Leveling With a Buddy

Ding! I'm finally 90. It was quite the grind, and I had to grit my teeth every time I saw a wild pet that I couldn't capture yet. Not to mention all of the other non-wild pets that I couldn't get a hold of.

I did manage to snag one non-wild pet while leveling, though. Yay for the Hopling!


Quite the odd cutie, no? :P

The achievement that rewards this pet was pretty fun to complete. It was somewhat frustrating at times, especially since there isn't a counter to track your progress and the little guys can hide in the most obscure places. Track humanoid works wonders, though, and made it possible to complete on the first run.

This pet will forever hold a special spot in my collection (plus others for varying reasons). Why? Because it was my first pet in MoP and my traveling companion while I journeyed to level 90! :)

Well, now that I'm past the level grind, it's time to get down to business before raiding starts up. Pet Battles and collecting all the new pets! :D

MoP Beta Achievement Updates - PVE to Collect

Wowhead News datamined a Chain Pet Leash from an upcoming beta build.

No clue how it will be obtained or any details about it. Its tooltip says it's unique and BoP, so it will most likely be the same as the Rope Pet Leash and the Red Ribbon Pet Leash. My initial hopes of finally being able to have more than one companion out at the same time kind of went out the window. :(

Also, from the new beta build - new pet achievements and reward updates:

- A Rare Catch (New) Capture a rare quality battle pet.

- An Uncommon Find (New) Capture a uncommon quality battle pet.

- High Quality (New) Capture 10 rare quality battle pets.

- Quality & Quanity (New) Capture 50 rare quality battle pets.

- Challenge Conquerors: Gold - Guild Edition now rewards the Thundering Serpent Hatchling.

- Newbie now also rewards the ability to trap pets.

- Ling-Ting's Herbal Journey now rewards Hopling.

There are also three changes to a few pet spell tooltips. The addition of "Battle Pet", which makes me wonder if there will be a distinction between a non-battle pet and a battle pet, or if they're one in the same.

I'm not quite how sure how to feel about these new achievements and their rewards. Collectors without a guild or a consistent guild group will likely have trouble completing these achievements and might have problems acquiring the pet rewards. There are still some players who are missing the guild-vendored companions because of the guild requirement. Add to that a requirement to complete dungeons/challenges and this might be a recipe for some serious discontent.

I've never been very fond of mixing PVE content with pet collecting as they're not exactly very compatible styles of gameplay. One requires a team effort while the other is more of a solo endeavor. Combining the two usually leads to some collectors feeling pressured to move into an area of gameplay they might not want to take part in.

Yes, I know it's all "optional", but for a person seeking to collect as many pets as possible, it's not optional or else what's the point of participating in collecting in the first place?

For now, I'll just wait and see how things turn out. Thankfully the pet collecting community is welcoming and supportive of each other. Even with the guild and PVE requirement for a few pets, and although some collectors aren't too keen to head in that direction, many players are still able to obtain these pets because others are willing to open up their guilds to fellow companion-seekers just for the sake of acquiring a specific pet.

MoP Beta - Title Change and Three New Pets

Ok. Blizzard is DEFINITELY trying to get as much out for testing before next week. :P Another beta patch!

It looks as though the developers agree with a portion of the pet collecting community and found that the "Tamer" title just didn't fit, so the achievement Time To Open a Pet Store will award the title "Zookeeper" instead.

I'm not sure if it's "*name* the Zookeeper" or "Zookeeper *name*". Wowhead News has "the Zookeeper", while MMO-Champion lists it without the "the" portion. Either way is fine, tbh. At least people won't mistake Quintessence for being untamed anymore! XD

New pets were also datamined from the beta:

Aqua Strider
Grinder
Hopling

All three of these pets are BoP.

Now, this is absolutely PURE speculation on my part, but seeing how a new Children's Week orphan was recently discovered, and now these three named, blue item quality, and BoP pets have been suddenly added as well... could these companions be the reward choices for next year's Children's Week event?

This is all based on... well nothing other than these items being datamined in the relatively same time frame. To me it just makes sense that if you're working on an upcoming project that has multiple pieces or parts, why not just complete all the parts at once?

Anyway, that's just my best guess! There's no indication of where these pets will come from yet.

I'm glad to see that Blizzard is still implementing some non-pet battles companions. Players who won't be participating in the new feature will have new things to collect in MoP too. :)