Wednesday, June 5, 2013

ArWAAARRRK!: Peacock battle pet to debut soon™?

Update 6.7.13: The speculation I included in this post on the origin of the mystery sound in the Throne of Thunder musical score has been slain by the truth, delivered via Twitter by none other than Glenn Stafford, Senior Composer at Blizzard. That's right---conch shells can be turned into horned instruments.

Cool, huh? AND we're still probably getting a peacock pet.
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Earlier today in an innocuous response to a tweet from yours truly, Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton hinted that players will be seeing a peacock battle pet in game at some point. Why is this important, you ask? Well...it's not, really. If anything, it tells us that Blizzard plans to continue to support pet battles---something that shouldn't be surprising at all.

So, you want to know why I have peacock on the brain? Oh, you don't want to know. I'm going to let you know anyway. Early on after 5.2's launch, I noticed a curious vocalization that popped up during a lull in the musical score for the Throne of Thunder. Initially, I referred to it as a 'yodel' (which, admittedly, isn't very accurate), and a friend offered that it may very well be a peacock. Listen for yourself---the phenomenon takes place around 10 seconds in:


Now, let's compare that sound to the vocalization of a peacock:


Do you hear it? At first I wasn't convinced, but now I'm no longer sure. Whatever the hell it is, just what the heck is it doing on a music track and what significance does it have? I've reached out to Senior Director of Audio Russel Brower for an answer, and will update this post and tweet his response should he return my query.

Given that it's likely we'll see a new peacock pet soon, how do you think it will be acquired? Drop, or new tame? Reward for a meta-achievement, perhaps Raiding with Leashes III: the Frozen Wastes? I've also heard a rumor that peacocks are Ghostcrawler's super cool but as-yet unannounced special 5.4 game-changing feature.

Time will tell.


2 comments:

  1. FTR, I'm pretty sure it's somebody pretending to be a peacock or whatever kind of arWAAAARK-ing bird. I actually played a bunch of music like this (with random vocalizations written into the score of instrumentalists), and it seems to be fairly common with more contemporary composers.

    If mumper is so quick to say "sure!" it says one of 2 things to me. Either he's trolling, or they'd already planned one. Since they're probably not going to add it in 5.5 or whatever, this makes me think that the next world we go to will somewhere be populated with peacocks (emerald dream? are there peacocks in the emerald dream?!).

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    1. I want to believe he's not trolling, but that a peacock was coincidentally in the works. 5.4? 5.5? World of Warcraft: Feathers of the Peacock? World of Warcraft: Peacock n' Balls of Rage? I don't know. We should know something soon.

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