We first heard about this yesterday in a comment from Ranshiin, but it’s been blowing up since then — with lots of readers here, on our forum, and elsewhere trying to figure out how this may have happened.

Tonight there was apparently a breakthrough. As you can see from this pic I borrowed from Spiritbinder’s post on the Arcania forums, we now have a more-or-less repeatable method to tame the worgen.

The worgen in question is Garwal, a quest-beast who transforms between worg and worgen forms while you fight him. Hunters learned early on that when you tame Garwal, he reverts to worg form and stays that way … unless, apparently, you manage to tame him just as he transforms — in which case he gets ’stuck’ in worgen form.

There are guides popping up with a better description of how to pull this off. The first I saw was courtesy of Icemaz:

1. Get Wyvern Sting. It does about 19% damage by itself over 6 secs, and sleeps for 30.
2. Find him.
3. Hurt him until he is approx 67-69% health.
4. Wyvern sting him.
5. Wait till there is 14 secs left on Wyvern sting.
6. At 14 secs left, cast tame beast.
7. If done right, right as your tame ends, he will have just transformed.

From what I am reading, you may need to adjust the timing depending on how powerful your Wyvern Sting is.

[edit] Also, be aware that — as Lathun/Xethik tells us in the comments — entering an Arena will reset your worgen to his worlf form. [/edit]

Unfortunately, Garwal can only be tamed while you are on his quest. And unfortunately for me, I finished this quest long ago so I haven’t been able to try it out myself. (At least not with Mania. Garwal is level 71, so it is theoretically possible that I can get Kaet up there soon to do this chain and grab this handsome fellow.)

But … this also seems like the sort of thing that Blizzard may move quickly to fix — or fix retroactively. After all, we’re really not intended to tame humanoids. A ghost wolf is one thing … a werewolf who wear armor another. So until we hear official word, I’d be careful about getting too attached to your sexy new worgen.

But you have to admit … he really is a very handsome fellow!

(My sincere thanks to everyone who e-mailed and tried to keep my updated. I’m just sorry that my net was out for so many hours while all this was shaping up.)

Post from: Mania's Arcania

First I spent some time feeding my Venomhide Hatchling, which will eventually transform into a Venomhide Ravasaur mount. Today he gave me a quest called Gorishi Grub, in which I needed to kill Gorishi silithids to gather 10 Silithid Meat for the little guy. All of the silithids in the Slithering Scar seemed to drop the meat at 100%, so it was a quick quest.

Incidentally, both the daily quest to feed my hatchling and the overall quest to get the mount (after many days of hatchling dailies) are marked as level 53 in the quest panel. I assume they can be picked up earlier than that but I’m not sure what level.

And that calls out something else — I have no add-ons installs on the PTR, so that means that the default Blizzard quest panel now shows quest levels. Yay!

[edit] As Gazmik Fizzwidget and Seidouyumi call out in the comments, this isn’t a new feature — it’s the so-called Colorblind Mode, and it works on the live realms also. (I say ’so-called’ because lots of people use it who are not colorblind.) I must have turned it on at some point on the PTR. I like the quest-level feature, but I would prefer to keep my money icon-based (and Colorblind mode replaces the coin icons with letters). So for now I too will continue using Levelator (as well as FactionFriend and Feed-O-Matic). [/edit]

After feeding my ravenous hatchling I set off to see if I could find some of the new raptor mini-pets. The PTR 3.2 patch notes say that there are 8 new pets, not including Argent Tournament pets — some found on rare and eilte raptors, plus one sold by Breanni in Dalaran.

Using the item names posted by MMO, I made the following chart to try to figure out which mini-pets come from where.

Commenters on the Wowhead PTR site say that so far the drop rate for the rare raptors seems to be 100%, but there are enough people searching out those rares on the PTR that I haven’t seen any yet. I would assume that the drop rate from the non-rares is a lot lower.

I did venture into the Wailing Caverns to see if I could score a Deviate Hatchling — and I did! (That’s him on the right.) I may have just gotten lucky on the drop, but I got my little raptor from a Deviate Guardian — my 25th Deviate Guardian and my 52nd elite raptor kill inside WC. The mini-pet isn’t Bound on Pickup, by the way, so it can be traded.

I’m a little puzzled by the Gundrak Hatchling, actually. Gundrak raptors are neither elite nor rare. Perhaps this mini-pet actually comes from a dungeon raptor that I’m not familiar with? I double-checked the Gundrak raptors — the ones in Zul’Drak outside Gundrak — and indeed, they are neither rare nor elite. So … I dunno.

