Every so often, a pet that could once be tamed is either removed from the game or made unable to be tamed.
In most cases, the hunters who had already tamed these pets get to keep them. So while you may see these pets in the game, you won't be able to tame one.
You can find some notes about the retired pets at the bottom of the page.
This black warp stalker is summoned as part of the "Adversarial Blood" group quest in the Skettis plateau in Terrokar.
Prior to Patch 3.0.8, Gezzarak suffered from a number of bugs -- she couldn't be buffed or healed other than with Mend Pet and she simply would not attack other players in PvP. On the positive side,
she also retained her impressive summoning animation.
The problems appear to be fixed now, but unfortunately Gezzarak can no longer be tamed and she has lost her summoning animation.
These three creatures probably hold the award for strangest retired pets. All three of them are summoned as part of the daily Oracles quest "A Cleansing Song".
The Spirit of Ha-Khalan is a ghostly, partially transparent crocolisk; the Spirit of Atha is a ghostly hydra, and the Spirit of Koosu is a green slime or ooze.
Between Patch 3.0 and Patch 3.0.8, all three of these creatures could be tamed -- because all three of them were labeled as crocolisks! Even now they retain the croclisk family diet, talent tree, and skills.
The original Sunreaver Dragonhawk was a lovely red dragonhawk that was used as a mount by the Sunreavers in Crystalsong Forest. Despite the fact that these dragonhawks were used as mounts, they could be tamed by anyone who was hostile to the Sunreavers.
This wasn't merely a change in appearance, but an entirely new creature. Hunters who had previously tamed a red Sunreaver Dragonhawk still had a red Sunreaver Dragonhawk, and the new armored Sunreaver Dragonhawk could not be tamed.
The Grimtotem Spirit Guide, aka the ghost wolf, is perhaps the most famous retired pet in WoW.
This little wolf was an unlikely hunter pet from the beginning: it is summoned by an NPC and only lives for about 8 seconds before falling over dead. And Tame Beast took 20 seconds to cast ...
But despite this, the ghost wolf could indeed be tamed when it was first introduced in Patch 2.3. Excited hunters spared no expense, buying equipment and recruiting friends to help shorten their cast times so they could complete Tame Beast before the wolf died. And many were successful.
Unfortunately, after several weeks Blizzard decided to correct their mistake, even though they had previously said that they would leave the wolf alone. A hotfix temporarily removed the wild Grimtotem Spirit Guides from the game, although hunters who had already tamed one did not lose their pets.
These wolves reappeared in Patch 2.4 as Grimtotem Spirit Wolves, but they can no longer be tamed.
Killing the Death Ravager is the objective of the quest "Strength of One", a level 10 Warrior quest on Azuremyst Isle. Most of the time, the Death Ravager sits quietly in a cage, unattackable, but during the quest he is 'released' and becomes aggressive and attackable.
Something in this scripting, however, carried over after the Death Ravager was tamed and mades him ... problematic as a pet. So Blizzard removed the ability to tame a Death Ravager in Patch 2.1.
When the Burning Crusade expansion first launched, the skies above Nagrand were populated with roving flocks of Windroc Hunters and Windrocs Huntresses who would occasionally dive out of the sky to attack an unsuspecting talbuk.
Sometime before Patch 2.3, however, those windrocs disappeared. An explanation has never been forthcoming.
In Patch 2.3, Blizzard made some major changes to Dustwallow Marsh in order to make it more attractive for leveling. As part of that revamp, they removed a bunch of redundant beasts from the Marsh. But no looks were lost, since all the beasts were indeed redundant.
Windroc Huntress
