Deathy Crashes the Moonkin Party

with all the talk and updates about the moonkin hatchling, i hope no one forgot about deathy! if you purchased the blizzcon 2010 live stream be sure to check your email. numerous players have started receiving their redeemable code for deathy, the deathwing-wanna-be murloc. i just got mine. :)

this is a very nice surprise to receive deathy a lot sooner than expected! quite frankly, i figured they would be sent out just a little before the expansion release date or after his animations/vocalizations were fixed. i guess the little guy got antsy so blizzard wanted to send him out before the whole lot of them started a murloc rebellion? :P

so yea, deathy is still unfinished and thinks he's grunty, but i adore him regardless. i love the last line of the in-game mail that deathy comes with:

"hey may loathe azeroth with a seething rage that knows no bounds, but he sure loves you!"

The Cuteness Continues

you thought a screenshot of them was cute? well wowhead now has 3D models of the moonkin hatchling and lil' ragnaros on their latest blog post. just try to resist their adorableness!

and i have to admit that i wasn't really all that taken with lil' ragnaros at first, but after seeing his 3D model... i'm suddenly overcome with a desire to cuddle the crap out of the mini-firelord. he thinks he's all big and bad, but he just really needs a hug. :P

**UPDATE: video previews are here! they only feature the three companion's animations. vocalizations will have to come later.

- alliance moonkin hatchling video
- horde moonkin hatchling video
- lil' ragnaros video

Four More Updates Plus One

according to wowhead's cataclysm beta blog, in the upcoming beta build (13277) the icons for tiny flamefly, bubbles, little snail, and lizzy have been changed and updated. this makes me hopeful that they will be prepped and ready to go for cataclysm, but we'll have to wait and see. even some companions with complete spell/item IDs, icons, etc. don't make the final cut and end up being put on hold or unavailable to players altogether. still.. i'm crossing my fingers! there's still no word on how these four companions may be obtained.

also noted on wowhead's recent post is a change to the crawling claw (available in cataclysm through the secondary tradeskill, archaeology). as of the next beta patch, it will be BIND ON ACCOUNT. i think this will be the first player created companion that is BoA. it must be a pretty difficult pet to obtain for blizzard to make it of epic quality and bind on account.

Cuteness Overload

mmo-champion has official blizzard moonkin hatchlingS and lil' ragnaros previews! yup, you read right. hatchlings as in plural. there is a horde version and an alliance version of the baby moonkin.

it's still unknown whether or not there will be two versions of the moonkin hatchling for purchase or if it will be a single item that morphs faction to match whichever character you are currently learning it on. since wowhead has two item IDs for the moonkin hatchling, there's a strong possibility that there will be two separate hatchlings to purchase from the PetStore, but we'll have to wait and see. also, if there are two that you may buy, it's still unknown if you can learn both on a single character or if each one will be faction specific. i certainly hope my alliance druid can have both! she does not discriminate faction when it comes to pets. if she could adopt an argent gruntling, she would in a heartbeat! :)

blizzard will be announcing the release date for these PetStore pets as well as information on which charity the proceeds will be going to in the near future. so we can expect to see these three in the store soon!

all seriousness aside, let me take a moment to.. USE ALL CAPS AND EXCLAIM MY ADORATION FOR HOW CUTE THEY ARE! *ahem* but yes, they are quite the adorable little balls of feathers. i can only imagine what interesting animations they will have. will they do the classic moonkin dance? maybe moonfire critters? one of the images shows the alliance version up in the air which could indicate either a jump or an attempt at flying... though the latter's not very likely since moonkin don't fly! (fatties :P just kidding lol.)

and because i don't want to leave the firelord out, lil' ragnaros in all his mini-glory is looking pretty cool. i'm not sure, but it looks like he doesn't come with the legendary mace, sulfuras, hand of ragnaros. the model seems pretty similar, less impressive than the actual weapon though. well i guess you can't hand out an all powerful elemental lord with all his bells and whistles or you my wind up being his pet instead of the other way around. :P oh and i'll be very surprised if lil' ragnaros doesn't have a 'kill critters on sight' animation lol.

i absolutely cannot wait for these three pets to go on sale. there will be much squee-ing in this household on that day.