And while I was looking for Takk in the Barrens I was surprised to see a zeppelin flying overhead. Apparently the new route from Orgrimmar to Thunderbluff doesn’t ‘zone’ between the two cities but flies straight through. I wonder if you can jump off half-way to get to Crossroads? :>

Unfortunately that was all the time I had for the PTR today. Perhaps I’ll have some more time this weekend.

Post from: Mania's Arcania

I first heard about this when Pike from Aspect of the Hare posted about the new features yesterday, and then several readers sent me e-mail and posted comments about it. (Unfortunately at the time I was unable to get to my own blog to post — very frustrating!)

Pike posted a link to her own armory page, where you can see the details — including name, level, family, and talent tree — for each of her famous pets in the lower right-hand corner. Very cool.

Another example: here’s the Armory page for Kaet, my level 70 Dwarf hunter. As you can see, Kaet currently only has two of her three trademark crabs with her, plus an unnamed silithid. (More on Kaet coming soon.)

Anyway, here’s what Blizzard had to say:

• Hunter Pet talent trees: Hunter character profiles now display their pets’ talent specializations. The currently viewed pet can be selected from a drop-down menu on the hunter’s talent page that includes the pet’s in-game name and creature type.
• Hunter Pet Calculator: The Armory’s Talent Calculator includes a new Pet Calculator tab that displays the three possible talent trees for pets. Each talent tree (Ferocity, Tenacity, and Cunning) is accompanied by a grouping of the creature types that use them.

[Aside] You may be wondering why I didn’t post the Armory link for Mania, who is after all my main character. That’s a bit of a story, but the short version is that I transferred Mania to a new realm to help out a friend, which also involved a name change. My friend has requested that I stay more anonymous on the new realm for her sake, and I have agreed to that.

I’ll continue to refer to the character as Mania because that’s who she is in my thoughts (even though it causes confusion between me and her, as it were!). But that’s why there’s no Armory link here to my main.

Post from: Mania's Arcania

Anyway, all the work should be taking place on the back end and completely invisible to readers, but it is possible that if you comment at exactly the wrong time, your comment may be eaten. So be aware of that.

[Update] Theoretically we are now transitioned to the new server. Please let me know if you see any irregularities. Thanks for your patience!

Post from: Mania's Arcania

In a post on the PTR Forum today, Blizzard poster Kisirani said:

The Sunreaver Dragonhawks that have been tamed will keep the coloration they have on live realms rather than getting a new texture.

In other words, taming a Sunreaver Dragonhawk now on the live realms will NOT get you a cool retired pet with a unique appearance.

If you tame a Sunreaver Dragonhawk now, or if you have tamed one in the past, you will not lose your dragonhawk — but it will continue to be a standard red dragonhawk even after the ‘wild’ version changes to the new mount-like appearance in Patch 3.2.

Kisirani also explained a bit about why this situation is different from other retired pets:

This is not a “grandfathered” situation as with other similar situations, as the new look for dragonhawks has not yet been live and this is a bug existing on the Test Realm alone. The new texture is being introduced in 3.2, but will now be applied to a new Sunreaver Dragonhawk that cannot be tamed.

Of course I’m sad about this — more pet appearances are always welcome — but I also understand their decision. … And at least this way the hated Alliance aren’t taming a beast that should be all rights be available to us Horde. *grin*

(My thanks to Beasthunter and Brio for bringing this to my attention.)

Post from: Mania's Arcania

The video includes the tame itself, Skoll in Prowl, Skoll out of Prowl, shots of his skills, Skoll in combat, walking and running, and lots and lots of gorgeous shots of the lightning flickering around him. The subtitles are in German, I believe, but I could figure most of them out with the help of the visuals.

nobbie writes:

As promised, the ‘Skoll’ video (taming + preview) is now online. I found him on the 3.2 PTR in the Foot Steppes near Brunnhildar Village, though, not the Snowdrift Plains. This is apparently a 2nd spawn location.

You can download the video file (WMV, ~32 MB) here: http://www.gamona.de/download,1500350
and watch the flash stream here: http://www.gamona.de/video,1500352

Thank you very much to nobbie and WorldOfWar.de for sharing this beautiful video!

Post from: Mania's Arcania

Commenter Clawclaw pointed us at this post on the MMO Champion forums about a new Northrend beast named Skoll that was found on the PTR in the Snowdrift Plains.

Skoll is … well, as you can see here, he’s an ice-blue worg with built-in lightning bolts which are constantly flickering about his body. (Even with the model viewer it was hard to get a pic that does justice to the lightning.)

