Project Lore

I have been obsessed with collecting non-combat pets recently. I've got quite a collection, and I'm hoping to round it out with more pets soon. Well, it sounds like we are going to have a new penguin friend very soon! Players who merge their WoW accounts with a Battle.net account will receive Oswald the penguin as a reward! This will come with the requirement to have a Battle.net account merged with your WoW account to play WoW, effective November 11. Note that these details are from the European WoW site and will almost certainly be applicable to US accounts as well. Battle.net is scheduled for a major revamp, and Blizzard seems to be preparing for that by getting their huge WoW player base onto the network. Soon, features like being able to friend accounts instead of just characters, account-wide achievements, and a single account for all Blizzard games will be reality. The ability to get the pet will likely be removed shorty after the mandatory merge date, as it seems to be an incentive to merge early to relieve stress on their servers on the cutoff date. Oswald used to be known as Mr. Chilly, which was a reward for Wrath beta players who merged their accounts to Battle.net accounts. He has not yet been obtainable on live servers, and it is unclear why he is now going by his first name. In addition, the existing penguin pet, Pengu, will have a slightly updated model that changes his red eyes to nice blue ones.

As well as Oswald, players will soon be mailed their Onyxia Whelplings for logging in on or around WoW's 5th anniversary on November 23. The EU WoW site's FAQ answers some questions on the details:

Q: What happens if I don’t merge my World of Warcraft account with a Battle.net account? A: After November 12, 2009, you won’t be able to log in to the game unless you merge your account with a Battle.net account. You will need to log in using your Battle.net account username (your email address) and password. Q: How can I obtain the penguin pet? A: Once you’ve successfully merged a World of Warcraft account with a Battle.net account, the penguin pet will be sent via in-game mail to all existing characters on the merged World of Warcraft account, along with all future characters on that World of Warcraft account. Players who merged previously will also receive the pet this way. Q: Do I need to merge by a certain date in order to receive the penguin? A: We plan to remove the ability to get the penguin pet at some point in the future, we haven’t determined exactly when just yet. Q: If I create a new World of Warcraft account, will I receive the pet? A: Only existing World of Warcraft accounts that merge with a Battle.net account are eligible to receive the penguin pet. If you create a new Battle.net account after November 11 and merge an existing World of Warcraft account with it you will still be able to receive the pet. However, please note that we plan to remove the ability to get the penguin pet at some point in the future.

Are you as pumped up as I am?

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They called us crazy, you and I! Those of us who paid a cool $40 just for the privilege to watch BlizzCon 2009 unfold live in front of our eyes, even as the leeches caught re-streamed feeds (of questionable quality) on other sites that shall not be named! Well, unable to attend the event myself, having such unbridled access to the proceedings from the comfort of my desk chair helped me bring the rest of you fine, up-to-the-minute coverage of all the news, but the promise of an exclusive in-game pet certainly didn't hurt. I initially lamented the regrettably long wait time (if I recall correctly, 6-8 weeks) between the event and the arrival of Grunty the Murloc Marine in my Inbox, but it ended up going by like a Summer breeze. It even arrived a little early, as it's actually only been a month since BlizzCon wrapped up. So if you purchased the live stream, either over the television through DIRECTV Pay-Per-View, or online through RayV, check your e-mail, as your activation code should be there by now. All you have to do is take that code and head on over to http://www.blizzcon.com/pet, click on the button, and type or copy and paste it into the dialog box. Keep in mind that a Battle.net ID is required to complete the transaction, so if you haven't linked your World of Warcraft account yet, you're going to have to do that first before you claim your prize. After that, log into the game and you should have an in-game mail from Master Handler Sylvester (an NPC who sends out all of the limited edition pets) which includes a Heavy Murloc Egg. Using the egg will add Grunty the Murloc Marine to your list of pets and will provide you with the Feat of Strength [The Marine Marine], as well! Grunty will leap from side to side with his gun at the ready, ever vigilant of impending Zerg invasions, and occasionally fire his rifle. Find a friend with a Zergling pet for even more fun!

