[edit] An explanation, since I’ve confused people without meaning to:

These are my two newest Elite Test Cadre characters, code-named J and K. (I’ve been naming my characters in alphabetical order. And I’ve already forgotten their actual names.)

J and K are bound for levels 58 and 64, respectively. After my last post about the ETC project, your comments convinced me that I should at least try using Refer-A-Friend to speed things up, and it’s working like a charm.

In this screenshot, my two characters are level 10 and have tamed Greater Timberstriders as part of the Draenei hunter taming quest.

Because these tallstriders aren’t real pets — they are just temporary tames with the quest wand — they didn’t shrink down the way that pets do when you tame them. And so they tower above my Draenei characters in a most impressive fashion!

(The apparent difference in size between the two tallstriders is because one is rather closer to the camera than the other. I had a lot of trouble getting them positioned. Where is Eyes of the Beast when you need it?!)

I wish I could have gotten an action shot. Because these birds are so tall, they seem to run in slow motion, bobbing along majestically like geese about to take flight.

But I thought it might be fun to speculate a bit. In this post I’ll make some guesses about what pets may be in peril in Kalimdor. Later I’ll take a poke at the Eastern Kingdoms as well.

My speculation is loosely based off the color-coding in a map that was seen at BlizzCon, which seems to indicate the intensity of landscape changes in various zone. (WoW Insider posted about this recently, which brought it back to mind. It’s also been on a number of other news sites and blogs since BlizzCon.)

Now I’m going to make an unsupported assumption and guess that, for our purposes, major landscape changes are more disruptive to wildlife than level changes alone will be. In my experience with MMOs, a major landscape change will require the content people to re-place any spawners in that area — a tedious chore which also gives them a great opportunity to change around the enemies in an area.

Just changing the level of an area, on the other hand, can often be accomplished with a simple data tweak to the spawners, or at worst a search-and-replace operation on the data tree. Of course, revamping the quest flow through an area will also likely change what creatures are where, but often this will be handled as an addition in a small area rather than a wholesale replacement.

… Which is just a lengthy justification for why I think basing my speculation on what appears to be a landscape map may be useful. I could be utterly wrong, of course.

So let’s take a look at the red zones from that map — presumably the most disturbed zones — one by one.  (I’m starting at the northwest and zig-zagging down.)

Darkshore

We’ve heard a bit about the changes coming to Darkshore. Auberdine will be destroyed and the night elves will relocate to the northern end of the zone. (This will help the quest flow immensely, especially if they add a second flight point at the southern end.) Apparently the Horde is encroaching from the south, as well.

Now Darkshore contains a lot of pretty common pet looks, plus two very special beasts: the transparent Ghost Saber and the turquoise Strider Clutchmother. Unfortunately for us, the Ghost Saber spawns in the very north of the zone — where the night elves are relocating their town — and the Strider Clutchmother spawns in the far south — where the Horde are encroaching.

If we are lucky, the Horde won’t disturb the southern part of the zone too much and the Strider Clutchmother will remain there. If we are very lucky, Blizzard will relocate the naga ruins in the north to someplace further south and we’ll get to keep taming Ghost Sabers. But I am rather worried about both of these creatures.

Azshara

From all indications, Azshara is going to get a major make-over. The goblins are reshaping the entire zone more to their liking, and who knows what — if anything — will survive.

Fortunately, Azshara is not a very pet-dense zone. It’s main claim to fame is some chimaeras, some turtles, and way too many taratulas. There are two rare beasts — the Evalcharr and Scalebeard — but neither has a really uncommon appearance. So while I will miss it as a handy place to grab a chimaera, I am much more excited about what new creatures the goblins may import from their islands.

Stonetalon Mountains

I admit it: Stonetalon Mountains is one of my least favorite zones ever. There’s that long boring run from Crossroads to the tiny Horde settlement, then another incredibly long and annoying run down through the Charred Vale to Desolace. The Alliance don’t have it much better, coming down from Ashenvale through all the goblins.