We don’t have a lot of information on this creature yet. Skoll is described as a neutral (yellow dot) tameable rare. Unfortunately the only in-game screenshot shows him dead already so we don’t have confirmation that he can be tamed.

And assuming that he can be tamed, we also don’t know for certain which pet family he might be in. Yes, he is clearly a saberworg … but he is also a neutral rare beast with a spectral look and built-in lightning. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he qualifies as our first non-feline Spirit Beast.

What we need most now is data! If you happen to be flying over the Snowdrift Plains on the PTR, keep an eye out for a yellow dot below you — and let us know what you find!

[Update] Commenter Safrienaer (aka Nanyana on the PTR) has tamed one of these bad boys and confirms that they are spirit beasts with the skills Prowl and Spirit Strike. And yes, Skoll keeps his lightning effect when he’s tamed. (You can just see the lightning around his ears in Safrienaer’s pic.)

Post from: Mania's Arcania

* … if, that is, you happen to be a level 80 Alliance hunter.

Sunreaver Dragonhawks can be found on the live realms right now as the ‘taxi’ mounts at Sunreaver’s Command in Crystalsong Forest. They use the Sunreaver faction, so they can only be tamed by Alliance hunters.

(In the past, however, Horde hunters were able to go ‘At War’ with the Sunreavers and tame these dragonhawks, so some Horde hunters may still have one in the stable. I wish I still had mine on Mania, but I released it for Patch 3.1. Argh!)

Right now, they have a red dragonhawk appearance. But on the 3.2 PTR, the Sunreaver taxis have switched to the new black/red dragonhawk appearance — the same one that is used for the upcoming Sunreaver Dragonhawk mount. Unfortunately, Patch 3.2 also renders the Sunreaver dragonhawk taxi completely untameable by anyone.

But according to Ryna on the Arcania forum, existing Sunreaver Dragonhawk pets get the new appearance. That’s her with her amazing new dragonhawk on PTR above.

So if you want to own a soon-to-be-very-cool-and-retired pet — and you are a level 80 Alliance — you might consider picking up a Sunreaver Dragonhawk before the next patch.

Of course, this may change before Patch 3.2 goes live. There are no guarantees: Blizzard may decide to replace the entire dragonhawk instead of just reskinning it so that the existing tamed versions don’t get the cool skin. But if you’ve got an open spot in your stable, what do you have to lose?

Post from: Mania's Arcania

So! When I logged in I found four characters — two from the Patch 3.1 PTR phase and the two new ones I copied last night. (Note that copying characters before Blizzard gives the go ahead is always a bit iffy, but I tend to copy at least one as soon as possible regardless because I can’t stand waiting to get in.)

I logged in on the fresh copy of Mania and recalled to Dalaran. I decided that my first stop would be the Argent Tournament to check out the coliseum, the new daily quests, new mounts and new mini-pets. I hit a snag almost immediately, though — the Dalaran flight master wouldn’t give me an option to fly to the Argent Tournament. Now I’ve had that flight point forever (well, okay, since Patch 3.1) so this was a bit of a surprise. I logged out and logged in the older copy of Mania, from the 3.1 PTR, but she didn’t have the flight point either (although she should have since she got it on the 3.1 PTR).

Okay then! I’ll fly there myself. So I flew up to Bouldercrag’s Refuge and then flap manually over to Icecrown. Once there I talk to the Argent Tournament flight master — who obviously recognizes me (no green !) and who is perfectly happy to give me a ride anywhere I like — but when I fly back to Bouldercrag’s … well, I *still* can’t find a flight path to the Tournament.

Other people don’t seem to be having this problem, and when I manage to get a pre-made to Northrend he does have the flight point. So for now I just report it and go on.

Oh, interesting thing: I noticed Midsummer Fire Festival tents in the Storm Peaks as I flew over. I could have sworn that the Midsummer event wasn’t happening in Northrend yet, but Midsummer will be long over when this patch goes live. Did I just miss a bunch of tent in the live realms, or is this new?

Anyway, back to the Argent Tournament. First I hit the Sunreaver Pavilion to see what new goodies the quartermasters are selling. And … I don’t see anything new. But then I realize that there is a new quartermaster in the tent! Vasarin Redmorn, the Sunreaver’s Quartermaster, sells:

• Sunreaver Tabard - 50 Champion’s Seals
• Sunreaver Dragonhawk - 150 Champion’s Seals
• Sunreaver Hawkstrider - 100 Champion’s Seals
• Shimmerling Wyrmling - 40 Champion’s Seals

All of these items require you to be Exalted with the Sunreavers. The Tabard doesn’t seem to do anything special.

