March 2012   « Archives | Current News »

Enjoy our monthly web comic created for WoW pet collectors! We feature a new World of Petcraft strip during the first week of each month.



About the Artist
Meaghan McLaughlin is an aspiring artist and the author of "Nerds Illustrated." She's currently available to create custom artwork of your WoW characters for a modest fee.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the information that was recently released about MoP? Curious about just the minipets and Pet Battles?

Well we've sifted through the walls of text and have all the pet-related news, just for you!

MoP Mini-Pet Updates

• There will be about 100 wild pets from all over Azeroth to collect!
• Account wide pets have been confirmed. All your characters will have access to all of your pets. This will cut down on switching between characters to level up a certain pet.
• The pet UI will be updated to show you a list of all the pets you currently have and the pets that you don't have. In the case of the companions that you're missing, it will show you where to find those pets.
• The pets that you own will have a corresponding "pet card" that will show all the information about said pet. Such information includes mini-pet health, level, attack, defense and movement speed values.
• You will be able to rename all of your companions.
• Developers are considering allowing players to grow their own mini-pets on personal farms within the Valley of the Four Winds. [source]

Pet Battles

• Each mini-pet will have 6 abilities that players can choose pre-battle. Much like player leveling, as your companion levels up it will unlock more abilities. Also like a player talent tree, you can only choose one ability per row of talents for your pet.
• Entering into a Pet Battle, you will see your opponent and the three pets you will be fighting against, but you will NOT see your opponent's name or be able to communicate with them.
• While in a Pet Battle, you will be able to switch between the three pets you've chosen to fight, and they will dutifully run up to your opponent's pet to attack it.
• Pets have four stats: health, attack, defense, and movement, which acts like an initiative roll, deciding who attacks first.
• Challenging another player in the open world will switch you into a unique zoomed in view. Once combat is over it will return you to a normal gameplay camera view.
• In addition to being able to queue into a queuing system and duel other players in the open world, there will be NPCs and critters that you can enter combat with to help level your mini-pets.
• Unlike PVP, your Pet Battles stats will only show you how many games you've won. Information on losses will not be available.
• Pet Battles using smartphone apps (World of Warcraft Remote) is something that Blizzard would like to implement someday.

There are still many questions left unanswered, such as will account wide pets allow access to cross faction companions? Is trading/selling leveled up BoP mini-pets still on the table for MoP? Information on how collecting a wild pet will work is still unknown as well.

We hope to bring you additional details about these topics, as well as further previews of Pet Battles in the near future, so stay tuned!

Raising Your Own Companion
There aren't many details about this possible feature, however developers are considering allowing players to "grow" their own companions on the personal farms a la FarmVille style.

"Among the possible things you can work your green thumbs on are herbalism nodes, cooking ingredients, gifts for different NPCs that’ll raise your reputation with their faction, and non-combat pets." [source]

Selling and Buying Minipets
While it wasn't mentioned or confirmed during the Mists of Pandaria Press Tour, according to Bashiok's recent blog post, trading and selling leveled up companions may still be a planned feature for the upcoming expansion.

"I wasn’t a very avid pet collector before, but after battling some of my friends (and seeing how much some of the trained pets sell for on the auction house) my interest has definitely skyrocketed." [source]

Bashiok also hints at a new faction currency, Craftsman tokens, that can be used to buy faction items such as toys and vanity pets.

So put your farm hats on and be ready to haggle out prices with the locals and fellow pet collectors alike!

The first of many waves of invites for the Mists of Pandaria Beta have been sent out. However, we'd like to remind everyone to be wary of phishing attempts on your account. Hackers are more prevalent than ever and phishing emails can look very close to the real thing.

Here are some important tips from Blizzard on how to safely check if you have been sent a legitimate MoP beta invite:

How will I know if I’m selected?
We [Blizzard] will send you an email letting you know when you’re selected, but please be aware of phishing attempts. Some unscrupulous individuals send out falsified emails purporting to be from Blizzard, but are in fact meant to steal your login credentials. For more information on how to identify these emails please refer to our Battle.net Security site. One easy way to ensure your invite is legit is to avoid clicking on links in any invite emails you receive, and instead log in to your Battle.net account and see if you have a Mists of Pandaria beta license attached. If there’s no license, you can be sure the email you received was not from Blizzard. [source]

Attach an Authenticator: Get a Core Hound Pup!
Don't forget that along with practicing safe web browsing you can also attach an authenticator to your WoW account for added protection. Attaching a mobile or physical authenticator to your account will also award you with an adorable Core Hound Pup! What better way to protect your account than with the help of a fiercely loyal core hound?

With the beta starting you can expect some new companion pet news coming soon. Feel free to follow @WarcraftPets on Twitter and check our Facebook page for periodic updates as well!

UPDATE: Two new BoP pets were datamined from the latest beta patch, a Sapphire Cub and Jade Owl. How they will be obtained is still unknown. [source]

Additionally, the Pet Journal is now available in the beta! We'll have additional news on this feature very soon. For now, read about the highlights in our forum:

• Preview of Pet Journal & Account Wide Collections
• Pets available according to the Pet Journal

Nearly a week has passed since the start of the Mists of Pandaria Beta. Pet Battles, collecting wild pets, account wide pets, pet renaming, and the ability to trade/sell BoP pets have not been fully implemented for testing yet.

However, we've found some awesome goodies during our initial run on the testing servers!

