The inimitable Matthew Rossi, our burly Shaman and Warrior expert, had his hands full with the overwhelming number of Warrior glyphs that popped up in the new Wrath Beta build. Since the few Shaman glyphs this build got me a little excited -- more than the yawn-inducing Paladin ones last week, anyway -- I thought I'd cover this one while Matt does the heavy lifting with the Warrior changes.

Glyph of Water Breathing
Your Water Breathing spell no longer requires a reagent.
An excellent glyph. I'm a huge fan of these no-reagent glyphs for obvious reasons. Although Shiny Fish Scales are abundant and cheap, they do take up bag space. What I like about these types of glyphs is that they'll literally pay for themselves over time because there's a direct cost. The best part of this? It now works exactly like the Warlock spell and can be used as an additional buff in PvP without worrying about running out of Shiny Fish Scales (e.g., it still consumes a reagent in Arenas).

Scattered Shots is for Hunters. Your host this week will be Daniel Whitcomb, who will continue his foray into the wide world of Wrath of the Lich King talents.

Beastmastery has pretty much dominated the world of Hunters in Burning Crusade, with Serpent's Swiftness alone nearly singlehandedly allowing for the most efficient damaging shot rotations possible -- With a little bit of wrangling between haste and ranged weapon speed, of course. While the changes to Auto Shot clipping in Wrath will likely make shot rotations as we know them a thing of the past, Beastmastery is still looking to be a very viable tree in Wrath of the Lich King, thanks to some clever synergies and some amazing pet buffs.

You may remember that we announced that a Brewfest Kodo was hidden in the WoTLK Alpha files some time ago. With patch 2.4.3, the Kodo did in fact get into this year's Brewfest. The Brewfest is currently open for testing on the PTR, and you can see the Kodos for yourselves - but only on the Horde side.

That's right. Blizzard has added the Kodo mount, but not in the way many of us had hoped. The Ram mount is now available for purchase only on the Alliance side, and the Kodo mount only on the Horde side. Kisirani has confirmed that this is intended. She says that they came to this decision only after much deliberation, but it's likely staying, although she'll listen to constructive criticism. As you can imagine, this has not been well received.

One of the biggest surprises Hunters found when they logged on after this morning's patch was that all was not as it was supposed to be. Although the tool tip for Scare Beast reads as instant cast, the old 1.5 second cast time is still intact. Netheara confirmed that the reversion of the cast time was, in fact, intentional. It was considered too strong and reverted, although the 30 yard range buff is still intact. The instant cast designation in the tool tip is an error that will be fixed.

Here's a nice little bit of news for all leveling Hunters, people looking into starting a hunter alt, or people looking to switch out or tweak out their current pet: the popular depository of all things Hunter pet related in WoW, Petopia, has gotten a facelift and a few handy new reference pages. The quick links and references seem to be a lot more streamlined now, and it should be even easier to find information. Some pages are still making the transition, and some of the pet pictures have not been updated to the new color scheme, but Mania assures us she is working on that.

In the meantime, she's also added a few new pages to the library, namely the Retired Pet page and the "Fake" Pet Skills page. The former deals with formerly tamable pets that can no longer be tamed, while the latter deals with pet skills that are present during the newbie hunter taming quests, but not on any permanently tamed pet.

I rather like both of the new pages. Not only should the information be helpful (if sad) to any newbie wondering where they can get that awesome ghost wolf, but the pages were a nice walk down memory lane for this old hunter. I remember when I made first Tauren Hunter, I was always disappointed that Swoop wasn't an actual bird pet skill, and I was considering a pet crab for my Dwarf Hunter at one point, and would have loved to have a thorny pet to add a bit more damage and threat power for tanking. Crabs could probably use some love anyway, as they seem to be competing with the likes of Sporebats and Bears for most neglected pet family.

But anyway, if you're a Hunter, and you haven't checked out Petopia in a while, it's worth a look, there's some pretty cool stuff going on over there.

From guild bank robberies to Italian painters recast as Tauren Druids, this week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.

Rumor: Blizzard working on a cell application for World of Warcraft?
Word at the Mobile Games Forum event last week is that Blizzard has plans for porting some part of WoW for cell phone use. Michael Zenke runs down the rumor.


