Tamed Worgen are Now Winterskorn Worgs [Updated]

It appears that in today’s maintenance, all the remaining tamed versions of the worgen changed to the normal ‘white worg’ wolf skin.

In addition, I’ve seen several reports that worgen who had been leveled by their hunter have been reset to the level they had when tamed (that is, either level 71 or the hunter’s level – 5). In addition, these wolves seem to have reset to level 68 (or the level of the hunter – 5, whichever is higher).

On the plus side, these wolves are once again proper Wolves, with talent trees and pet skills.

I haven’t yet seen any official Blizzard comment on this, but I’ll keep an eye out.

(My thanks to the legions of people who e-mailed and commented to let me know about this change!)

[Update] After looking at the Armory page for Kaet, my dwarf who tamed Garwal, I believe I have found the answer for the odd de-leveling.

My white worg — the same one who was once Garwal — now displays as a Winterskorn Worg, a level 68 white worg from the same area.

If you view the page source in a browser that handles this well, such as Firefox, you can see the following XML text:

pet catId="23" family="Wolf" familyId="1" icon="ability_hunter_pet_wolf" level="68" name="Cry" npcId="24076" npcName="Winterskorn Worg"

A quick trip out to Howling Fjord found that Garwal remains unable to be tamed (although Beast Lore still doesn’t recognize that fact).

So it looks to me like Blizzard merely replace all the tamed Garwal worgs with Winterskorn Worgs. Fascinating!

87 thoughts on “Tamed Worgen are Now Winterskorn Worgs [Updated]

  1. Karmagedon

    Yes, my lovely, useless fishing buddy is now a white wolf. A plain Northrend vanilla white wolf. Sigh. I can go tame a level 80 just like him anytime. I now officially hate blizzard and am off to lick my own wounds and mourn the loss of my wounded DreamWalker. May he rest in peace.

  2. Rikaku

    I half-expected this, at least I can release my Worgen-wolf without any second thoughts now. But it’s still a bummer. Oh well, it was good times Maxwell.

    Only thing I’m annoyed about is losing the levels I did earn. At least then I’d remotely desire to keep my wolf, but with just taming Old Cliff Jumper recently, I think it’s time garwal and I said goodbye =/

  3. Rottingham

    As I said on the other forum abotu the new worgen and goblin races:
    Why would Blizz be so quick to fix the worgen, and even make it another beast model, if they didn’t have a plan for worgens in the future? My pet hydra and ooze are not crocs, and there are a few people I know who have Ghost wolves that didn’t change to white wolves or grey wolves or whatever. They must have a reason for changing the worgen so fast while it took a bit of time to change the others. My bet is that Worgen will probably be the next playable class…

  4. Featherskiss

    In loving memory of FullMoon, May you run in Forests of soft moonlight somewhere where Blizzard can not hurt you my friend..`sniffles`

  5. locutus

    My jack is gone as well since I already have a 80 wolf I am letting him go. Thanks blizz. I refuse to play a worgen toon as I think it is a stupid idea.

  6. Clawclaw

    My Hunter is 71, along with her Garwal (tamed at 71), and now it’s level 68.
    I’m guessing everyone had their wolf drop in level to some extent regardless of what level it was.
    At least he’s not ginormous on the log-in screen anymore :o

  7. CobraLily

    At least I did take a load of cool screen shots with him, but hey maybe in the next expansion we all can be Worgens. So if that holds true that may be the reasoning of a not so tamed Worgen.

  8. Shinryu Masaki

    To all the people who are, might, or have been complaining about the other pets that where removed from the tame table (ghost wolf, hydra, ooze, black warp stalker, etc), this is what is actually the case.

    Those pets weren’t bugs.

    All those retired pets where working normally. Ok, I know some of them had slight problems, like the ghost wolf’s fast walk, but it’s not like other pets that are still tamable didn’t have those problems too.

    The thing with the worgen is that, at its base, it wasn’t a worgen to begin with. It was just a wolf. And said wolf had a hidden worgen form buff that he applied to himself when you took him to 50% health. The proof of this is that when you where actually taming Garwal in his worgen form, when the tame ended he reverted back into a normal wolf. This was also the case when you took him into an arena.