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As you may have read, one of the new pets slated to be included with patch 3.2.2 is the Pandaren Monk. This miniature kung-fu fighter remains the only in-game implementation of the ursine race. Though they once held an ancient empire in the center of Kalimdor, the Pandaren race have since hidden themselves away in the uncharted regions of Azeroth. Will they one day return en masse? My guess is only when their home is threatened by some massive, outside force. But despite their isolationist tendencies, some Pandaren evidently find their way to the main continents, not entirely unlike Twoflower on vacation. The only thing I know for sure is that I wish Blizzard would stop teasing us about it! More data-mining goodness from over at MMO-Champion has revealed the Monk's intricate martial artistry, and it is only making the wait even harder:

I have to admit that I'm really loving the animations here, and I hope its a preview of things to come way down the road. Not including Pandaren at this point is like not including the Cow Level in Diablo II, it would just be cruel not to! Besides, next to stealthy-roguey-assassination types, my favorite kind of class to play is a hand-to-hand fighter, and that's something that World of Warcraft is sorely lacking at this point.

If you're wondering how you can get your mitts on this pint-sized pugilist, well, we still don't know just yet. There's no specific indication as to where the Monk might drop, and it doesn't appear to be one of the trading card game's new loot cards, either. We here at Project Lore will let you know when we hear something about it. Here's to hoping that it's not a region-specific gift!

Obviously, we're pretty excited about the Pandaren Monk, but what about the rest of you? Knowing how cool the animations are and how rare it will likely be, no doubt this will be one of the most sought-after pets in the game! Is it worth going out of your way to get one for yourself?

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Blue Stew is a new daily column bringing you a delicious concoction of developer news, thoughts, and opinions straight from the boiling pot that is the official World of Warcraft forums. The highlights of each day include additional commentary by Project Lore staff. It's Day 4, and somehow I'm still truckin'. All of this info-gathering business can really take it out of a guy, but I've still got some juicy tidbits for my loyal readers! Without a doubt, the biggest piece of Official World of Warcraft Forum-related news today is the opening of the Cataclysm section. There's not much to be found there yet, but it's sure to be the place to go for developer thoughts on the next expansion in the near future. I think I'm going to shake up the format a little bit today, if that's alright with you folks. Don't worry, I'll keep all the commentary and silly non-sequiturs intact. I just think it might be a tad more readable if I stay away from the bullet points. Paragraph breaks are a good thing, trust me! Guild Advancement Suggestion Quintas wants a Ferrari that brews coffee for you and irons your clothes on the way to work. Outside of some Xzibit-brand charity, she's going to have a hard time making that happen (and she'd probably have to actually own one of those zippy, Italian roadsters in the first place). Likewise, she wonders why we can't have our own Guild Houses that do everything for us, defeating the need to ever visit the outside world again! As WoW players, don't we already have that problem? Amongst her proposed "enhancements" is an Artisan system that attracts specialist NPCs to your guild, supplying them with unique patterns and schematics. Yo, yo, yo! It's yo' boy, Xzibit, here teamin' up with West Fall Customs to bring you the tightest rides this side of the Thandol Span! Like most "good ideas," though, it quickly spirals out of control, and soon enough you're running back and forth around the world collecting materials, doing dailies, and trying your best to woo this demanding NPC for what amounts to very little in return. I'm sure Blizzard isn't short on good ideas, it's more a matter of whether or not they're worth executing, something that I think Qunitas forgot to consider while in the midst of her illustrious proposal. I highlighted this post to once again address the issue of Guild Housing: it's just too much of a hassle. If you ask me, Blizzard's got the right idea. They're implementing most of the features people have always asked for, but they're doing it through the UI, instead of spending resources on constructing virtual domiciles. Think of it this way: why go through the trouble of having to meet up in a Guild Hall every time you want to do something when all of your normal business can be conducted through Guild Chat? Player housing is great when you can implement it from the ground up, and when you have the opportunity to incorporate it into PvP play (sacking fortresses and whatnot), but it's not worth shoe-horning into the game for purely cosmetic purposes. Will we ever see it in WoW? Maybe. Blizzard always used to rebuff the idea of changing Azeroth and, well, look where we are now. I just wouldn't expect it anytime soon when there are clearly so many more interesting things for the development team to work on. My Tiny Crimson Whelp Story Judging by the thread title, Velliana either writes articles for Highlights or has seen one too many episodes of  Taxicab Confessions. I'm not sure what a "Tiny Crimson Whelp" might entail in the world of prostitution, but I bet  you could find out for a couple Benjamins. The (admittedly short) story details her jaunt into Grim Batol, and the epic, emotional struggle she underwent wondering whether or not it would be worth killing a whelp for the mere chance of a drop! You'll have to click through to the thread for the shocking conclusion! What I found most interesting about this post is that it attracted more attention from the Community Management team than even the worst nerf complaint thread. Not one, not two, but three chose to respond, each detailing their own attempts at collecting all of Azeroth's tiny whelps. Thundgot had an especially tough time. It took him over an estimated 5000 kills to lock down all four. Thankfully, he made some extra gold along the way, but it just goes to show you that even Blizzard employees don't get everything handed to them on a silver platter. I don't have any of the whelps myself (I've barely even tried), but how about the rest of you? Were you as lucky as Miss Velliana here or was it a much more laborious and frustrating experience? Elitist Jerks Closes Thread on Unholy DK Ghostcrawler's been on the warpath today, dealing primarily with massive amounts of Hunter QQ. But that's not all! The Death Knights are itching to have their say, too. Now, I'm always a little wary of people who obsess over min-maxing their characters, but I can't deny that Elitist Jerks is one of the best sites to look at if you really want to understand how to play your class (that is, if you can sort through the long threads and gobs of esoteric information). Why Skaven is whining to Blizzard about something someone else decided to do on another forum, I don't know, but he sure is upset about them closing one of his favorite threads. GC reminds us of why he likes Elitist Jerks so much. They conduct the kinds of conversations he likes to see: "One of the things I personally appreciate about the EJ forums is they tend to focus on what is, not in their opinions on what should be. That tends to lead to discussions based on facts and not opinions. Their Unholy DK threads focus on how to maximize dps as Unholy not on petitioning Blizzard to buff Scourge Strike." The way I understand Skaven's complaint is that changes made to Unholy spec now favor one skill over another similar skill. Now we all know that sometimes even small modifications to a class can have a greater impact on the way they work in practice. But, as Ghostcrawler points out, he and so many others, like to complain because their class no longer fits the idea of what they think it should be. In other words, he's freaking out over having to re-learn the ins-and-outs of his Unholy Death Knight, even when the change itself is miniscule. This may seem like pointing out the obvious, but it's clear that there are many people out there who have yet to learn that crying on the forums isn't going to help or change anything. I think that about wraps it up for this edition. Please chime in with your thoughts on all of these topics below, and let me know if you prefer this format over the other one!