New Pets
The Darkmoon Rabbit is a new BoU pet of epic quality that was datamined the very first day of MoP beta. It's unknown how players will be able to obtain this companion, but there is an achievement (That Rabbit's Dynamite!) that requires players to "Slay the ferocious Darkmoon Rabbit". This achievement does not have any rewards attached to it at the moment, but we're not ruling it out as being tied to the pet in some way.

Other than the Darkmoon Rabbit, Wowhead found 5 more new potential companions hiding in the beta! So far these pets only have spell IDs. [source]

• Beaver Yearling
• Porcupette
• Raccoon Kit
• Tiny Water Strider
• Otter Pup

Wild Battle Pets
Another new feature is the ability to track wild pets on the minimap! All critters flagged as "Wild Battle Pets" will show up as orange bunnies on the minimap (pictured above).

We've started a long list of known Wild Battle Pets on our forums:

Wild Pets by Zone (Eastern Kingdoms) »

Many of the critters share similar models to existing companions, but there are a few new zone-specific ones such as the Tiny Bog Beast found in the Wetlands and the Tiny Harvester found in Westfall.

So far only the Eastern Kingdoms seem to have been populated with these critters, and we'll have to wait to see what types of pets Kalimdor will have to offer.

Along with being able to track them, a new cursor icon is displayed when hovering your mouse over the actual critter (video below). Rather than a sword icon, players will see a new crosshair. Players can still attack and kill these critters, however right and left clicking (with and without a companion pet out) while using the crosshair icon only yields an error message at the moment.



We assume that all of these Wild Battle Pets will be collectible after using companions to fight them. But we're not 100% sure since pet battling hasn't been implemented on the beta yet. We'll just have to wait and see!

Pet Classes and Battle Abilities
Pets will fall into one of 10 possible pet classes. Each pet class has its own strengths and weaknesses when up against certain other companion classes.

• Beasts (Beast attacks deal bonus damage to Critter companions and less damage to Humanoid and Flying companions.)
• Critters (Critter attacks deal bonus damage to Humanoid companions and less damage to Beast and Flying companions.)
• Dragons (Dragon attacks deal bonus damage to Flying companions and less damage to Water and Dragon companions.)
• Flying (Flying attacks deal bonus damage to Mythical companions and less damage to Dragon and Flying companions.)
• Mechanical (Mechanical attacks deal bonus damage to Humanoid companions and less damage to Mechanical and Water companions.)
• Mythical (Mystical attacks deal bonus damage to Dragons and less damage to Animal and Mechanical companions.)
• Water (Water attacks deal bonus damage to Mechanical and Dragon companions and less damage to Water and Humanoid companions.)
• Elemental (no info yet)
• Humanoid (no info yet)
• Undead (no info yet)

Although Pet Battles aren't ready for testing yet, Wowhead has organized a list of possible spells and abilities for each class of battle-ready companions.

Pet Battles Achievements Tab
Lastly, there is a new Pet Battles tab in the achievement window, but it currently does not have any specific achievements listed. We expect this tab will be populated with interesting and fun Pet Battle goals in a future beta build.

More to Come...
It's still very early in the testing phase and much of the new Pet Battle content is unavailable, so many things could change. We'll be keeping a close eye on the wild pets as well as the other anticipated features. Be sure to check back for more beta updates!

In the latest beta patch, Blizzard released an incomplete (yet mostly functional) Pet Journal and implemented account-wide pet collections. Along with these new features, many wild pets were added to Kalimdor and even a few new ones appeared in the Eastern Kingdoms.

Pet Journal Preview
The Pet Journal lists all available companions with the ones you currently do not own greyed out. Each pet has its very own viewable stats and abilities window, as well as a preview of what the companion model looks like.

You can utilize the Pet Journal for creating and previewing your team of three battle pets by dragging and dropping your desired companions into the three slots as seen in the video below.



In addition to being an integral part of Pet Battles, the Pet Journal is also used as a "stable" for all of your companions, and you can access your pets on all characters through the new journal.

Account-Wide Pet Collections
This feature is now available for testing. Here's what we've discovered about Account-Wide Collections so far:

• You can access all pets in your collection on any character, even those of the opposite faction. (This may or may not be intended.)
• At the moment, you can access all pets cross server too.
• Faction-specific pets do not automatically turn into the companion of the faction you're accessing it from. For example: An alliance balloon will not become a horde balloon. Instead you must collect and learn both to have both pets in your collection.
• Duplicate pets across multiple toons are merged into a single instance of the pet which is accessible through the Pet Journal. For example: If you have a Perky Pug on two characters, you will not have two Perky Pugs in your collection. Only one will be available in the journal.

Wild Pets List Updated
The list of all the Eastern Kingdoms Wild Pets and their locations have been updated on our forums. A Kalimdor Wild Pets thread is also growing in size as more pets are being discovered!

There are still some zones that haven't been populated with wild companions yet, but we expect those areas to be overflowing with critters in a future beta build.

Also, don't miss out on the gigantic list of all the possible pets listed in the Pet Journal on our forums! Keep in mind that many of these listed companions will probably not make it into the release of MoP as true vanity pets. We'll have to wait and see which ones make the cut and which ones will continue to be unavailable to players.

We'll keep these threads updated as changes are made to the Pet Journal and as more wild pets are added with each beta patch. Be sure to follow WarcraftPets on Twitter and Facebook for more frequent updates, screenshots and video as we continue combing the MoP beta for new pet goodies!