How would a Starcraft MMO work?
Akela Talamasca explores how Blizzard could transform Starcraft into their next MMO using World of Warcraft as a model. Player vs Player vs Player anyone?


The Battle of San Romano ... FOR THE HORDE
Works of classical art updated for the digital age? Who knew a Late Gothic painter would be playing a Tauren Druid?

Episode 21 of our official podcast is now online and ready for your ears to take it all in. We finally lay to rest one of the biggest debates on the show-- yes, we finally pick an Alliance cry (and you can probably guess what it is). Also, we answers lots of viewer email, and:

• Talked about David's great post about the AV imbalance
• And the ghost wolf debacle
• Chatted about the unwritten rules of raiding and where they come from
• And we had two good conversations about overhealing and the coming gear reset in the next expansion

And we also declared war against Fandral Staghelm in Darnassus-- if you kill the guy (and you should), be sure to post your killshot over in the WoW Insider Show forums. When we get a bunch of them together, we'll roll them all up into a gallery on the site here.

If you've got feedback on the show, feel free to drop us an email at theshow@wowinsider.com. And don't forget that we do this every week-- we'll be back on the air this coming Saturday afternoon at 3:30pm EST. Mark your calendars and enjoy the show!

Episode 21 of the WoW Insider show is live tomorrow afternoon over on WoW Radio, starting right up at 3:30pm EST. And last week's episode was so much fun that we've got the exact same group back together-- John P, Turpster and I will cover everything that's happened in the last week of WoW, including AV imbalances, the QQing over the Ghost Wolves (and why Blizzard was wrong), hitting the gold limit, and when to (and when not to) overheal during raids.

Plus, we'll answer your emails and questions (theshow@wowinsider.com is the address, and we'll be in IRC as usual), and undoubtedly Turpster will have something funny and/or inappropriate to say. Definitely will be a good time-- if you're around tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm, log into WoW Radio and give us a listen. See you then.

Make no mistake about it-- Blizzard screwed up the issue of ghost wolf taming. A few months ago, when patch 2.3 was introduced with the new Dustwallow content, players found that by quickening Hunters' spellcast time, they were able to tame an animal that was never meant to be tamed-- the ghost wolves summoned by Grimtotem shamans there. Players thought it was awesome, and so did we. And despite the expectation that Blizzard would fix the problem and ruin our fun, we were surprised to hear that even though Blizzard admitted the taming was not intended, they would let it go. Those who wanted to put in the extra effort and cost to get a neat pet model would get one.

Cut to earlier this week, when Drysc posted exactly the opposite on the forums.

This isn't the first time Blizzard has flipped on players, and odds are that it won't be the last. They screwed this up, and players deserve to either keep having the ability to go out of their way to tame these wolves, or get a good reason why they shouldn't be able to.

It's not new that players all over the trade channel and forums have been threatening to quit WoW after every change, or lack thereof, that Blizzard makes. After the latest hunter pet hotfix, rendering the Grimtotem Spirit Guides untameable, the fur has been flying.

In fact, with this change, discontent is circling the blogosphere as well as the forums. John Patricelli of WoW Insider and Big Bear Butt Blogger,
has quite a bit to say about the nerf, and Time Well Wasted composed a very thorough write-up on the subject.

Would you ever quit WoW because of a decision made by Blizzard? What would it take to push you to this point? Many people leave the game due to relationships, time constraints, jobs, and finances, but how many of you know someone who has quit because Blizzard made a change?

Personally, I have all but given up on alts, or taken hiatuses from my main character, because of game aspects that were altered, or needed to be.

I sincerely doubt I would ever quit WoW entirely because of Blizzard's decisions, but this is being stated with a fair degree of trust that Blizzard would never deliberately, and for a prolonged period, render a class wholly unplayable. Where do you stand?

More specifically, will you quit over the loss of the wolf?

[Thanks Christopher!]