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UPDATE 7/7/09 Wow, I figured this would be fixed, but I didn't think it would come quite this quick. Mania's Arcade now is reporting that the Worgen can no longer be tamed, and those that already have been tamed are somewhat useless. It was a good show while it lasted! Earlier: This past weekend was a great one for hunters everywhere as word spread about a newly discovered way to tame a Worgen - WoW's version of a werewolf-like, badass humanoid creature. It turns out that with just the right timing (described in detail at Mania's Arcade) you can tame Garwal, an NPC in northern Howling Fjord who gives out the quest Alpha Worg (in both Horde and Alliance versions). He has both a worg (beast) and a worgen form, and you have to tame him at just the right time to make sure you get to keep him as a worgen. And once you've gone through the trials of claiming the worgen pet, you then have to be careful in order to keep him. You shouldn't, for example, risk certain activities like bringing him out in an arena, lest risk his return to worg form. Now the big question - will Blizzard allow this game exploit/bug/awesomeness to stay in the game? All this excitement over an unexpected new pet reminds me of a similar situation with the Ancient Grimtotem Spirit Guide, who once upon a time in late 2007 / early 2008 was tameable. Similar to this time around, there was a ton of activity on the official hunter forums about the new addition to the pet kingdom. First, a blue poster for WoW Europe said the bug would not be removed. A couple weeks later, a separate post on the US forums informed us that the ability had been removed through a hotfix. With this in mind, it seems unlikely that the worgen will remain as a pet, now matter how many petitions you sign. In fact, I'd say that all the attention the topic is receiving through blogs and the forums may just hasten Blizzard's response. But, there is some good news. If you're able to claim him quickly enough, I would say that chances are good you'll get to keep him. Any non-hunters who are trying to complete the Alpha Worg quest in the meantime may just have to put up with some serious competition! Also something to keep in mind - not everyone is happy with being able to tame a worgen. But I'm keeping my positive stance until I hear a good reason beyond jealously because you've already turned in that quest and can't go back to redo it (Yeah, I know it sucks. But at least some people can partake in the fun - I'm all for that). I've had  a great time sorting through the dozens of threads that have spawned up as a result of the whole situation. Everything from what to name your new pet worgen (my fave submissions - ManBearPig, Sirius, GonnaGetDeleted) to what other creatures players wish they could tame (griffons and zhevras are high on my list). It also makes me want to log on to my lowly level 19 hunter in the Project Lore fan guild and start pumping her up. It's a race against the clock! So what does everyone else think of this recently discovered game mechanic? Have any of you hunters gone out and tamed a worgen yet, or have most of you already completed that quest? For those of you who have successfully tamed the worgen, are you hopeful that you'll be able to keep him?