Cryptozoic Update

Cryptozoic has stated that:

"The common Loot card will be an alternate skin Lil XT as seen on the Blizzard store. Yes, the common Loot card is now a pet and this will continue with each set moving forward." - source

this is GREAT news for pet collectors if what they are implying is true. starting with the upcoming worldbreaker TCG expansion pack and continuing for every new expansion released thereafter, the common loot card will be a companion pet!

this will likely drive prices down a bit on the new TCG pets, but it may also mean higher availability. even if the pet cards are more accessible, i don't expect to see a bunch of the card game companions walking around azeroth like the flood of sparkle ponies.

on the flip side, a pet in the common slot for each expansion could also mean poorer quality TCG companions due to the demand for a new one every set as well as the less rare quality. we'll just have to wait and see how blizzard handles this change.

Landro's Lil' XT

wowtcgloot.com has confirmed that landro's lil' xt will indeed be a loot card from the upcoming TCG expansion: worldbreaker (releases mid-december). not only will it be available soon, wowtcgloot also states:

- [Landro's Lil' XT] 1/3

"This means for the first time ever there will be a permanent pet in the common loot position in an expansion."

so unlike many of the other TCG redeemable vanity pets, this particular one will be more common and probably less expensive. perhaps this is due to the fact that it's pretty much a copy of an already existing companion (lil' xt) that's available from the official PetStore? it certainly wouldn't make sense to me to make it a rare (and therefore pricier) loot card when you could just buy a very, very similar and likely cheaper version from the PetStore.

landro's lil' xt does have something that lil' xt doesn't have; flavor text!

"Use: A near-perfect, goblin-manufactured knockoff of the Wonderworks original."

it's quite rare to see anything outside of the usual "use: teaches you how to summon this companion" or "right click to summon and dismiss your (insert pet here)" now that all vanity pets are learnable spells.

so in terms of uniqueness, the TCG version of lil' xt does have something over most other pets, even if it's just a semi-renamed version of an existing companion. and who knows? maybe blizzard decided to add some new animation to it or different vocalizations. i could imagine the TCG version falling apart when attempting to imitate lil' xt's animations due to its "knockoff" qualities. how fun would that be? :)

Slowing Down

now that cataclysm is exactly one month away, i've been slowing waaaay down on the beta testing. most of the remaining companions that i have yet to see, test or collect on the beta are the ones that are pretty straight forward and don't really require anything special other than lots of time and energy. so i guess those last few may just have to wait until the live release of cataclysm for their very own screenshots. :P

i'll probably sort out a plan of action and prioritize which pets i'll be going after first in the expansion, as well as hunt down any last minute information on the companions that are still eluding the cataclysm pet list.

and it goes without saying, but i'm still anxiously waiting for the PetStore additions, my very own deathy code to redeem, and the 6th anniversary gift.

Four More?!

there have been quite a few bumps for the collecting community this past year, but we have to also keep in mind the gigantic flood of companions coming this winter and in cataclysm. give and take, ups and downs. can't have the good without the bad. :)

that being said, despite the recent pet peeves, i do feel slightly spoiled with so many pets heading our way, and to top it off... the developers probably have even more companions in mind and planned for the future!

bindar of warcraftpets found four new additions on wowhead's cataclysm site (added november 3, 2010) that have been categorized as companions:

- bubbles (might be a bubble pet? lol. or perhaps a nod to michael jackson's chimp?)
- little snail (a snail critter model does exist, and there was a brief moment when the guild rewards were released that a "pet snail" was datamined, so perhaps we should remain hopeful?)
- lizzy (i'm hoping this one is a baby warp stalker that are currently waddling about on the beta. lizzard... lizzy, it works!)
- tiny flamefly (finally a friend for the firefly?)

