December 2011   « Archives | Current News »

If you've been following us on Twitter and Facebook, you've already heard that this is a BIG weekend for WarcraftPets!

Beginning late Saturday morning (EST) on December 3rd, we'll be taking the site offline for some major updates. We expect the downtime to last between four and six hours. When the site comes back up around 6pm on Saturday, check out this news page to discover what new features and site improvements have arrived. I guarantee, you won't be disappointed!

We've already confirmed many of the new pets that were released with 4.3, but Blizzard has announced three more upcoming pets in their official guide to the 4.3 pets and mounts page! [source]

• Lump of Coal - Reward from Stolen Present during Winter Veil
• Lunar Lantern (Alliance) - Sold by Valadar Starsong for 50 Coins of Ancestry during Lunar Festival
• Festival Lantern (Horde) - Sold by Valadar Starsong for 50 Coins of Ancestry during Lunar Festival

Both the lantern companions are Bind on Use, so with the help of the Neutral Auction House, it's likely that a single character will be able to acquire and learn both pets regardless of their faction.

The Stolen Present is a reward from the new level 80 Feast of Winter Veil daily quest, You're a Mean One... This may indicate that Lumpy will not have a 100% droprate from the Stolen Present, but players will be able to try their luck once per day during the Feast of Winter Veil. The Feast of Winter Veil is coming up soon, so we won't have to wait too long to find out!

Unmentioned Pets
There are a few pets that were not mentioned on the official Blizzard guide on Patch 4.3 companions. These pets include:

• Gregarious Grell - Common loot card from the upcoming TCG expansion deck, Crown of Heaven
• Sand Scarab - Common loot card from the upcoming TCG expansion deck, Tomb of the Forgotten
• Sea Pony - Fished up from the coasts of the Darkmoon Island during the Darkmoon Faire monthly event
• Soul of the Aspects - Unknown

Both the TCG vanity pets were discovered as redeemable options from Landro Longshot on the 4.3 PTR, and the Sea Pony was a confirmed fishing companion on the PTR as well. Keep in mind that while these pets were datamined and confirmed on the PTR, there is no guarantee that they will be available.

The source of the Soul of the Aspects is still a mystery. For now, we will have to wait to find out more about this mystical pet. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for news about it!

We promised you a whole new WarcraftPets. Yet it looks the same. Nothing’s changed, right? Wrong!

New Back-End
WarcraftPets has been rebuilt from the ground up – an entirely new back-end: 17,312 lines of PHP and 22,988 lines of HTML!

Everything has been rewritten with two goals in mind: performance and speed. WarcraftPets should now respond to traffic spikes with ease. Major slow downs should be a thing of the past. Additionally, we have a more scalable foundation upon which to expand and improve the site.

Speaking of improvements...

Improved Collection Tracking
You can now track all of your characters on a single WarcraftPets account! Even better, we're introducing an Armory Import feature that will import your pet collection directly from the WoW Armory in a single click. Whenever it's time to update your collection after getting a new pet or two, you can easily reimport it from the Armory. Or, you can continue using our manual update to check off pets one by one. The choice is yours.

Merge Multiple WarcraftPets Accounts
If you're one of the many people who have created multiple accounts on our site to track each of your character's collections, we've got you covered. You can merge each of your secondary accounts into your main. Simply log into your secondary account and scroll to the bottom of the Account Management page. There you'll find an option to merge that account into your primary account.

NOTE: Merging is only available to accounts that list only ONE character. Once you add a second character to your account, you will be unable to merge it into another WarcraftPets account.

Collection Comparison Tool
If you've been looking for a way to easily compare your pet collection with other collectors, you got it! Now you can Compare Collections between any two WarcraftPets members or even between individual characters!

We've added a shortcut icon [] to allow you to easily compare your collection to other members of the site while you browse. You'll see this icon in member lists and beneath comments.

Liking what you see so far? It gets even better!

Forums – Yes, Forums!
For years people have been requesting forums on WarcraftPets. Thanks to our architectural updates, Forums are finally possible. We've got forums for:

• Pet Collecting - Share pet collecting news and advice.
• Pet Trading - Organize pet trades and sales with other collectors.
• Pet Battles - Discuss pet battles, strategy and theorycrafting.

Note that you'll need to be logged into your WarcraftPets account to post.

But Wait... There's More!
Thanks to your support as the BEST fansite community in the WoW universe, we've got even more goodies for you!

• Pet Filter Updates - Add any number of filters. Exclude certain pets while including others. A streamlined UI makes it easier than ever before!
• Pet Interactivity - We've added all interactions to each pet's profile. Now you can easily see which pet interacts with which other pets, critters and characters! Here's a complete list.
• Unlisted Pets - For your added convenience, we're now maintaining a list of all recently datamined pets covered in our news section that have not yet been added to our database.
• Worldwide Realm Support - You can now add characters on any realm to your WarcraftPets account, including realms on Asian servers.

