Mists of Pandaria: Hunter Pets

**I apologize for the darkness of my screenshots. I took them at night and it was raining. Also, for pete's sake, don't look at my armor. It's hideous. I'm not to the point where I want to transmog it yet so I'm doing my best to ignore it.**

As a hunter (Hunters RULE!!), one of the things I look forward to most about a new expansion is taming new pets. Finding and taming a new pet is always fun, finding new pet families is fantabulous fun. MoP has six new pet families including the two that came out with the pre-release patch.

• Basilisks
• Water Striders
• Cranes
• Goats
• Porcupines
• Quilen

So far, I've tamed a water strider, crane, and porcupine. I think, at this point, my blue porcupine, named Petunia, is my favorite. I really like the skins on the porcupine family. I actually traveled to Zangarmarsh when the patch came out to tame a blue Fen Strider because I'm the impatient sort and had to have a new pet right away. I have to say, I really love the Surface Trot ability, which gives the hunter the ability to walk/ride on water. That can be such a convenience. I also like the Still Water buff which increases spell power by 10% and critical strike by 5%. 

Lots of new pet looks were also released with MoP. Unfortunately, I am pretty disappointed with all but one of the new cat looks. I really don't like how the cats are so lumpy. It's like they're the Hunchback of Notre Dame of WoW. The one cat that I like, and have tamed, is the Hunched Jade Cat (See??? Hunched is even in the name.). I'm also unimpressed with the look of Pandaren turtles. I tamed one (a brown dragon turtle if I remember correctly) just so that I could have one, but I stabled it and doubt very seriously if it'll see the light of day. Frankly, they're just dull-looking in my opinion.

One of my favorite new looks, however, is the water strider. I had to have one of those as soon as I saw one and they also belong to the Water Strider family (obviously). Very nice-looking water bug. I also like the silkworms. I would kind of like to have one of each, blue, green, red, and yellow. I think they're all pretty cute.

As for the pet families I have yet to tame, goats, basilisks, and quilen, I'm excited to add them to my stable, more so for the goats and quilen. The quilen have a very handy skill, Eternal Guardian, which will allow for the resurrection of a party member. I think this will be extremely welcome in an instance or raid, to have an extra party member with this ability. It's just too bad that it can't resurrect the hunter. ;) I just think the goats are cute.

If you'd like more specific and detailed information on the newest pets, check out Petopia. The new pet families are just one more thing about the expansion that I am vastly enjoying. Any other hunters out there with MoP pet likes or dislikes??

Mists of Pandaria: First Impressions

I have very few negative things to say about the latest WoW expansion. I'm not one of those "race to 90" type of player, but I have been playing since the day of the release and I've been having a fantastic time.

I know that I'm in the minority when I say that questing is my favorite part of the game. I enjoy exploring the world, picking up quests, getting new gear, and just generally immersing myself in the game's world. I seriously cannot relate to the player who complains that it's taking too long to get to 90. I was, however, immensely pleased when I dinged 86 just last night. ;) That should give you some idea where I'm at in Pandaria. Okay, okay. I will admit that I'm chomping at the bit to get the new cloud serpent mount. All good things...

Pet Battles

Prior to the release, I was really looking forward to this new aspect of the game. It gives the player an alternate course of action instead of the constant raiding, PuGs, and leveling. The reality of this feature totally lived up to my expectations. The cheesy Final Fantasy-esque music. The silly turn-based attacks. The cutesy pets whose sole purpose in life is to kick ass. I love it. It's fun. It's distracting. It's addicting. I feel bad choosing to level certain companions over others. This has led to me trying to level several at one time which means that my highest level pet is only 11, lol. Questing in Pandaria and seeing the potential, capture-able pets makes me drool. I can't wait until I get a pet high enough so that I can start acquiring the new pets.

The Scenery

Come on. How can you not appreciate this??

If you don't like the scenery in Pandaria, I can only assume that you're color blind. It's visually striking and totally pleasing to the eye. If I hear one more person gripe about the graphics in WoW, I may have to turn stalker and pound on that person a bit. Maybe the graphics are not top shelf, but I still don't see what the complaining is all about.

Pandas. Squishy, Loveable, Ninja, Pandas!

This is another popular topic about which people like to complain. Do people know much about real, in the wild, pandas? Sure, they look cute, but I would like to see you come between a cub and it's mother. Polar bears, black bears, and grizzlies are cute too. Did you hear about that hiker that was taking video of a grizzly? All they found of him was the video. Anyway, my panda monk is only a level 14 so I can't speak on an "expert" level, but I'm having great fun playing her. She's pretty and she's pretty vicious.

My One Complaint

I think having cross-realm areas is a fantastic idea. I really like seeing other players when I'm out and about questing. However...It would have been nice if that had been turned off for the first few weeks after the expansion release. Over population is now the issue instead of dead areas. I was questing with my lowbie panda in the Northern Barrens and there weren't enough quilboars and sacks of rice to be found for all the dozens of pandas trying to do the same quests. It was just a bit frustrating. After a while, I gave up and went for some pet battles instead.

