They Grow Up So Fast

if you haven't noticed by now, the hippogryph hatchling and cenarion hatchling have had their models slightly altered as of patch 4.2.

they seem to have matured a bit and have lost some of their baby fat. both hatchlings are still identical, though.


the most notable change is around the beak area. when comparing the images above to older screenshots found on wowhead.com, you'll notice how the older versions have wider and shorter beaks which gave them a more comical and softer look. the newer models have a longer and sharply pointed beak, plus another slight alteration with the thinning out and tiny extension of the antlers.

i'm a bit disappointed with this updated model to be honest. i could see blizzard changing one of the hatchlings to make it slightly unique when compared to the other, but both pets with new (yet identical) looks? plus i was rather fond of the hippogryph hatchling's baby fat. it was just so cuddly!

another thing that irks me somewhat is that developers went through the trouble of altering the model here and there but did not change the color to again, make them different from each other. they are still twins, down to the tip of their beaks.

don't get me wrong, it's just a small pet peeve and i still adore these two pets, but i would have liked to see perhaps the newer hatchling (cenarion hatchling) with the updated model + a different color scheme, while the original hatchling (hippogryph hatchling) remained unchanged and untouched.

who knows, though? perhaps that was the intention, but as with the withers and teldrassil sproutling bug that occurred a couple patches ago, maybe things got mixed up and both hatchlings were altered. i guess we'll just have to wait and see.