    Tame beast removes all mobs based buffs when it ends, so that we don’t end up with a pet that has a buff that it’s not supposed to have for it’s family. Arena also removes all buffs prior to the start of the match. When we tamed Garwal, we forced the game to not remove his hidden worgen form buff when tame beast ended. If Blizzard wanted to allow us to keep our worgen pets, they would have had to completely reprogram Garwal to have the worgen form has its base form. This would have been a lot more work than just flagging him as untamable.

    Blizzard is also quite addamant about it. They did clearly say that they refuse to have worgen as a hunter pet. Though they never gave any reasons as to why, aside a “we don’t want to” kind of statement. It’s possible that they want to make worgen a playable race in the future, but only they know, we can only speculate.

    In the end, our worgen pets where just wolves in disguise that we got through a bug. The end result was inevitable.

  9. Rayquaza7996

    Does anyone know if this may have caused the massive glitches I experienced (e.x.: One of my pets disappearing, never to be seen again, and only being able to withdraw my Worgen and Deadlock)?

  10. Casdia

    I’d like to point out to all of the people who are saying “What about the ghost wolf/croco-whatevers and such? They weren’t taken away!” that while it might not be so difficult to convince an ooze or a hydra or even the ghost of a wolf to be your ‘pet’. Taming humanoids is more like slavery than anything. A worgen is a humanoid, intelligent creature, like an ogre or a dryad. So while it was cool to have our worgen for awhile, I would have been shocked had blizz actually left them in.

  11. tanzar

    so i guess only warlocs are alowed to have slaves even if it is only highly intelegent demons i meen it is only a demon after all . or unless it’s some how game (npc) related then it’s ok for a oh lets say druid in bear form to be enslaved …but hey that’s “story related “

  12. Palladiamors

    I knew it was coming, but as always, it came without any communication. I just wish they’d talk to the playerbase more about things like that. People didn’t get a “We screwed up, we’re going to take them out now.” Just silence, and a quick fix on a Tuesday maintenence.

  13. Rottingham

    @Shinryu Masaki
    Very true! You have put a lot of thought into this. It seems very logical. But what about when you or your pet die? Doesn’t your pet lose it’s buffs then, too? So if the Garwal died, or you died, wouldn’t he have reverted back to his wolf form then? From what I understand, since I never had it, nobody has had that problem. It may be that I am thinking about this wrong, but It’s just a though…

  14. Mania Post author

    Thats for pointing out the level discrepancy, Clawclaw. Mine is also now level 68.

    In addition, I apologize beforehand for anyone I may snap at today. I just spent the past 4 hours in an urgent care center — my husband broke his finger. He’s fine; it’s minor — but it’s made me irritable.

  15. Neilaren (Shu'Halo)

    RIP WarGarurumon, you definitely turned some heads. :)
    Space is now reserved for Skoll. Shu’Halo beware, angry blood elf wants her spirit beast THIS TIME…

  16. Sigrah

    I think it’s a little unfair that Blizzard took out the Worgen for those that tamed it. In a world where Warlocks bind extra-planar demons to do their will and Death Knights can reanimate corpses to do their bidding, it doesn’t seem like such a stretch to let Hunters keep their Worgen as pets. Oh well, sorry to those that had him. I wasn’t high enough to even try :)

  17. Nimizar

    *shrug* The quick response to this still strikes me as fuel to the rumour of the worgen as a playable race in the next expansion :)

  18. worry - baelgun

    i was happy with the original fix they did that made them completely useless, but to remove them completely was just uncalled for. i guess the worgen/goblin as next races is true then for them to take it this far. seriously gonna quit my hunter an roll a priest. im tired of everyone hating my class.

  19. Rikaku

    Not to be off-topic, but there was an interesting question on the forums that caught my eye. According to the PTR notes (that I just read) there’s no changes to Rake, Wild Hunt or anything else pet related. Am I missing it or was it reverted?

  20. Rikaku

    Thanks for the update. For some reason the PTR hates me and I can’t update. I blame my authenticator. (like I do every patch XD)

    But again, thanks for the update =)

  21. Tyger

    Worgen Pets would look cool, sure enough. But Like every Other Cool Pet, eventually Every Hunter would have one and you’d look cooler with a Tiger coz everyone else has a Worgen ;p

    Like the White Lion, My Hunter had that when it was a Horde Quest Spawn so was Cool for an Alliance Hunter to Tame, now the Winterspring Quest is Both Horde and Alliance Every Hunter can Get the White Lion with ease. I abandoned my White Lion

  22. joy

    i wish to make a site as a memorial to them but i dont know how, can someone explain to me how? also i may let him go and get Skoll, he will have become reincarnated into this worg. Gonna miss him /mourn

  23. Wildstalker

    Worgen are HUMANOID. Taming one and having it as pet was obviosly a bug. I think that all speculations about worgen as a playable race have nothing to do with the “worgen-pet nerf”. Simply, Blizzard didn’t want us to have a humanoid as pet.

