and waited for him to venture back out.
He flew right into the trap...
And the tame completed with ease.
Bat acquired!
Let's get the bad stuff over with. One of the worst texturing details is on the bat wings, at the tip of their claws. They resemble a poorly enlarged jpeg image, full of pixelly goodness. >< It's very obvious once you're aware of it, though at least the constant wing movement makes it easier to ignore.
At a glance I suppose they don't look
too bad. I was actually surprised how much I liked the colour scheme of this model in particular. Usually I would say my favourite would be the dark ones with the blood red wings, but this guy looked pretty nice.
Next pet peeve....the damn holes through the wings! Argh these annoy me so much, and are one of the major reasons I can't stand having a bat pet. They're just so obvious and horrible looking. =(
I'll admit I think the face could be kind of cute (in that ugly-cute sort of way).
Though the large fangs seem to be growing out of the cheek rather than inside the mouth.
The body is very bizarrely proportioned. The back legs fold into each other during the idle flapping. The feet also seem to bend whichever way they want to.
I decided to take my new friend out for some fight practice against some mobs.
He held his own pretty well, and I was surprised by aggro management. I never pulled off of him. He was definitely a bit 'flimsy' though. If I left him on his own too long his health would rapidly decrease. The stun was pretty handy however, even for PvE. It could be manually cast to interrupt an enemy spell, or just left on auto if you want occasional brief reprieves while fighting.
There was one moment that really took me by surprise. My bat was
clever! At one point we were fighting these dragon mobs who would occasionally cast this pillar of fire in front of them on their target. There would be a moment's notice in the form of a rune circle on the ground where the fire was about to appear. As my bat was solo-fighting against one of these dragons, they cast the rune circle and suddenly the bat
moved away so that he was not in the fire and continued fighting without any interference from me at all. I was stunned. He didn't exhibit this again after, but that one brief moment was really surprising.
In any case, I certainly didn't hate the bat, but until they have a bit of an update I can't see myself being able to own one permanently.
I wish I could, because I love bats, and I think one would be a great pet for Veph, but they just have too many issues right now that would irk at me.
)
