Now that the insane launch of "Cataclysm" is behind us, we can start to kick back and enjoy the new lands stretching out across Azeroth. While killing monsters and forming raids is a common way to while away the hours in "World of WarCraft," many players opt for more peaceful pastimes. For example, they collect non-combat pets. Even though these pets are little more than window dressing for your character, people are obsessed with discovering rare ones. Blizzard has also taken to giving pets as door prizes for BlizzCon attendees and packing them into special editions of their games.
Which leads me to an important question: Where do "World of WarCraft" pets come from? Cory Stockton, the lead content designer on the game, was more than happy to enlighten me on the process of how a pet is added to "WoW."
The origins of most of the pets in "WoW" are simple enough, as they are just modified versions of models already in the game. For example, Stockton worked a lot on Tol Barad, a PvP raid zone in "Cataclysm." The zone happens to have a dock where there are a bunch of Tauren fishing and Stockton wanted a seagull hanging around the dock to act as window dressing:
"We requested a seagull from the character art team and my seagull came in. I got some basic animations on it. Like it being perched, it flying around in circles. I thought the seagull looked really great, so I wanted to make a pet out of it. At that point I just requested a couple extra fun animations, so we have an animation of the seagull flying in a loop and we have an animation of it pecking around in the ground...it ended up looking so cool, once we got it from the character team."
Stockton went on to explain that most of the pets tend to come as an after-thought, but in a good way. "A lot of times, an asset will come in and we won't even know that we're going to make a pet out of it. But when it gets in a designers hands, things like that can end up becoming much more than we originally envisioned."
Cory's seagull is currently a faction reward for boosting reputation in Tol Barad.
But a seagull is a pretty straight-forward pet. What about some of the more exotic ones, like Mini Tyrael or Mini Thor? I was curious if there was a limit to what Blizzard was willing to put in when it comes to pets that fit universe of "WoW."
"I wouldn't say we can do anything. You'd be seeing a lot more stuff if that were the case. We want the pets to feel like they at least came from the universe. Even the pets you see that are sold on the Blizzard pet store, they come from the Blizzard universe, so they make sense. We definitely don't want to put something in the game that's so out of context that when you see it, it pulls you out of the world that you're in.
So basically anything in the Blizzard universe is fair game. Seems to me like there's one Blizzard franchise just crying out for some pet attention, so I asked Cory how likely it would be to see tiny Lost Vikings following Orcish shaman into battle. He definitely didn't rule out the possibility: "We've got to keep some pets [for later]! 'WoW''s got a long time to go."