  24. shirahime


    Ture Worgen are Humanoid, but i spent some of my low lvl life killing them to level skinning, so when can i start skinning, furbolgs or tuskarrs?

  25. Scott



    I have to agree. You can argue it from many different angles (many if not most of which result in stalemate), but this is really what it all comes down to.

    It saddens me to know the door is now firmly shut on the possibility of a future “restore”, but at the same time I have to admit that was never a realistic hope, and so in a way it’s just as well they did this.

  26. Budwyzer

    so many people thinking they’re smart…. hurts… mmmy.. brain… so.. much.. stupidity…. UUugggghhhhh

    @Shinryu Masaki
    Uuuhhh no. :P and yes =D
    Yes it was a bug from a hidden script but, so you’re saying that people having tamed the slime, the hydra, or the ghostwolf wasnt a bug??? If those werent supposed to be tamed then WHY did Blizz make them untamable? Riddle me that! And yet those people got to keep their “Bugged” pets. And yes those are bugs, obviously Blizz had no intention of allowing those pets to be tameable yet they were, thus they were bugged. So shut it!

    You’re right about people being all over pets and then they become a common occurance BUT, the worgen was made untamable the nite after I got it, soooo…
    I would’ve been one of the few, the proud, Lime’s Owner. Just the same as no one else can get a ghost wolf or a spectral tiger mount.

    I totally agree, apparantly Demons are all mindless beasts just WANTING to be controlled by a sentient being. Nevermind that a werewolf is more of a wolf than a human, I dont see human in the name but i do see wolf… O.O
    I mean comeon, anyone ever seen a werewolf make out with somebody?? NOPE So its definately a beast, Blizzard is just a buncha freakin jerks. Only caring about the easy fixes to keep the 11M accounts going and pull in that 100M and some every month! This kind of crap is what happens when you PATCH a game too much. The game is too old… End of Story. Time to go find a new game. =D

  27. Ryai

    what people are still going on over warlocks enslaving demons and hunters can’t have worgen? Even I never used that in my argument as I wasn’t wanting worgen persay but a wolf with a worgen skin.

    Look. Hunter’s tame their beasts. They make friends.

    Warlocks are for the most part power hungry/sadistic/twisted/warped creatures. I mean heck in a story I’m rewriting my lock got out of control and started to try and summon a PIT. LORD. [yes my warlock is that insane and power hungry]

    And no this isn’t what happens when you patch to much, or would you still want to be on vanilla wow? WoW is a BIG MMORPG. It needs ALOT of files for EACH SEPERATE PACK.

    Or would you rather wait 3+ years for an expansion pack that’s had little beta testing, if at all? It’s why PTR’s exist. It’s why beta’s exist. It prevents you from having to install something that’d take a week.

  28. lyrico

    Well unlike all you other QQ hunters, I wanna say ty blizz. I’ll miss my worgen as much as any of you BUT, my stables were full and I had a pet that didnt work taking up a slot I could use for something better. Speaking of that I vote we get more stable slots, hint hint bliz. But you guys knew it was gonna happen so get over it.

  29. Scott


    I mean comeon, anyone ever seen a werewolf make out with somebody??”

    I lol’ed

  30. Shinryu Masaki

    It’s possible that it was a buff that didn’t get removed from death, like how Flasks are.

    They weren’t bugs because they where just normal beasts that where flagged as tamable. The only thing Blizzard did to them was to switch the flag to untamable, nothing else. Garwal, just like you said yourself, has a hidden script, and we bugged it to make him keep his worgen form after the tame. This has no relation at all to the other retired pets, which didn’t have anything scripted into them like Garwal had. And please, try to stay polite. Thank you. =)

  31. gralf

    If worgen are humanoid how come the one in UP is listed as a beast? I think blizzard did not like us hunters getting a cool pet because it was cooler than their oh so fantastic spirit beasts! So worgen are part humanoid and part beast – spirit beasts are part beast and part spirit maybe so the differnce between the 2 is?