So I am completely ready for Stonetalon to get blown away. I haven’t heard much about specific changes, other than a canyon to Ashenvale rather than a tunnel, and the Charred Vale opened up to the sea on one side.

I’m rather hoping that Stonetalon Peak (the green valley to the north that contains the Alliance flightpoint) is relatively unaffected, because I tamed my Twilight Runner there. But otherwise this zone only boasts the same ubiquitous brown chimaeras and green taratulas, and we’re not in danger of running out of those!

The Barrens

The Barrens is, famously, being split into two zones divided by a lava-filled chasm. I don’t know if we have official names for these areas yet, so I’ll just call them Barrens North and Barrens South.

According to the color-coded map we have, the Barrens North will see moderate changes to landscape. I have no idea what that means at this point, but it seems reasonable to expect that we will not lose our lions and lionesses, our violet raptors, or our tallstriders.

Similarly, Echeyakee is probably safe, as is Snort the Heckler and Takk the Leaper. (Have you ever noticed that the Barrens rares have very Mafia-like names?) In fact, Takk is probably extra-safe since he is now related to the Leaping Hatchling mini-pet.

The Barrens South, however, seems to be up for some more severe landscape changes. Which means that, depending on exactly where the lava-filled chasm goes, we may have some special pets in danger.

Humar the Pridelord currently spawns just outside Ratchet, which hopefully means he’s safe. I’d also hate to lose Azzere the Skyblade, since the only other places to find this particular color windserpent right now are in instances. But my top concern for the Barrens South are the vibrant green scorpids in the Field of Giants. That’s the only place we’ve ever seen these scorpids, and they are by far my favorite color.

Thousand Needles

Apparently, the Cataclysm is going to flood Thousand Needles. I imagine the ‘needles’ will still be above water, but the Salt Flats definitely won’t be … and that really doesn’t seem like it leaves us much of a zone to work with.

Unfortunately, while I have never really thought of Thousand Needles as a bustling hive of beasts to tame, it actually houses quite a lot of interesting options — most of which probably don’t breathe underwater so well. So there are some worries in this zone.

Most notable is the rare Silithid Ravager, the only tan silithid you’ll find outside of Ahn’Qiraj. But Thousand Needles also contains the only non-instance red scorpid, the Scorpid Reaver. And Vile Sting, of course — although you can now find silver scorpids in Silithus, at least.

This zone is also currently the easiest place to tame low-level white wind serpents, which from what I see in game are a very popular choice. At least there are other options for the white wind serpents, though — getting another tan silithid is a bit harder.

Speculation is Fun!

At this point, all we have is speculation. As we get closer to Cataclysm, I am sure we’ll learn more about what will be changing and in what ways.

I’ve only touched what we assume will be the most affected zones here. There are plenty of pets in other Kalimdor zones that we could conceivably lose. But I have a certain level of faith in Blizzard — they know that some of us are crazy about pets, even if they don’t really understand it. *grin* So if we get to beta and we find out that they’ve removed, say, Echeyakee … well, we can let them know that we don’t think that’s such a good idea.

Next time: the Eastern Kingdoms!

And as you know, I am not much of a power player, so my notion of problems is rather more limited in scope than many hunters, despite the frequent attempts by my loyal commenters here to enlighten me.

At any rate, I decided that I am personally pretty satisfied with hunters right now — as I usually am — with one exception. And that exception is the Spirit Beast family.

Now let’s be very clear here: I don’t think that spirit beasts are awful. I just think they could be better. And so I started plotting out ways that I personally would be happier with spirit beasts. Here’s what I came up with …

No More Spirit Beasts

First, let’s get rid of the Spirit Beast family. It’s such a weird mashup. I think it would make a lot more sense to move each of the existing spirit beasts into the corresponding normal family. So Loque’nahak and Gondria become cats, Skoll becomes a wolf, and Artcuris becomes a bear. That changes their skills, of course. (And changes Arcturis’ talent tree from Ferocity to Tenacity.)

