Project Lore

Tyrael's Normal, Boring, Pose I was absolutely ecstatic when it came to light that Grunty, BlizzCon 2009's exclusive pet, and the Zergling, one of the possible three pets from the World of Warcraft Collector's Edition, tangled.  Much to my surprise, both of the pets mixed it up StarCraft style, not just Grunty.  That means that someone, somewhere, deep in the bowels of Blizzard took the time to go back and edit the Zergling's properties to attack his foe.  Yep, the doggie actually attacks, and kills Grunty in a messy death animation if he gets the better of the space marine.  It's an incredibly minor, but brilliant bit of content. The intergalactic tango only whet my appetite for further (no longer) non-combat pet interactions.  My prayers, and previous complaints have been answered, kinda.  Tyrael, the archangel from the Worldwide Invitational in 2008 is getting some added interactions.  Tyrael will now increase his repertoire two fold, adding the ability to fall asleep (and be stirred awake) to his list of skills.  The little guy is a very light sleeper, constantly rolling over and fidgeting during his Zzz's.  Previously the tiny angel would only fold his arms and dance.  Okay, still not that impressive, but at least it sucks less.  Plus, there could be more animations that just haven't been discovered yet. If you want to see the new animations you can head over to this post, which tipped me off in the first place.  Although his animations remain on the low side - and lack any sort of sound - at least Blizzard has shown they are willing to edit old pets, again.  Now if only those few Tyrael holders could meet up with those few mini Diablo holders - also from the original Collector's Edition - then we may be in for some more cross-title mayhem. Have I told you that I love vanity pets?

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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?

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