On this day, 7 years ago, Eyes of the Beast was removed from the game

Patch 4.0.1 was released 7 years ago today, on October 12, 2010. That was the day that Eyes of the Beast was taken from us. Eyes of the Beast was a damn cool ability that let you take control of your pet independently and play through its eyes. It was so cool I named this site after it!

No, it wasn’t used in actual raid combat or anything like that. It was mostly a flavor ability, but it did have some actual uses like pulling Baron Geddon in Molten Core. I enjoyed it mostly for the shenanigans you could get up to, like flagging unsuspecting players for PvP combat, or just going on a PvP server and sending your pet into towns like Gadgetzan to wreak havoc. You could also use it for scouting dangerous areas, or just having some fun while you’re in a battleground queue.

In Wrath, they actually added the Glyph of Possessed Strength which increased your pet’s damage by 50% during Eyes of the Beast, which was even more fun in world PvP. So, why did they remove it? Well, I’ll let Ghostcrawler explain.

(starts at 42m12s)

So if they could go back in time, they probably wouldn’t have removed it in the first place. It’s a case of ability pruning being taken too far as he freely admits. Ghostcrawler later said in a tweet that it wouldn’t be hard to re-add, it’s just a matter of budgeting out the programmer time to put it back in. In other words, I think it’s pretty unlikely we’ll ever see this again.

The only way I can see them adding it back to the game is if they have another use for the code that’d be used to possess an NPC, such as new quest type, a boss mechanic, or something along those lines. Then they could just tack Eyes of the Beast onto that code since it’s already done.

I’ll leave you with this cute tribute video that a Hunter made just before Eyes of the Beast was removed. It gives you a good idea of how fun the ability was:

Let the devs know (kindly) if you’d like to see it again!

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13 thoughts on “On this day, 7 years ago, Eyes of the Beast was removed from the game”

  1. I sure miss that spell, too. I miss leveling pets, taming other pets to teach their unique attacks to my existing ones. Miss all the spells they stripped from my poor hunter 🙁

    I also miss carrying ammo, by the way, and seeing an actual quiver on my character ;o)

    Now, that was what I call class fantasy 🙂

  2. If it was going to be re-implemented, I would like to see it as a toy and usable on any class with a pet. This way more people can have fun with Eyes, like Warlocks and Unholy DKs.

  3. I had The Beast as a pet… I miss running around with it when it would keep it’s little Boss Skull tag after taming.

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