  32. Palladiamors

    Here we go, Budwyzer. Of the trio of ghost wolf, hydra, and slime, only the slime stands out as a good point at all. The reason being is that ghost wolves and hydra are set as beasts, while the slime is unset. That being said, it is a lot more likely that slimes could be considered beasts then worgen, and it makes more sense to be able to keep something as a pet that is normally unset as opposed to permanently humanoid.

    It was a glitch. Due to the worgens transformation into a wolf, it’s internal coding listed it as a beast, and thus tameable. If I remember reading the way to tame him right, basically your tame had to go off the SECOND he transformed back into a humanoid mob, before the coding had time to change him back over to a humanoid. An obvious, unintended taming.

    You obviously know little or NOTHING about werewolves, or even worgen. They are more or less half human, half wolf, and it shows. Did you even pay ATTENTION to the quests in Grizzly Hills? HELLO?! Those hunters in the lodge didn’t SEND werewolves after you, they WERE were the werewolves that came after you. Some of them can control their transformation, and some of them transform at night. Only a handful of the worgen in game are the true worgen kind, and even THEY are fairly intelligent in their own special way. So now, having a worgen pet was in no way really acceptable. Was it cool? HELL YEA! But it was a massive, and I mean MASSIVE glitch in the system. The only mistake Blizzard made was in not adequately communicating with the playerbase, but after four years, that’s not really shocking to me.

  33. Schadenfreude

    Personally I always thought the Slime pet was weirder than a Worgen pet. However, the quick fix and turnaround on the Worgen pet, and the switcheroo on all tamed Worgen to make them normal wolves– this STRONGLY suggests to me that Blizzard is going to make Worgen a playable race. Blizzard has always been against taming anything humanoid-ish– for example, I always thought it would be cool to tame Ursangous or Claw the bear druids, but that’s never even been considered by blizzard.

  34. Malikith

    I disagree strongly with all the argumenst about Why Blizz should be OK with taking away the Worgen. I feel Hunters were bent over, no reach around, no dinner, not even the courtesy of Vaseline.

    Quick Rundown then Ill not be posting about this again. The Worgen In grizzly Hills are the Arugal variety, Most Worgen in game are Arugal contaminated. Those are Werewolves, not true Worgen.

    Slave issue…Worgen are semi intelligent but so are many other pets including Raptors. And yes Warlocks have demons..They Enslave.

    Body style… We have Gorillas. Enough said.

    Coding… Blizz can Code, encode or decode anything they want. This si the only Game I know that everything seems to fit anywhere. They did their Homework. Thiss was an issue they did not See. Agreed. But they should be Applauding Ingenuity not Berating it. Its not liek people found a loophole that allowed a player to Kill Arthas or found a glitch that increased their damage times 10 versus Loki, etc, etc. In otehr words..it was harmless. Gave a Goal for bored players and something to Have as a Combat Trophy.

    Storyline…Who really cares? Has it ever mattered to anyone Why they were allowed to Tame a certain pet? IS Roleplay THAT important to why you could GET it? Not really. It might be important AFTERWARD..so you have a Reason for having it..but how often do you set down and say “Hmm what is my roleplay reason for running my level 10 Blood Elf all the way to Darnassus to Tame an Owl?” You Dont. You do it because its a cool pet and you want it.

    Im very dissappointed in Blizz for doing this.

  35. Palladiamors

    This is really starting to boggle me. Never, in the history of WoW, have we EVER been able to tame humanoids, and ALL WORGEN ARE HUMANOIDS. The ghost wolf, hydra, and hell even the slime were different matters entirely. THIS IS NOT A PET HUNTERS ARE ENTITLED TO

  36. Palladiamors

    Continued, because I managed to hit enter early. I am a pretty anti-Blizzard person myself, ask any of the normal posters on this board. But this isn’t something I think Blizzard screwed up on. Everyone doing it needs to stop trying to make excuses for why we SHOULD be able to have worgen. Blizzard is NOT going to bring it back, like it or not. It was a mistake, and they fixed it. Like I said, Blizzard should have SAID to people “Whoops! That was unintended, sorry but we’re going to have to take them away.” If your going to be angry, be angry about that, but stop trying to act like it’s a pet type we SHOULD have.

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