Vanity Pet Animations - What Happened To Them?
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iTZKooPA on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 17 Comments Tags: Vanity pets, archangel, bag space, companions, egbert, gold medallion, mini-pets, non-combat pets, small pets, tyrael
iTZKooPA on Thursday, August 28, 2008 - 17 Comments Tags: Vanity pets, archangel, bag space, companions, egbert, gold medallion, mini-pets, non-combat pets, small pets, tyrael 
Vanity pets, non-combat pets, small pets, companions, mini-pets, waste of bag space, whatever you know them as, they are here to stay. I am by no means a collector of the pets, but I know plenty of people who are. Way back in vanilla World of Warcraft, I had a guildie whose goal was to fill up all his bag slots with the buggers and then pull them out one by one during a Molten Core run. But just because I don't collect them doesn't mean I don't enjoy them or strive to achieve a few.This year's Children's Week brought the cutest pet I have seen in the game. Getting a hold of the foul beast meant that I had to spend a few hours running all over Azeroth to get Egbert's Egg. Seeing that little Hawkstrider wig out when you stand idle was well worth the time. Then Blizzard Entertainment got into the Olympic mood and added a Gold Medallion that would summon a small dragon known as the Spirit of Competition. This pet also required a bit of a time commitment. For each PvP battleground a player won, they had a chance to be rewarded with the item. The chance was fairly high, making the non-combat pet a fairly common one on my server. Nevertheless, being a huge fan of the Olympics and dragons, I had to have one.
The Worldwide Invitational also had an interesting pet that I was not able to get my hands on, Archangel Tyrael of Diablo II fame. Shortly after people began populating the world with Tyrael – not to mention trying to get him to duel with Diablo – I heard that he wasn't that cool of a pet. In fact, Tyrael has one animations to speak of, crossing his arms. He also responds to /dance, he just won't stop dancing until he is re-summoned.
Seeing as my main is a rogue, I don't get to run around with my pets too much. It wasn't until I ran a string of heroics and some Karazhans that I realized the Spirit of Competition doesn't have any animations to speak of either. It just floats there, acting like a Wind Serpent. Lame.
So what this means is that the last two semi- to near- exclusive pets have almost no animations, idle or emotes, to speak of. It appears that the newest pets have had far less time put into them than the easily accessible rewards from Children's Week or the dozens of other companions running around. I know vanity pets aren't that big of a deal but these are supposed to be the exclusive ones, they should be the coolest to own. What's up with that Blizzard? Did they finally revolt?
Reader Comments (17)
frist
They might add more animations to those later, but I have a feeling they rushed them out at the last minute so they didnt spend much time conceptualizing animations to go with them (plus with Tyrael because he's so limited, I think they didnt want to invest Too much in making him too cool - so people wouldnt be as upset if they missed out) As to the spirit of competition, Imagining how to make a neat animation for it would be a challenge, I think
I want Tyreal.
Dragon = breath fire/smoke
2 animations done!
I never thought that any one collected them. However I do think I may enjoy collecting them. I to also got the spirit of competition and yeah i don't really like him as much as I thought I would, he is kinda lame.
Do your damnedest, moderators! You'll never take my prairie dog from me!!
Can you fix some of your links? A lot of them have an extraneous ” tacked on the end of the link.
In Wrath of the Lich King these non-combat pets "are not going to take bag space". I dont know how, maybe they will give you a key chain kind of thing or sumthing.
mechanical squirrel FTW!
@ Rugi, you get a spell put into your spellbook, in general tab I think.
Anyway, as a little present my cousin knew I played wow, bought the first thing that said wow on it, which happened to be the trading cards, and I pulled that ethereal plunderer card that worth 200 bucks, I keeping it though to make people jealous
I don't personally collect the vanity pets though I too know people that do, my friend Rachel is fanatic over them its really quite cute. Its like the beanie babies of WoW.
Though, as a future graphic designer and a writer on top of that I don't like that they didn't animate the Spirit of Competition. That's just lazy. Its easy, like someone else said, breath fire, and since he's a serpentine dragon have him fly around in a small circle swirly pattern while breathing sparks or something. During idle of course. and while walking just having him fly like a normal sky dragon of his ilk would be bad ass. All twisty turny. I could've come up with so many animations for the two of them its ridiculous.
With the archangel there are things that look just like that, thank god, in FF12. Give it a sword to swing around. Allow it to momentarily summon like little spark balls to mess around with. Have it like flap its wings and shift around during idle. ANYTHING but just crossing his arms.
Cool thing on them no longer taking up bag space. Maybe I'll actually commit to collecting one.
Beerfest wolpertanger ftw!! rogues and druids and mages remember they'll follow you around even when you're in stealth so ganking someone or leaving them out in a bg or arena may not be the greatest idea.
Currently in the beta, every class has a pet tab on the Character sheet. By going into the pet tab, you see you can look at your pet, mount, or vanity pet. So when you get a mount, or a vanity pet, you right click the token, you do the learning animation exactly like learning how to make heavy silk bandages, and then it leaves your bag forever, going to the pet tab on your character sheet.
I like my little pet clockwork robot. He's the only pet I ever summon on a regular basis. Only reason I like him is because when you keep clicking on him, it'll get pissed. Reminded me of the SCV's from StarCraft
imo, pets are like WOOT thingies, you show them to your maties they go like: GZ!. End of story after 5 min... you unsommun it, carry it around in your bag for a while and finally conclude to put them on your bank. Unlike my main (rogue) who runs around in BG's with a mana wyrm (cewl :P) to toy around with ppl who can't see me and fail to AoE me... I mostly use Egbert in raids with my tankadin :) my conclusion: It has an entertainment function to make waiting for things less longer.
lol i love the frog i have on my mage. It hops (not a big deal) and it lashs out his tongue.(kind of funny to see) Making stupid macro like /lick /me passes out after licking Forst Frog. Some people get a kick out of it.
Its not really a pet...but I never raid without Archmage up on each boss pull....my Raid Leader hates it but when he goes...I manage to resummon him in between tanking rotations :P
Archmage brings luck! Maybe I should hand the quest in sometime? :D