Exotics Everywhere

But I don’t think the spirit beasts should be normal beasts, either. So let’s leave them as exotics. Yes, that gives us individual exotic beasts within a generally non-exotic family. And I think that’s okay. Even more, I think it helps restore a sane measure of individual variation within pet families. Some cats are normal cats; some cats are exotics with slightly better stats.

Of course, it would be annoying as a new hunter to have your heart set on a particular wolf and then find out when you go to tame it that it’s exotic. So we should really move the Beast Lore talent to level 10. (Indeed, it should have been moved there when they removed Pet Training.)

More ‘Spirit-y’ Pinnacle Pets

Spirit beasts are currently the pinnacle of Beast Mastery — and an outward sign that you are a serious pet collector. But cats, wolves, and bears shouldn’t be the only families pinnacle pets like this. So we’ll need to add more — one to each non-exotic family at least, and preferably one to the exotics as well. Like the current spirit beasts, these should be high level (70+ if possible), rare, and somehow spirit-y.

Skoll is an excellent example of how to have a very special look without going transparent, and I am sure that there are some really cool looks that the Blizzard artists could come up with. I imagine the artists are a little overworked right now, but I think that if we hunters knew we’d get two or three a month until they were all implemented, we’d be content enough to wait.

More Individual Exotics

But I don’t think that pinnacle pets should be the only exotics in non-exotic families. For one thing, even with one per family their rarity may still make them quite annoying for some hunters, especially with the more popular families. And lower level hunters should be able to have some fun also.

So let’s add a handful of non-spirit-y exotics to the non-exotics families as well. This gives us a great opportunity to introduce some of the currently unused or untameable beast skins, like a green carrion bird, a red warp stalker, or a blue dragonhawk.

For hunters in the know, these looks are immediately obvious and different. For non-hunters and hunters without our focus on pets, they aren’t any more confusing than learning that (currently) Gondria isn’t really a cat.

So anyway, that’s what I was thinking about in the shower today.

His name is Arcturius. He is, indeed, a Spirit Beast — complete with all the Spirit Beast skill, including Prowl. Like other Spirit Beasts, he is a non-aggressive rare elite. Unlike them, he’s only level 74.

Hunter safrienaer tamed him in Grizzly Hills just north of Amberpine Lodge — you can find a map and more pictures on the forum post. safrienaer also notes that:

As of now he doesn’t have any special sound effects – he sounds just like any other bear.

But we probably have many builds left before Patch 3.3 is ready for prime time, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up with unique sounds and possibly some more glowy effects as well.

We’ll have to keep a careful eye on this bear!

[edit] More great pics from nobbie at WorldofWar.de: just follow the Gallery link at the bottom of the Arcturis post and scroll down.

[edit] And because I think it’s very cool, I’m reposting info that Jangalian dug up:

Side note – thought his name looked hella familiar, so I put it into Wiki. Here’s the first answer it gave me…

Arcturus (α Boo / α Boötis / Alpha Boötis) is the brightest star in the constellation Boötes. With a visual magnitude of −0.05, it is also the third brightest star in the night sky, after Sirius and Canopus. It is, however, fainter than the combined light of the two main components of Alpha Centauri, which are too close together for the eye to resolve as separate sources of light, making Arcturus appear to be the fourth brightest. It is the second brightest star visible from northern latitudes and the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere. The star is in the Local Interstellar Cloud.

An easy way to find Arcturus is to follow the arc of the handle of the Plough. By continuing in this path, one can find Spica (α Virginis) as well—hence the maxim, “Arc to Arcturus, then speed on to Spica.”