these four don't have unique item or spell IDs at the moment, so it's likely they're just placeholders or works in progress (for now). blizzard may add them in cataclysm or they may not. many pets have been discovered and datamined before but not all make the final cut. like many of the other speculated pets, we'll just have to wait and see.

even if there's a huge question mark about these four, i'm quite excited! especially for a possible vanity pet named lizzy. normally gender doesn't really concern me. male, female, other... non-combat pets are non-combat pets and i love them all. however, it would be nice to see a balancing out of the male to female pet ratio.

currently there's really only one other obviously female pet, winter's little helper. all of the other companions have either androgynous names/models or are obviously male, such as mr. chilly or the argent squire and argent gruntling or mr. wiggles and so on. there has yet to be a "mrs." or "ms." anything!

i could just assign a gender to the many non-gender specific pets if it bothers me that much, but it would be nice to see some female companions that were intended to be obviously female along with the male ones being pumped out, yenno? so i'm pretty hopeful for the "lizzy" pet. and yes, i know that "lizzy" may not even be an intended female name/companion, but it's the closest one out of all the pets so far. i'll take what i can get. :P

'Tis the Season to be Collecting

faa lala la laa, lala lalaaaa. oh wait. it's not christmas time yet! well it certainly feels like the holidays with all of the new (and old) companions coming our way.

mmo-champion has datamined two icons for the moonkin hatchling as well as an icon for lil' ragnaros from the most recent beta build. unfortunately, they've also discovered that lil' alexstrasza has been removed.

personally, i'm not all that bothered by the dragon aspect baby being made unavailable (for now) to players. lil' deathwing, i can understand since he's the main focus of this expansion. but other than him (and the onyxian whelping, who isn't really labeled as mini-onyxia herself... although it does behave a lot like momma dragon.. meh details :P), having a mini-dragon aspect as your pet just seemed kind of... odd. it took the mysticism and epic-ness out of the game somewhat. no one's supposed to be able to OWN an all powerful being like a dragon aspect!

anyway, back to the moonkin hatchlings. yes, two icons have been datamined; one horde and one alliance. still no sign of a model for the pet though, but blizzard did mention that it would be available in november so i guess we just need to wait a bit longer.

my biggest question is if there really will be two hatchlings to purchase, and if we'll be able to learn both versions on the same toon, regardless of what faction we play for. or will it be a new type of companion that morphs factions to match the current one you're on? (let's face it, people love their faction switching lol.) we'll see!

more holidays pets to look forward to this month as well as in december:

- plump turkey
- winter's little helper
- father winter's helper
- tiny snowman
- winter reindeer
- and hopefully a new pet under the holiday tree during the winter festival!
- last but not least, possibly a pet to celebrate world of warcraft's 6th anniversary

oh and, uhm, i think there was this thing called an expansion coming out december 7th? something like that? :P

so on top of all of the upcoming holiday pets there will be all new expansion companions to collect! talk about vanity pet collectors scoring big this winter haha. tons of pets to look forward to, and hopefully all goes well and as planned.

Day of the Dud

yes, this calls for the angry tree macro.
much like the northrend orphan quests, it would seem as if the day of the dead quest is similarly bugged. if you completed it last year, the NPCs will not offer it to you this year. what does it matter? this ONE and only quest offered during this 2 day in-game event is the only way to obtain the limited duration macabre marionette. once the holiday is over the pet item will disappear.

this is extremely disappointing. not only was the event bugged last year and many players didn't even receive a marionette before the event was over or had their pet item disappear early, now many of us won't be able to enjoy the marionette this year either.

i was really looking forward to hanging out with a little skeleton, maraca wielding, sombrero friend too.

at least they fixed the issue where your 12 hour costume would disappear once you got onto a flying mount. some sort of consolation i guess... sorta. not really.

hopefully all those who did not complete the quest last year enjoy their macabre marionette this year. treasure it while you can! :(

note: logging and zoning may cause the pet item to disappear earlier than it's supposed to. this was a common issue during last year's day of the dead event. there are already reports from players on the official forums that the issue may not have been resolved for this year's event. so again... treasure the little skeleton while you can!!