Gentlemen, start your whining: Hunters can no longer tame Grimtotem Spirit Guides, the ghostly looking wolves from Dustwallow Marsh. Drysc announced earlier today that this is an intentional change that was recently hot-fixed into the game. If you've already gone through the arduous process of obtaining the pet for yourself, you'll get to keep it, but they will be unavailable for taming from this point forward.

Of course this all comes as a big surprise since a Blizzard rep had previously said that this very change would not take place. While Drysc hints at some of the reasons for this change and mentions that it was a difficult decision to make, it's difficult for me to comprehend why these wolves will no longer be available. The process of taming them and then leveling them up to seventy was already difficult enough to make them a rare appearance on the servers I call home. Why would a difficult-to-obtain graphic novelty be removed from the game? It's not like they have any special traits or abilities that make the more powerful than other hunter pets.

I was sad to hear about this change, since I've been procrastinating on taming one of these wolves for my hunter alt. Maybe I'll go and tame that Ghost Saber I've been thinking about, just to be safe in case Blizzard decides to wipe out that other unique pet. What do you think about this? Does anyone think this is a good change?

When Patch 2.3 hit and Dustwallow Marsh got a make-over, Hunters were delighted to learn that the Ghost Wolves in that area were tamable. This was not Blizzard's intention, but they saw nothing wrong with letting it happen.

Many Hunter's flocked to the Marsh to get one of the coolest looking pets in the game. And now we learn, they look even cooler in combat. And hotter. And greener.

Mania's Arcania reports that the Ghost Wolf pet turns different colors while under different combat effects. In addition to the ones in the picture, the pet can also turn purple while under a Curse.

My guess is this is an unintentional side effect of the animal not having a solid texture skin over the 3-D model frame. All pets probably turn different colors while under various effects as part of the particle effects, but the solid skin over the model prevents us from seeing it like we do on the Ghost Wolf.

If Blizzard is really on the ball, they will create other semi-transparent mobs, pets and maybe a temporary shapeshifted form for players that takes advantage of this. They already do it with the Spectral Tiger Mount and the Shadow Priest form, why not on other models that would be affected by colorizing of buffs/debuffs? How fun would that be?

EDIT: Added in examples of current in-game semi-transparent models.

WoW Insider's Zach Yonzon joined Turpster and I on the podcast this past weekend, and boy did we have a good time. Zach actually woke up at 4:30 a.m. his time (he's in Manila) to join us, but we got a lot of good discussion in about Arena PvP, battlegrounds, and all the other news from the last week of WoW Insider:

• We chatted about Arena Smurfs, and I forced Zach and Turps to come up with ways to stop them.
• We talked about robbing the guild bank, and how you can get away with it.
• Alliance players: don't hate yourselves. Hate us Hordies.
• We asked if daily quests were bad for battlegrounds. (Short answer: no, but we need more of them).
• And finally, I asked Blizzard to keep the Ghost Wolf around, and sure enough, that's just what they did.

All in all, a superlative hour of podcast listening (except for my stupid mic clicking all the time-- sorry listeners, I swear that by the next time we go on, I'll have a brand new, completely silent mic), available right now over on WoW Radio. Check it out, won't you?

And while you're over there, be sure to listen to the rest of their great shows, too-- they are now broadcasting 24/7 on the front page, so if you've missed any of the shows in their archive, keep your speakers tuned to their page. And tune in next Saturday at 3:30pm for more WoW Insider show-- it's just like this great blog, only in audio form.

If you listened to our podcast on Saturday (which was heard on the new 24-hour WoW Radio), you heard us chatting about taming the Ghost Wolf, a neat little trick that Hunters (like our own Matthew Rossi's wife) have discovered to let them tame a very rare, very special pet. I personally made my opinion known on the show: that this was a great little reward for level 70 players willing to put the time and effort in to get the pet, and that Blizzard should definitely leave this as is, intended or not.

And now, the great Mania points us to this forum post by EU Blue Issuntril, who confirms that even though the taming wasn't actually intended, Blizzard doesn't have plans to address the issue-- Ghost Wolves are here to stay.

Great news for Hunters willing to go the extra mile for a cool pet (and for Hunters who have already done so-- would definitely be lame to log in after all of that work and find your spectral pet missing). Kudos to Blizz for letting the Ghost Wolves run free.