Other uses include the following –

• Arcturus, a star known for its brightness.
• Arcturus in works of fiction, for fictional references to the star
• Arcturus (planet)
• Arcturus (band), an avant-garde Norwegian metal band.
• Arcturus (steamship), a passenger ship of the Finland Steamship Company.
• Arcturus, Zimbabwe, a village in the province of Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe.
• Arcturus Mengsk, the leader of the Sons of Korhal and later Emperor of the Terran Dominion in the StarCraft computer game series.
• Project Arcturus, a failed Ancient power-source project in the Stargate Atlantis television series.
• Arcturus Group, a consultancy based in Brussels

=) Just FYI. And yeah, I know wiki changed the name, but there were no results for the original spelling. That’s the closest I could get.

As you can see from this shot of Aisna with her new diseased wolf, these guys do indeed use the diseased wolf skin — which was previously unavailable before level 47, in Felwood.

The Diseased Young Wolf replaces the existing Young Wolf. Like the Young Wolf, the Diseased Young Wolf is a non-aggressive, level 1 beast that seems to hang out mostly inside Northshire Valley (the human starter area) in Elwynn Forest. (I also found a few behind the cat lady’s house just outside the Northshire walls.)

A bit further back in Northshire Valley you can find a level 2 Diseased Timber Wolf, which replaces the Timber Wolf. Same skin, same non-aggression, one level higher.

Both of these new diseased wolves can be tamed. They are also involved in a quest: Eagan Peltskinner, who on the live realms right now asks you to kill Young Wolves and Timber Wolves for their meat, now bemoans the growing sickness in the neraby wolves and asks you to bring him diseased wolf pelts instead.

(But no worries about the previous wolf skin: you can still tame non-diseased Mangy Wolves just outside Northshire, or the Gray Forest Wolves a bit past Goldshire for that look.)

So the question for me is: what’s the goal here? Is this part of the set-up for a pre-Cataclysm event? Setup for Cataclysm itself? Blizzard moving the diseased wolves elsewhere because they’re going to be eliminated from Felwood? Or just a developer who really wanted a diseased wolf at level 10?

[Aside: While I was checking out the Diseased Young Wolf, I noticed that the PTR also features a slick new tutorial system with better text and pictures, plus flashing UI elements to help new players figure out what's going on. I probably just missed this before, but I quite liked it. In addition, the stupid Defias inside Northshire Valley itself are *finally* non-aggro. Man, I hated those thugs before!]

Addendum: I took a trip around Durotar, Mulgore, and Tirisfal but I didn’t seen anything else new in the way of beasts. Two things of interest:

1. All the enemies in the protected 1-5 areas are now non-aggressive.
2. I couldn’t find any abomination guards in Undercity. Instead all I found were Kor’kron guards.

There’s nothing particularly interesting to hunters in the patch notes, but MMO Champion did notice a new skin in the data: the Spectral Bear.

Is this the newest Spirit Beast? Stay tuned … and let me know if you see him on the PTR!

But Cataclysm will be restructuring the oldest part of WoW enormously. That clean division of old and new content … not so clean anymore.  Now I’m an old hand at MMOs, but I’m not entirely sure what to expect from this one. And that goes double for how and where new pet families may be introduced.

Pet families have never been explicitly limited by expansion — only by the level and location. For example, moths and wasps were added in Wrath of the Lich King but can be tamed by a hunter with only the Burning Crusade because they occur in Outland.

Chimaeras and silithids, on the other hand, can be tamed by any level 60 hunter, whether they have any expansions or not, because they occur in old Azeroth. (True, you need Beast Mastery to tame them, but talents are available to all hunters, and you can get Beast Mastery at level 60 if you plan carefully.)

How is this going to work when the old and new content are so thoroughly intermingled? Gilneas and the goblin starter area will probably be set off, much like the Draenei islands and the blood elf area, but it sounds like the majority of changes will happen in commonly accessible areas. Does this mean that if we get new pet families, they will be largely available to all hunters? Or will we see new families only in the explicit expansion areas?