To Conclude

I've run into a few glitches here and there. I've run across totally asshole-y players stealing all the quest kills and gathers. What's new? After playing beta, I can see a big difference in the number of things that needed to be fixed versus the more polished final release. I am a realist. I expected hangups. So what? I think MoP is a complete breath of fresh air when compared to the somewhat more intense expansions of WotLK and Cataclysm. I still have no regrets signing up for the annual pass. I'll more than likely renew or, at the very least, keep my subscription current. I'm still having fun with the game, reading other's blog posts and tweets, and being part of the community that is WoW. I'm definitely not ready to throw in the towel.

Screenshot Wednesday

Even the skeptics have to admit that the scenery in MoP is fabulous.

Speculations with Mists of Pandaria

I'm assuming the achievements highlighted in blue are the account wide ones?

There has been a freakton of talk about the account wide mounts and achievements. I'm a bit behind the others, but I do have some thoughts on the subject that I thought I'd share. As a confessed altoholic, there are definitely aspects of this that are intriguing to me.

Note:  All text in italics are from the official World of Warcraft blog article.

Most achievements are account-wide
This means you only earn the points once. If you have earned an achievement on one character, you can see it on all your characters. However, and this is important, you will still see the achievement toast (the pop-up notification) if a second or subsequent character completes the achievement. We think it’s still important to recognize milestones like reaching level 80, maxing out a profession, or killing a raid boss for the first time. It's fun to have everyone congratulate you when you get the toast. Nonetheless, this will just be a new character of yours completing the achievement that you’ve already earned on your account. You won’t double up on points.

I get that they don't want you to earn the points twice and I like that you'll still get the acknowledgement for completing achievements on all characters. However, it seems redundant to be earning the same achievements on all characters when they've already been done on your account. Personally for me, I'll feel a lot less inclined to try and earn achievements on more than one toon when I know that it really doesn't count. And I mean the achievements like "To All the Squirrels I've Loved" and "Pest Control" (two of my favorites). Meh.


Most criteria are not account-wide
If you start an achievement on one character, you can't then finish the achievement on another (there are exceptions, so please keep reading). We didn't think it made sense for one character to get level 60 and another to get level 20 and then see the "level 80" achievement toast. If you start to explore Thousand Needles on one character, you’ll probably want to finish that achievement on the same character.

This actually makes total sense.

Some achievements are "meta achievements."
These are achievements that require you to get other specific achievements. An infamous example is "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been." These achievements generally ARE account-wide. If one character earned Noble Gardener and another character earned The Flame Warden, then your account would get Long Strange Trip. (Otherwise it would be weird: it would look as if you had the sub-achievements, but you wouldn't have the meta-achievement). Even though you need Explore Thousand Needles on one character, all of your characters can contribute to Explore Kalimdor.

Ok. This one is logical too. It would make getting the exploring achievements, for one, way easier.

A few achievements are account-only.
There are two categories of account-only achievements. One is achievements that are not possible to earn on one character. If we made an achievement to level every class to level 90, it would be account-only. (I'm not sure we will, but it's a good example.) The other category are achievements that are just brutal to complete on one character (and you’d never want to do for multiples), such as 2500 daily quests or 250K honorable kills. In these cases, the cumulative work of all your characters on those criteria will count.

It took me a second to get this one. I like the idea of account-only achievements, especially the one they give as an example. It's nice incentive. "Cumulative" work is also nice but it makes getting those types of achievements easy.

We hope that rewards granted from achievements (pets, mounts, titles, and tabards) will be shared at the account level.
 I'm not going to promise this yet, because a lot of magic has to happen for that to work, but it's our intent. We have discussed having a character level requirement for some rewards, so that your level-2 gnome couldn’t walk around with the “Defender of a Shattered World” title just because your level-90 shaman earned it. If the gnome made it to level 80, though, you could proudly show off your title. You also won’t be able to use a faction-specific pet, mount, or title on the wrong faction. The achievement wouldn’t go away -- you just wouldn’t be able to show it off on that character. There are probably additional exceptions and details we’ll find as we dig deeper into the system.

This is where they start to lose me. Earning these types of rewards should be earning these types of rewards. Making certain achievements have level requirements would be an absolute must in order for me to not completely hate this idea.

What gets me about account wide achievements and mounts is that this is just yet another way that Blizzard is "dumbing down" WoW. They make everything so easy to get nowadays, that the feeling of having worked at something and completing it isn't there so much for me anymore. I also think that players should have to "pay their dues" for certain things. If they keep lowering the level for when we can get our flying training, they may as well just increase walk speed. You know what I'm saying?

Making achievements, training, leveling, dungeons, and raids too easy takes away that sense of accomplishment. I don't want to play a game that a two year old or someone's pet monkey could master.