WoD Beta: Flashy Title Here (Pets?!)

I've been semi-quiet on my blog for past week; the Diablo 3 2.1 patch just sucked me in. Still, I've been diligently logging into WoW for pets. Can't neglect those pet battle dailies! :P

New Pets and Achievements
Anyway, there was a beta patch yesterday and it wasn't huge but some updates were pretty significant in my opinion. We've got two new pets, a new achievement, and two achievement updates. There were also slight changes to the Draenor trainer rewards and the vendor located at the menagerie in your garrison.

First new pet is the "spacegoat" that was previously datamined. It's official name is Karabor Kid, and the pet journal says it will be from the Blizzard Pet Store. When? That's a definite unknown, but I'm already throwing money at my monitor though lol. And of course, *insert some lame joke about selling Draenei "kids" to "collectors"* :P

Second new pet is tied to an updated achievement, An Awfully Big Adventure. Defeating FORTY-FOUR trainers (spread out all over Azeroth, Outlands, Northrend, Pandaria, etc.) with the Elekk Plushie on your team will now reward your efforts with a pet, Trunks (a new baby elekk).


Yes, you read that right. 44. That's...a lot of trainers! But for many battlers, it should be a piece of cake. The most annoying portion of this achievement might be the travel-time. And probably the Celestial Tournament since the achievement requires all of the rotating initial 3 trainers.

Thankfully, there are already many strats that detail how to defeat the usual trainers with a "carry pet". We'll need to brainstorm and test new strats for the additional trainers, but I have faith in the battling community that some solid ideas will come out. :)

Speaking of updated achievements, though, another one was changed. Previously, Victory in Hillsbrad rewarded Hogs, but no more. Now you get a title (corresponding to your faction) when you complete this achievement.

I'm pretty bummed that the pet won't be the reward anymore, but hopefully Hogs will make his appearance somewhere else in the game. I have many bones for him to gnaw on, so get into my collection, damnit. :P

Aside from the changes, there's a new achievement for defeating all of the Draenor trainers. Taming Draenor will unlock "Draenor Pet Battle Daily Quests".

I'm still not sure what the daily quests will consist of, though. Is it a new daily quest? Or something we've already had a chance to test? Is it tied to the level 3 menagerie or maybe it's something else? There are still a handful of pets that are rewarded from the quest "Mastering the Menagerie" (quest NYI), so maybe the achievement unlocks that?

We'll see. I'm having a hell of a time trying to even complete the achievement on beta. With disconnects and the world going down constantly, it's been slow going. Not to mention my menagerie is still only level 2, so I can't even check level 3 if there's anything new once I've completed the achievement. Hopefully someone else will have the time and patience to see what this is all about.


Draenor Trainer and Vendor Changes
On the topic of Draenor trainers, their rewards were changed slightly. Instead of receiving Pet Supplies, battlers will get some gold and 4 Pet Charms from each trainer. Before, the bag contained some charms as well as a family-specific leveling stone.

In news related to this, the vendor at your menagerie now only sells Flawless Battle-Training Stone instead of both the generic one and family-specific ones. The flawless one costs 2 charms each, so if you battle all 6 Draenor trainers each day, you can purchase at max 12 stones per day. This value is subject to change of course.

I'm actually ok with these changes. Rather than juggling 11 different family-specific, soulbound stones, we'll only need to deal with one all-around useful one. Save some bag space, save some headache!

It does take away a little of the excitement from the trainer rewards, though. With a bag, there was anticipation whether or not there's a new pet inside. Now we won't have to worry about grinding those dailies every day for a new pet. Instead we'll be grinding away on those dailies for battle-stones lol. But I think I'll be happier with a guaranteed stone than an RNG drop pet heh.

There's still a chance we might see more of the leveling stones and a new reward bag from some other reward in a future content patch after WoD's release. I wouldn't count it out, at least.