the official under development page has the summaries of patch 4.0.1 and 4.0.3. mmo-champion is reporting that there will be extended maintenance this tuesday (october 12, 2010), which is often an indicator of a patch.
Patch 4.0.1
what will we see in patch 4.0.1 that is significant to companion enthusiasts? not a whole lot that i can tell. this patch is mainly implementing graphical and game mechanic changes. one thing that will be interesting is the updated spellbook and companion pet tab. since i'm currently not on the PTR, i can only report what the new tab will look like as seen on the beta.
with the revamped tab you'll find your pets in your spellbook rather than your character window. companions are still listed in alphabetical order and unfortunately, and to my dismay, there is still no search feature for the pet section of your spellbook. but unlike the previous pet tab, each companion listed will also have its name shown with its summoning icon. this should make it more convenient to find that specific pet you'd like to bring out.
another thing to keep in mind is that if you're using any vanity pet related mods, you'll probably want to update them. 4.0.1 will be bringing about many UI changes, so many addons may end up malfunctioning once the patch is released.
that's pretty much it for patch 4.0.1 for pet collectors. there may be some other additions that i'm unaware of, but we'll just have to wait for the official patch to find out. :P
Patch 4.0.3
patch 4.0.3, in my eyes, is the big doozie for pre-cataclysm content. in this patch (release date is unknown) there will be huge changes to the landscape of azeroth. this could mean a few of the world dropped companions may be relocated or disappear (either permanently or temporarily). warcraftpets.com has a short list of which pets MIGHT BE endangered.
i really cannot stress the "might be" and "possibly" enough, because we just don't know for sure which companions will be or will not be around in cataclysm. it won't be made clear until the actual expansion is released. who knows? if some of these companions do go missing in patch 4.0.3, developers could still sneak them back in between the patch and the expansion release.
there is still time to obtain these potentially endangered companions, so don't panic. to prepare, though, i would definitely move them up in priority on your "to collect" list. there are many unknowns with the coming patches, so all we can do is hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
note 1: there is no sign of the feat of strength achievement (it was mentioned a while ago) that requires you to have acquired all the "rare" companions, such as the whelps and other potentially missing pets, on the beta. i can only hope that this is hinting that developers do intend to release cataclysm with all current pets (although some will probably have to be moved or obtained in a different way).
note 2: for those of you eager to start on the pet-rewarded guild achievements (which is probably everyone haha) - i'm not entirely sure when guild achievements will launch, but i'm 90% sure we will not be able to earn them until the actual expansion release. however, they may give us previews in the coming patches so we can at least see them on live servers. if blizzard does give us the ok to work on them pre-cataclysm, i would expect patch 4.0.3 to have that content. but again, i don't think they'll be out any time soon.
I'm not against removing pets honestly. I know pets are more of a casual obsession when compared to mounts (which are removed often) but I don't have a huge problem with it. We've only ever had two removed pets (assuming we never see the Spirit of Competition return) so I don't think it would hurt us to lose a few more in a similar manner.
ReplyDeleteAll of those pets are really easy to get regardless. Not to sound harsh, but most serious collectors ought to have those and if they don't it could be accomplished in one day's time.
@Harval - "pets are more of a casual obsession", this is one of the biggest arguments that comes up when debating whether or not the dungeon changes for holiday bosses was a good or bad thing. because collecting companions was never really intended to be a large part of gameplay and was really only a side thing blizzard put in as a second thought, the idea of making the holiday companions harder to get shouldn't be such a bad or negative thing. at least... that's one side of the argument.
ReplyDeletemy biggest gripe, though, is that there's no consistency. if it's a casual aspect of the game, keep it that way. instead, blizzard is encouraging players to become pet collectors and hardcore collectors to become even more hardcore... with incentives like achievements and rewards.
removing some of the pets come cataclysm would probably support the view that, hey, pet collecting is more of a casual/side activity so it's ok to remove these vanity items that were never intended to be a large part of the game in the first place. not removing them would support the opposite. blizzard needs to pick a stance and then stick with it instead of giving us mixed messages imo. that or compromise. sometimes there's room for compromise, sometimes there isn't.
@Quintessence - I can see what you're saying, but at the same time removing pets can reinforce the collecting aspect of pets as being similar to mounts. Mounts are often removed when Blizzard feels it demeans them, or makes them too easy to get. Pets are obviously generally not as hard to come by as mounts, but this removal could be saying for instance, "Hey, you had x amount of time to get these pets, and now that time has passed". That's similar to what they do with mounts.
ReplyDeleteI collect pets for a reason obviously, I'm not real big on raiding and that puts me out of the running as a serious mount collector. Just today I got my dragonhawk for example, which I know at this point is well behind serious collectors. I wouldn't want pets to go down that path, but like I said I wouldn't mind removing these simply because the world is changing and they were so easy to get anyway. My biggest fear is they'll just offer these pets as vendor pets and to me that just demeans them if they weren't originally from a vendor. The hunt is important to me as a collector, I like working towards the pets I collect as much as I like actually getting the pets.
We'll see what happens I guess.
On a somewhat related note, I've been giving thought to those elemental themed pets and wondering if just maybe they're going to be part of the pre-Cataclysm elemental invasions. It seems plausible, given the fact we don't know where they come from yet.