Back in the pre-BC days, hunter pets' abilities were based on a sort of talent point type system. The point system was based on the pet's level and the loyalty level (also now absent from the game). When a hunter tamed a pet that was low level, the pet would have no points to be spent on things like growl. The whole dumb loyalty level thing was particularly stupid - the pet had 6 loyalty levels with the first taking the longest to obtain - you tamed the pet at loyalty level 1. Due to the pet point system, you had no points to spend until the pet reached loyalty level 2. This meant that your pet could not growl until it reached loyalty level 2 since you needed points to purchase growl like you might purchase a talent point ability. The formula for loyalty involved time spent at happiness level and was modified by experience gained in that if the pet was gaining experience (by fighting mobs that were not gray to the hunter and so it was based on the hunter level) it would get to loyalty level 2 faster.
However, the big kicker with that was that it would sometimes take hours of fighting at least green con mobs while keeping the pet well fed and happy before you'd be able to even teach the pet to growl. You could just hang around the AH and feed your pet for several hours without fighting and see it eventually sort of spontaneously reach loyalty level 2, but that took much much longer. Back then hunters didn't have good tools for escape and melee was pathetic - traps had to be placed while out of combat, it all sucked for close range combat. Combine that with the prospect of leveling a pet that may have been many levels beneath the hunter that can't even growl to hope to hold aggro, let alone hit the target to do any additive damage. Meleeing a green-con mob back then for a hunter would pretty much cost you 1/3rd to 1/2 of your health. I remember illustrating this to Rosaria once in game (if she reads this she may remember) while I meleed one of those yetis in winterspring as a level 60 hunter - so the yetis were yellow con to me - by the end of the 100% melee fight, I was at less than 1/8th of my health.
There were all manner of BS experiments and crap by players trying to find the formula for loyalty gain time and in the end, it all seemed pretty random. There were pets that seemed bugged and took hours and hours to gain loyalty level 2 or never gained it at all and had to be abandoned. Usually you could count on loyalty level 2 by the time you'd gained your pet about a level worth of experience. Oh and pet XP back then was much higher per level than it is now, like 1/4th of the hunter's required or something - i.e. significant.
So there you were, maybe a level 60 hunter with a level 34 or so Broken Tooth pet, trying to level it and you had to kill mobs of no less than green con – so like 52 or something. One shot, the mob would be charging you (and your shots didn’t do anywhere near the kind of damage they do now relative to mobs’ health) and even though your pet would also charge the mob, it could not growl, and could not even hit the mob because of the miss code so it didn’t hold aggro at all and you wound up in melee with the mob for 20 or 30 seconds to kill it. You could do annoying crap like wingclip and kite to distance but back then arcane shot did like 200 damage and was your only instant non-DoT attack, or you could snare trap the mob, but again, you’d be kiting and in the end, it wound up taking as much time or more, or you had to risk running into more mobs while you did it… eventually, say after killing 30 to 60 mobs of green con level your pet might ding loyalty level 2 at which point it could growl – and growl would miss of course. If it landed, your pet would get killed every 3rd or 4th mob because of the level disparity, if you tried to heal the mob in combat (back then it was a channeled heal) you invariably pulled aggro too because most of the pet’s attacks would miss, including followup growls. All in all, it was a system that went right beyond immersion and into the realm of sadistic “pound of flesh†design.
All of these issues were brought up with devs time and time again over the years. Comparisons to Warlock pets were made which dinged with the warlock, later, mage pets were compared and still the devs insisted that they wanted it this way for hunter pets. So yeah… this change, while welcome, is a slap in the face and if anything, makes me believe more that whichever dev or devs that really had it in for hunters (class bias has been obvious through the years on the part of the dev staff) is now on to other projects. I guess this change is nice, but really it’s actually kind of insulting to see it come around finally.
Anyway, pardon the walk down the memory lane from WoW Hell, I don't know how many of you will remember that ugly volume (not merely a chapter) of Hunter history in this game, but there you go.
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If ignorance were painful, half the posters here would be on morphine drips.
Everyone playing WoW knows everything about playing two classes: 1) their own and 2) Hunters
e'know, com'on! Giimmeee di Ke$$$HHHHHH!"