I received a letter from DirecTV the other day. Enclosed in the envelop was something I had been waiting for. A card.
BlizzCon Exclusive Gift
The Grunty the Murloc Marine loot card from BlizzCon, a reward for subscribing to watch the event on pay per view.
The card is… well… just that, a card, rather like a gift card, with instructions on the back on how to redeem it for the in-game pet.
Instructions
I suppose I could have paid for the pay per view event by just listing the card up on eBay. They seem to be going for about that much or more. But I wanted the companion pet, so I scratched off the backing and entered the code.
Grunty Redeemed
I had to do that quietly, because if my daughter had known what I had before I redeemed it, I would have been faced with an unbearable amount of pouting and pleading. Fortunately for me, Mr. Chilly showed up the same day so I was able to distract her with that. Well, that and some talk about the upcoming WoW 5 Year anniversary pet, the Onyxia whelpling.
Once redeemed, an in-game mail was waiting for me and all of my current characters.
There was even an achievement (a feat of strength) for geapping the attachment that came with the note.
It took me a moment to decipher what the achievement’s name meant.
And so now I can have Grunty the Murloc Space Marine follow me around if I like. He is fine around town, though I could not recommend him if you are attmempting to be discreet. Every so often he unload the magazine of his rifle into the air.
Grunty Unloads!
The sound can be startling, as it is a bit loud.
He will also pop a smoke flare every once in a while, which will draw attention. That is fine if you are marking an LZ, but not so good if you were trying to hide.
I hear he will also open fire on the zergling companion pet that came as an option with the original World of Warcraft Collector’s Edition. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to see that, as I hear most people took the panda or mini Diablo.
So one more pet on the pile for me. I still need a few more for the 50 pets achievement. And, of course, what does Blizzard give you if you collect 50 pets? Why, another pet!
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
I am jealous. I desperately want grunty, but not enough to like pay anything for him ya know?
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The CE pets are bind on account now, so I have all 3 now, not just one.
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Nice. I’m jealous. I’m up to 27 pets and I see the path starting to fade around 35 or so. I could use a couple of these specialty pets.
Now get to work on the Hallow’s End achievements. I knocked out 8 of ’em tonight. :-)
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Great Pet! Jealous I am indeed.
As Rave pointed out they changed up the Collector’s Edition pets awhile back. Now you can create a new alt, select the pet, and then mail it to all your other characters since they are Bind on Account now. Doing this you can get all three CE Pets: Panda Cub, Zergling & my personal favorite Mini Diablo.
Cheers!
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GZ! Got mine a few weeks ago, still gives me a heart attack with his shooting…
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I’m am extremely jealous. Great pet.
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Even though it totally destroys the little immersion that WoW has to offer, I find myself really really wanting one :)
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I think the giant name tag over your head might do a little more to give you away then the pet firing a gun when you try to hide :)
Gonna have to see if youtube has a video of the interaction between this pet and the zergling, that might be interesting. He should shoot at the space goats too, just because.
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Im sorry but thats crap.
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@Syncaine – You might think that, but the gun sound is loud and, frankly, out of place. It attracts attention. (Which, I guess is the point of a vanity pet.)
And the column of smoke when he pops a smoke grenade makes your “giant” (giant relative to what?) name tag seem trivial.
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Wait so others can hear the gun sound made by the pet, and see the smoke? How has no one griefed the Dalaran AH by getting a bunch of these things to stand around 24/7? Noise + smoke is just asking for it.
(You can’t ‘hide’ in WoW anyway, which is why nametags in a PvP MMO are silly. It’s not a huge issue in WoW outside of battlegrounds, but it made hiding impossible in WAR and I imagine Aion)
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Syncaine: You can’t ‘hide’ in WoW anyway,
Of course you can. I do it all the time in Wintergrasp, and I did it quite effectively in WAR as well. Name tags make it more difficult, but you cannot, for example, see a name tag through a building or a hill or a tree or quite a few other things.
And hiding isn’t the same as being invisible. Merely being where somebody doesn’t expect you to be, off in their peripheral vision waiting for them to get engaged with something before you swoop in, is remarkably effective.
“How has no one griefed the Dalaran AH by getting a bunch of these things to stand around 24/7”
They are reasonably rare. I have yet to see one other than my own.
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I never had much trouble hiding, either in WoW or WAR. My problem was doing anything effective once I came out of hiding. Still is, actually…
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I remember seeing the mini Diablo and the Zergling back in Vanilla WoW. I can’t say I ever saw the Panda.
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Hiding behind a tree depends on your guild tag, right? If you are in SUPER LONG GUILD NAME OF AWESOME GUILD, then no, that tree won’t hide you :)
But yea, I get your point. I just find it silly in a game like WAR that they have name tags enabled at all times, it’s such a simple change to remove them in RvR, and really allow people to hide behind small things like logs or rocks. It’s one of the things that makes DarkFall ‘stealth’ work so well without the need of a ‘you can’t see me poof’ skill, and it was one of the things that really bothered me in WAR. With all tags on at all times, it’s just another (albeit small) thing that encourages zerging and just plowing ahead recklessly.
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And actually, tab-targetting also makes hiding somewhat pointless. Even if I can’t see you behind that house or tree, my tab-target will find you and put a nice circle around you, not to mention in many cases my ranged attack will fly straight through a rock or tree and still hit you (WAR is better about this, but still wonky at times). None of this matters in PvE of course, the mobs never cry foul, but given WAR’s supposed RvR focus, that’s the kind of stuff that separates AV and Mythic when it comes to PvP combat systems.
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I played with tab-targeting in WoW this weekend and it isn’t as all-knowing as you make it out to be. Through a set of Wintergrasp battles I found that while I could tab-target people who were not line of sight but that I could still actually see, I could never tab target people who were behind an object that obstructed my view of them. So, again, hiding works if you are, in fact, hidden.
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