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Up until the past couple of months, I always stuck with Horde characters. Sure, I've tried out Alliance here and there, but never found them quite as intriguing. I'm sure the fact that my RL friends I play with are all Horde also plays a role. But now that I've been true to the Horde since the WotLK release, I decided to try out an Ally once again. And the fact that I wanted to roll a character on the Executus server so I could play in the Alliance Project Lore fan guild gave me a good push. I know my way around gameplay pretty well, and I expected a refreshing change of pace when I rolled a draenei hunter. But as I've been leveling with her, I've been surprised by how much it has changed my perception of the game by adding to it. Obviously, Alliance is a new faction, and draenei a new race for me. And therefore, it's a new starting area to learn my way around. Pixie is my first hunter character (but thankfully I have a little guidance on how not to be a huntard). I've tamed my first combat pet, Artemis, and started training fishing and cooking for the first time to support his dietary needs. I picked up a couple of professions I've never leveled before - herbalism and alchemy -  just to keep the excitement going. And the friendly group of players in the guild that I'm new to have done a good job of making me feel welcome. So how has all this affected gameplay? Well, there have been a couple of funny moments. Like the first few times I came back from questing and initially thought it was weird that I was walking into a group of Draenei and not getting attacked. Then, realizing I'm one of them now. Also, the first couple of quests to kill Bloodelf spies or other Hordies tore at my heart a little. My Locomomo started out just like them! And now that I've pointed out differences in how we speak in vent, I owe my guildies some props. I've gotten a lot of help learning my way around the Alliance areas that up until now, I've only ever heard of and never fully experienced. And, I learned how to cluck at a chicken until it laid an egg that I now have for a pet. That confirmed my suspicions that indeed each faction has a few surprises up their sleeves. So all this new stuff makes it almost like I'm playing for the first time again. But at least I know the basics and lingo to help get me through. And it's making clear to me just how wide the world of warcraft can be, if you choose to utilize all it has to offer. One aspect that I'm looking forward to seeing in action will come once I leave the starting area. This is my first time on a PvP server. Have mercy! Has anyone else had a similar experience when starting up a new character?  And how long did it take you to get into the groove and past the feelings of awe that come along with the unknown?

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While looking for more information about the new Mountain Dew/WoW cross over promotion, I came across their forums and found this post by the Gamefuel Admin. Turns out the pet is simply a prize to anyone who registers on the GameFuel site who has a Blizzard Account. While there's still no official word that the battle bots are the prize, it's pretty much been assumed by everyone to be the case. So if all you want is a new pet and you don't want to have to participate in the drawings, don't want to have to click on different ads, don't want to have to do your IRL dailies, you don't have to. Just head over to the Mountain Dew GameFuel site, register, and (somehow) you'll eventually get your pet. Might as well enter for some of the cool stuff they have to offer with the points you get for signing up, though. A new Alienware laptop sounds pretty good to me!

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The Folks over at MMO-Champion have once again dug through the latest game files and found new stuff for everyone to drool over. Grunty the Murloc Marine is just that, and if they're following their trend from the past few events (a murloc pet, murloc costume, and mount with a murloc doll), the murloc space marine might just be the in-game item from 2009's BlizzCon. Considering Starcraft 2's public beta is on the verge of coming out, it fits quite perfectly. The pet itself has an awesome gun and an animation of shooting the gun, which you can see above. Check it out or head to MMO-Champion for high res screenshots!

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When a hunter happens upon a Spirit Beast in Sholazar Basin, the reaction is usually sublime and controlled; decorum is maintained at all times. Like this: "WWAAAAAAAHHHH IT'S MY SPIRIT BEEEEEEEEAST!!!" And then they gather their composure... and spittle-shriek again. Of course, this usually only happens once in a hunter's life as the Spirit Beast in Sholazar Basin is extremely elusive. Well guess what we did today: "WWAAAAAAAHHHH IT'S MY NEW SPIRIT BEEEEEEEEAST!!!" Blizzard has come through with a little-mentioned rumor, that a new Spirit Beast would be introduced. Now, in the latest version of the PTR, this rumor is a reality. Gondria has arrived.

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Dual Spec is one of the most highly anticipated features of patch 3.1, and that's what we'll be hilighting in this video. There are currently a couple of bugs involving hunter pets as they relate to Dual Spec, but keep in mind that this is the PTR, so things will likely change before they go live.

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