Unfortunately, like an idiot, I spent all my Champion’s Seals on a hippogryph just a few days ago so I can’t afford any of these items to see what they look like. However it seems likely that the Sunreaver Hawkstrider is akin to the ‘vehicle’ version that you ride as an Aspirant, and the Sunreaver Dragonhawk presumably looks like the new dragonhawk at the flight master — a rather metallic dragonhawk with black and red armor. (Interestingly, when I flew out of the Argent Tournament area my taxi was a lovely unarmored black dragonhawk.)

There are also two new daily quests in the Sunreaver Pavilion: A Leg Up (recover tallstrider meat from Hrothgar’s Landing) and You’ve Really Done It This Time, Kul (rescue people from Deathspeaker’s Watch). I’ll try those out as soon as I have a chance. Both of these seem to require Sunreaver reputation since the pre-mades can’t access them yet.

The Argent Tournament has a different feel now that the coliseum is finished. It has’t much changed the surrounding area, but the coliseum looms over everything else now.

Oh wow! The most gorgeous cat just ran by me! And … it’s a druid! A black Tauren druid. When I whistled at him he stopped to preen and turned into a bear. The bear looks nice, but man is that cat an improvement! I’m really impressed.

Okay, let’s hit the Argent Pavilion. Several new daily quests in here as well — which presumably require Argent Crusade reputation. It looks like you’ll get one of either The Fate of the Fallen (kill Fallen Heroes) or Get Kraken! (kill things from a hippogryph vehicle) each day, and always be able to take Mistcaller Yngvar (kill him) as well. There is also a continuation of the Black Knight’s tale, The Black Knight’s Curse. That one’s not a daily, but I’ll check it out after I finish here.

Ooh, and here’s the Crusader’s Quartermaster, Dame Evniki Kapsalis. She sells:

• Argent Crusader’s Tabard - 50 Champion’s Seals
• Argent Warhorse - 100 Champion’s Seals
• Argent Crusader’s Banner - 15 Champion’s Seals
• Argent Pony Bridle - 150 Champion’s Seals

The Tabard allows you to teleport to the Argent Tournament with a 30 minute cooldown. The Warhorse is an epic ground mount and the pony provides a mount for your Argent Squire that “allows your squire to run distant errands for you.” That’s presumably the thing that let’s you use your squire for mail, bank, or vendor. It requires level 78 but doesn’t mention a cooldown.

None of the Crusader items mention a reputation requirement, but I assume that there is a requirement of some sort on the quartermaster herself. I really, *really* wish I had saved some Seals, though, because if you didn’t catch that above … Mania can get a pony! Yes, the Argent Warhorse is available to Horde. I think I’m going to faint …

Speaking of which, the new Quest panel is very nice — just like the DoubleWide addon. It makes quests much easier to read. Unfortunately they haven’t done the same with the profession window yet. But it’s a start. The quest objectives on the world map doesn’t seem to be operation yet, though, or perhaps it doesn’t work for daily quests. Oh, no, I take that back — they are working for some quests but apparently not for the newest ones yet.

… Ugh … Short break while I mollify my husband. No one seems to be reading yet anyway so you probably won’t even miss me. *grin*

[edit] We had an emergency contract come up. I’m going to have to continue this later (in another post, most likely). Sorry about that, everyone! Feel free to tell me what cool PTR things you discovered in the comments. *yearnful face*

[edit #2] Ahha! I’m back! Probably not for long, since it’s already 4:30 am here and I need to get to bed, but I can sacrifice a little sleep for the PTR.

Here, for Ryai, is a screenshot of the Obsidian Hatchling sold by Breanni in Dalaran for 50 gold (minus faction discount). I want to try finding some of the other raptor mini-pets as well, but I haven’t had a chance yet. The angle isn’t the best on this shot, but it’s really hard to find an angle that doesn’t make him look even weirder than he is anyway because .. well, he’s pretty weird-looking. (Reminds me of a mal-nourished Savannah I had once.)

Well, hanging around Icecrown begging other people to buy an Argent Warhorse so I could see it didn’t work, but Rikaku did send me this screenshot (and thank you very much for that!).

After that failure I headed for a mount I can afford — the new skeletal warhorse. I have a thing for horses — even skeletal ones — so I am very happy to be able to buy another fast bony pony to ride. Especially for the new low price of 8 gold (after faction discount)!

The Ochre Skeletal Warhorse has some very interesting tints that show up differently in different lights. The shot here is from Dalaran to give you an idea. Notice that it has the same striped trappings as the expensive purple Argent Tournament skeletal warhorse.

