REMEMBERING GARWAL
A Tale of the Tamable Worgen
July 3rd, 2009. A post on the World of Warcraft forums intrigues many hunters. Apparently a hunter on the Darkspear Server was seen roaming around with a Northrend Worgen as a combat pet. Most people dismissed it as rumour...That is, up until screenshot proof was shown. Soon, forums on Mania's Arcania, MMO Champion and the Official Blizzard site exploded with activity as thousands of Hunters tried to figure out how this feat was achieved. The original hunter who tamed his worgen was not willing to give information as to how he did it, claiming that by doing so he'd loose not only his one-of-a-kind pet, but also that Blizzard would surely do something about it. It should be noted that most of the posts made about this event at the time have since been deleted.
July 4th, 2009. Our own Spiritbinder made a breakthough. The Worgen in question was an NPC in Holwing Fjord named "Garwal". Killing him is the final part of a long quest chain available to both the alliance and the horde, and you can only see him if you are on that part of the quest chain. Hunters who wanted their own Worgen pet, but had completed the quest prior to this, could not see him and thus had no chance of taming him.
As with the Ashenvale Ghost wolf seen today, Garwal does not start off looking like a worgen. Instead, he appears to be a normal white Saber Worg. Upon reducing him to 50% of his health, he would change into a white Northrend Worgen model, as pictured above. Clever hunters found that if they finished the tame just as he swapped to his Worgen form, by either usage of Wyvern Sting at a certain percentage of health or with the aid of a friend, he would remain as a Worgen once tamed rather than revert back to a Saber Worg. This appeared to be a passive buff and would be removed upon entering an arena.
Naturally, once this was discovered, the hunter community in large exploded upon the chance to tame, that is if they hadn't completed the quest at an earlier date.
July 6th, 2009. Blizzard finally responds about their stance on the Garwal tames.
Naturally, their responce angered a number of hunters, who had quickly fallen in love with their bipedal, werewolf pet. A number of protests and petitions were started on the official forums, at this stage mostly civil. It should be noted that at this point in time that Cataclysm, and subsequently the Worgen Race, had not been announced.Zharym wrote:It is not intended that Garwal can be tamed while in worgen form and will be addressed via a hotfix in the near future. When we have determined how to handle situations where hunters have already tamed Garwal we will let you know
July 7th, 2009. Another couple of updates about the Worgen situation form Blizzard. Most of which have been lost; the few quotes below and above are entirely thanks to Mania's personal Blog: Mania's Arcania.
Zharym wrote:The worgen should not technically belong to any of the pet families and was therefore removed. This means the pet no longer has access to pet talents or abilities. Whether or not similar circumstances with hunter pets in the past have occurred isn’t really relevant. Given the nature of the creature that was tamed in this case, we feel it should not belong to any of the eligible pet families from which a hunter can choose his or her combat companion.
As you may have gathered form the quotes above, Blizzard removed Garwal form the wolf family and made him untamable for those yet to grab him. By removing him from his pet family, they stripped him of any pet abilites and talents, thus making tamed Worgen inadequite in combat. They also could not be fed, renamed or buffed asside from Mend Pet. It also meant that they no-longer had an icon in Hunter stables, resulting in a number of rumours that GMs were stealthily deleting Worgen from stables.Zharym wrote:It may yet still be removed altogether. I don’t have a final decision on that to share with you.
The responce from the Hunter community at this change was not plesant. A number of posts were seen comparing Blizzard's treatment of the situation to totalitarian regimes of the past and present. On the Official forum side of things, posts were being deleted and people temporarily banned in an attempt to controll the virtual-riot thet had on their hands.
July 21st, 2009. The final nail in Garwal's coffin, so to speak. A new patch was released this day which caused all previously tamed Worgen to be swapped with another wolf, the Winterskorn Worg, who shared the same colouration as the pre-worgen Garwal. Most of the anger of the hunter community had died down by this point, but many still felt bitter about the loss of their companion. However, rumours of Cataclysm were starting to circle around at this point (I think). Many wondered if the removal of the tamable Worgen alluded to Worgen being made a playable race.
Nonetheless, with all tamed worgen being replaced, the reign of Garwal ended.
The Legacy
Many hunters still look back upon their briew few weeks with their Worgen pet fondly and/or bitterly, but Garwal did more for the Hunter community than that. The method used to tame him lead to many hunters wondering if the same concept could be applied to other pet tames. The first to succeed this was the Oild-Covered Wolf, who still remains tamable as of this writing. From there, we have recently seen methods derived from this original feat applied to other creatures with appearance-altering buffs.
However, we would be foolish to ignore the other lesson learned here. If Blizzard deems a creature to be not suitable as a hunter pet, they will take actions to remove it. We have not seen this with our new "appearance buff" pets, but one should prepare for the eventuality that it may happen.
The Opinion
Disclaming right now: this is purely my own opinion of the matter. If you have your own feelings about this, that is fine, feel free to post them here. I accept your experiences and emotions happily, do not flame me for mine.
So, I never had the chance to tame Garwal. When WotLK first launched, Howling Fjord was the first zone I went to and i had a lot of fun leveling there. As my brother and I were going for the loremaster achievements at the time, we made sure to complete all the quests we could, which alas included the Garwal questline.
I was able to tame him on a PTR, so I knew I could perform this difficult tame. I also helped out about a half dozen other hunters tame him with an alt of mine, including a good friend. I consider myself extremely lucky in this regard. I got to experience all the excitement of this unique and dificult tame, but I was spared the heartbreak when Blizzard decided to remove him.
Now, with that said, I have never been so proud, then so ashamed to be a hunter than during this time.
When the tamable worgen was first discovered, the hunter community banded together as never seen before. Thousands of strangers from all over the world headed a unified effort to try and find out how this first hunter was able to get his own Worgen. We have not seen this sort of cooperation between hunters since, I doubt we ever will to be honest. It was glorious.
And then a mere few days after, I was seriosuly thinking of cancelling my subscription due to the way the hunter community was acting. This quote of mine back on the old Mania's Arcania post about it pretty much explains how pissed I was. I know a lot of people loved their Worgen. But I still feel hunters responded in a most horrible fashion that I never want to see again.
I really hope that Garwal's "legacy" will be that we get to keep the appearence buff pets we have today (after all, I don't see flaming boars becoming a playable race anytime soon). 
That would be pretty fun if I could be a flaming boar, though...... 