Got Bugs?
We've done extensive testing, but anytime a website of this scope undergoes so many changes, some bugs are bound to slip through the cracks. If you notice any bugs or odd behavior, please contact us to report it.

A Very Special Thanks
None of these upgrades and features would've possible without the work of two programming geniuses. As the owner of WarcraftPets, I'd like to extend my sincerest thanks to them, and I encourage our community to do the same.

Weena, our Lead Developer - You've spent countless hours reprogramming the site and creating many of the new features which are destined to become WarcraftPets staples. You've tweaked page upon page to match my exacting designs. Our community owes you an enormous debt of gratitude.

Cal Henderson (a.k.a. Bees) - You wrote the book on building scalable websites (quite literally). Without your exceptional guidance and support, we wouldn't have gotten very far. Thanks again!

Dive Right In!
As you can see, there are tons of new upgrades and features. So dive right in! Enjoy the armory import, multi-character tracking, collection comparison tool, and everything else mentioned above! We'll see you in the forums!

For a limited time, the Pandaren Monk is on sale from the Blizzard PetStore (applies to the North American store only).

This martial arts wielding companion is half-price: $5 USD, down from $10! The sale only lasts until December 19, 2011, so don't delay if you're considering picking up one as a gift for a friend or family member for the holidays!

UPDATE: A fix should be in place soon. For more information, see this post on our forums.

There were many upgrades made to WarcraftPets recently, and we hope all of our users are utilizing and enjoying them thoroughly! There have been a few snags, but our awesome lead developer, Weena, is working diligently on sorting them out.

Armory Import Feature
We're aware that the Armory Import feature is currently not working as intended, and many users are receiving errors when attempting to use this new feature. The problem relates to the limited number of requests to Blizzard's API, but we are working on implementing a permanent solution. We hope to have it finished by the end of this weekend.

In the meantime, we recommend updating your WarcraftPets collection manually or by using our WarcraftPets Express addon. We're sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience and understanding!

Enjoy our monthly web comic created for WoW pet collectors! We feature a new World of Petcraft strip on the first Sunday 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.

The Feast of Winter Veil is here! Once again, it's time to gorge yourself on Gingerbread cookies and fight the Greench. It's also time to collect some seasonal pets!

This year, there's an all-new Winter Veil daily quest, You're a Mean One.... The reward is a Stolen Present which has a chance to drop a new pet: Lumpy! But here's another treat: we've heard reports that the Stolen Present also drops the original 2007 Clockwork Rocket Bot pet! This gives many newer players who missed the 2007 event a chance to finally get this vintage robot companion. Note that it is still Bind on Pick Up, and much like Lumpy, it does not have a 100% droprate from the Stolen Present.

So put on your snow collecting boots and go out there and get some pets!

As many of you know, we recently made some major upgrades to WarcraftPets. One of the biggest changes was the ability to track collections for all of your characters on a single account. This in turn lead to changes to the way the Top 50 Collections lists were calculated.

• The Top 50 (Single-Character) list compares all characters in our database and pulls up the 50 with the most pets.
• The Top 50 (Account-Wide) list compares all the members of our site that have more than one character listed, pulling up the accounts with the highest pet total across all characters.

Under our old system, members who appeared on one list would not appear on the other. But our new system allowed for many members to be included on both lists.

For example, if Matt was at the top of the single-character list with 200 pets on his "Conan" character, he would also appear at the top of the account-wide list simply because he had additional characters listed on his account. So while accurate, this account-wide top 50 list didn't really give anyone else a chance in the spotlight, as it was originally intended to do.

Bottom Line:
To be more equitable, we made an additional change to the account-wide list. Now members who appear on the top 50 single-character list will NOT be repeated on the account-wide list. This will give more collectors an opportunity to shine.

Warmest Wishes from all of us at WarcraftPets! Have a wonderful and safe holiday as well as a fun-filled Feast of Winter Veil!



Tis' the Season
Don't forget to check under the holiday tree located in Ironforge and Orgrimmar starting on December 25^th. Unwrap the gifts and you may find neat toys, holiday items and food, and several festive pets. Remember that the companions found under the tree are Bind on Use, so should the presents fail to yield a specific Winter Veil mini-pet you desire, be sure to check out the Auction House!

Thank you for continuing to support WarcraftPets. It has been an honor to serve the pet-collecting community this past year, and we hope to continue bringing you exciting companion news throughout 2012 as well! We wish everyone a prosperous and pet-filled New Year.