Friday, September 27, 2013

Pierre and Rascal-Bot Can Now Be Caged/Traded

Senior game designer, Jonathan LeCraft, Tweeted something very interesting yesterday evening.
"Pierre and Rascal-Bot have been hotfixed so they can be traded and caged. They are also no longer unique."
Both Pierre and Rascal-Bot were originally implemented as BoP and un-cageable/tradeable. With this change, engineers can now cage/trade them (items are also BoP now) and collectors can have up to 3 in their Pet Journals.


I'm sure many collectors will be quite pleased with this change, and it was expected, as Blizzard hasn't implemented a profession-exclusive pet since the original engineering companions. However, I'm curious what prompted this change. Certainly it was warranted, but I was expecting the change to occur just before the release of the next expansion, allowing engineers some exclusivity for a period of time.

One reason that may have caused a speed up in the change is that Rascal-Bot can come in different breeds. I'm not sure if Pierre has multiple breeds as well, but if so, it would only make sense to allow players more than one in their collections and grant the ability to trade different breeds with each other.

And perhaps there was just a large outcry from the collecting community, requesting that these pets be cageable. Blizzard has been very accommodating lately, and actively listening to collectors. Not all suggestions or requests are granted/implemented, but developers are definitely paying attention. This could just be another prime example of Blizzard hearing the community out, thinking it over, and then releasing a change after some consideration.

Or maybe this was Blizzard's intent all along! :P Allow enough time for one pet to be crafted before changing its binding status. It seems unlikely, though, as it doesn't make a ton of sense.

But who knows. Anything is possible and I'm sure Blizzard had their reasons for it. I'm glad these two pets will be available to a much wider audience now that they're tradeable, but it was cute that they were exclusive for a short time. Even though I'd much prefer that they're cageable/tradeable, it was a bit nostalgic having profession-exclusive pets. It brought me back to the days where I had to drop my main professions (twice!) to learn engineering just for the two pets. :)

2 comments:

  1. It's probably to compensate for other professions getting many new recipes of which the items are BOE where engineering mainly has two uber expensive mounts this expansion? I may be missing a couple cool things, but that's what it seems like :) However I can't understand why they maid them BOP in the first place...maybe to force people to level up an alt, or level up engineering at the expense of other proffessions...sinking more gold into the game. Who knows?

    Anyway, i'm probably not going to actually sell the ones I make so Power to those who make some gold out of it, or use for trade.

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    1. @Pukanini: It may have been an oversight, or perhaps they simply changed their minds after receiving more input from the community post-patch 5.4 release. Either way, I think it was a fair decision.

      I won't be selling my eng pets either, but I've never been one to try and turn a huge profit off of pets. Mainly because I'd be terrible at it and lazy too :P

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