Let’s take a look at the history so far. When it launched, WoW included 17 pet families:

1. Bats
2. Bears
3. Boars
4. Carrion Birds
5. Cats
6. Crabs
7. Crocolisks
8. Gorillas
9. Hyenas
10. Owls (now Birds of Prey)
11. Raptors
12. Scorpids
13. Spiders
14. Tallstriders
15. Turtles
16. Wind Serpents
17. Wolves

Patch 2.0 and the Burning Crusade expansion added 6 pet families — an increase of about 35% — for a total of 23:

1. Dragonhawks
2. Nether Rays
3. Ravagers
4. Serpents
5. Sporebats
6. Warp Stalkers

Patch 3.0 and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion added 9 more — an increase of about 39% — for our current total of 32 pet families:

1. Chimaeras
2. Core Hounds
3. Devilsaurs
4. Moths
5. Rhinos
6. Silithids
7. Spirit Beasts
8. Wasps
9. Worms

On a purely historical basis, we might expect another 10-12 pet families (an increase of about 31%-38%) from Patch 4.0/Cataclysm. Or we might get no new pet families at all …

At this point we really have no idea how Blizzard will draw the line between Patch 4.0 content — available to everyone — and Cataclysm expansion content proper. And that means that we don’t really know how the new pet families — if there are any — will be available and at what levels.

I’m really looking forward to finding out. (Hint, hint, Blizzard — send me a beta invite ASAP! Or even better, an alpha invite!) In the meantime, though, the best we can do is speculate endlessly and with great passion.

I haven’t forgotten that goal. In fact, I’ve been working on my little project off and on ever since. I now have a guild with 8 characters — 7 hunters and 1 death knight banker — called, of course, “Elite Test Cadre”.

The hunters are level 10, 16, 22, 28, 34 … and 36 and 27. The last two aren’t done yet, as you can see, and I have a bunch more to level up after that. I also plan to replace the death knight once I get a high enough level hunter, so that I can fill up all 10 character slots on this realm with ETC hunters.

Considering how little time I’ve actually had to put into this project, I’ve had to cheat quite a bit to get this many characters. I started at the bottom — at level 10, I mean — which made the first few characters pretty quick.

I also transferred over several alts that had been lying around forever. I felt bad not playing them, but now they have a purpose again! (The level 28 ETC hunter, for instance, was my first Alliance hunter ever. But I’ll post more about her later.) This is one reason that my cadre is Alliance-only at this point — I have more Alliance alts lying around than Horde.

One thing I haven’t done (yet) is take advantage of the Recruit-a-Friend program. I find it hard enough to play one hunter at a time — two at once is beyond my capabilities. I am thinking that I may need to use the RaF program for the higher level hunters, though, because slogging through the level 70 and 76 characters, for instance, is going to take awhile.

I also haven’t been using the extra-XP heirloom items for these characters, largely because the only character I have anywhere who is high enough to get the heirloom items is Horde. (That would be Mania.) But at some point I’ll stop with the Alliance and start on Horde, and then I may get some heirloom stuff and transfer it over.

Anyway, building a special-purpose set of characters like this is actually a lot of fun. I don’t need to worry about anything but leveling them, and when I hit the target level … I’m done! No more worries at all. Somehow this is very relaxing for me.

I also don’t worry about fleshing out full character personalities and histories — I’m not on an RP-realm for a change — although oddly even the brand new characters have developed a personality as I play them.

In point of fact, I haven’t actually gathered any data from these characters yet. I’ve been having too much fun leveling them up. But hey, if nothing else I should be in a good spot to gather data when Cataclysm comes out. *grin*

It’s special because there are special guests: namely me and Pike from Aspect of the Hare. The topic: hunter pets, of course!

I’ve been a bit brain-fried lately so I’m not sure how much good I’ll be, but I fully expect Pike and Lassirra to make up for my deficits. *grin*

So what’s new for hunters and pets? Just this one note:

Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.

Nice!