While I was taking the screenshot of the skeletal warhorse, a player linked their new Venomhide Hatchling in Trade chat. I didn’t see it myself, but the item information says that the hatchling may only be summoned in Un’Goro, Tanaris, or Silithis. So … not a normal mini-pet. The owner told me that he got it in the new quest line in Un’Goro that took a long time — so long, in fact, that he wasn’t going to bother continuing it for the mount. On the other hand, the PTR hasn’t been up that long so it can’t be that bad, right? *crossing fingers*

Shortly after that another interesting item came through Trade chat — there are new categories in the LFG tool, including ways to look for any dungeon or heroic dungeon or any daily dungeon (regular or heroic). Not something I will ever use, but I’m sure those will be popular.

I relogged briefly onto an Alliance pre-made to check out the other new racial mount, the slow Striped Dawnsaber (now available at level 20!). Unfortunately I forgot that I wouldn’t have enough Darnassus reputation on a pre-made to buy one, but there were plenty of night elves in the area who were willing to let me get a screenshot. This cat looks a lot like the Striped Frostsaber, except that it has an interesting cinnamon cast.

So it’s getting late and I’m getting tired. Time for one more thing before I go to bed. Ravasaurs or Northrend orphans? Hmmm …

Ravasaurs. Definitely ravasaurs. *grin*

Flap flap flap down to Un’Goro, reading Junkfood Science while I fly. Then gallop gallop gallop down to the road from Tanaris, where we can once again find Mor’vek the Ravasaur Trainer, now mounted on a ravasaur (and oddly, with a Young Venomhide standing beside him). He tells me to go get poisoned by Venomhides 20 times … and he lets me know that learning to ride a ravasaur will take “a long, LONG time”. Oh, joy.

I accept the first quest, Toxic Tolerance, and go find some Venomhides to poison me. I was hoping to run across the Ravasaur Matriarch as well, but no such luck. And there aren’t nearly enough Venomhides in the area, even with only a few people here. Or maybe I missed the bulk of them somewhere. Although .. I punch the first Venomhide once (unarmed) and then stop attacking while I fiddle with my inventory, and when I look back up he’s posioned me twice. Perhaps this won’t be so bad.

Unfortunately, after I kill him I can’t find any more.

Ahha! There’s one! I get naked and punch him to death as slowly as possible. He splashes me with his venomous blood. And again! And again! Whee!

*cough* Okay, I feel a little weird about this. Should I really be enjoying getting splashed with venomous blood while naked? Heh. Anyway, I’m almost halfway done with this quest.

Oh here’s an interesting thing: my pet has a new icon on the mini-map. Instead of a blue dot, he is now a yellow X with red outlines. I wonder what that’s about.

In fact it only took me four Venomhide Ravasaurs to complete the quest, but finding that last Venomhide took almost 15 minutes. I timed it. :/ And I suspect it will be a bit tougher for anyone who isn’t level 80 yet.

Next up: a quest called Venomhide Eggs in which you collect … Venomhide eggs! From Venomhide nests … oh which there seem to be plenty, thankfully. After that is They Grow Up So Fast, in which you get that Venomhide Hatchling I heard about on the Trade channel. Apparently it will shed teeth as I run around with it out and when I have collected enough teeth I can … grow it into a mount? I’m not certain.

But in order to get the teeth, it looks like I have to do daily quests. The first one (and possibly only one) my Venomhide Hatchling offers me is Hungry, Hungry Hatchling — collect 15 pieces of fresh dinosaur meat in exchange for one baby tooth. At this rate it will take 20 days to get my mount … although 20 easy dailies is still probably better than the Winterspring Frostsaber. Especially since I seem to be getting a 100% drop rate on the meat.

After feeding my hatchling 15 pieces of meat, he’s full … and I guess I am done until tomorrow. Which is probably for the best since it’s almost 7 am and I am supposed to sleep sometime tonight …

And so I’ll bring this live blogging adventure to a close! Good night all. *grin*

Post from: Mania's Arcania

Previously, however, Blizzard had stated that they’d like to make pets scale with a whole host of stats, not just those few. So what happened? Ghostcralwer posted a clarification today on the Damage Dealing forum:

We would still like to improve pet scaling for things like haste, armor pen and really just about everything. Resilience and spell pen were the two that seemed the most important so we tackled them first. The way this data is handled in WoW is a little complicated (you’ve got something that isn’t a player being affected by player spells, as well as having spells of its own) so the changes aren’t trivial. We’ll try to get to as many as we can for 3.2.

We’ll just have to keep an eye on the ever-evolving list of changes in Patch 3.2 and see what makes it in!

Post from: Mania's Arcania