For a start, it’s not consistent. Opening a previous or next page in a new tab (by middle-clicking on the back or forward buttons) doesn’t follow the new to-the-right pattern but instead opens the new tab in the old place, right at the end of your current tab list. Also, if you open a child tab, click to view it and then close it, you’ll now be viewing the page to the right of the parent tab rather than the parent itself. It’s a small annoyance but one that doesn’t gel with my ‘how it should work’ world view. So rather than put up with these (admittedly tiny) niggles, I figured I’d just switch back to the old system.

After a little searching, I found the fix. Open a new tab and put this in the address bar…

about:config

…and tap <return>. Click past the “I promise not to go in like a bull in a china shop!” warning and you’ll be presented with a loonnngggg list of settings. This is basically all the stuff you can tweak in Firefox but the devs would rather you didn’t in case you bugger something up. Simply scroll down the list until you spot…

browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent

It’ll be set to ‘true’. Right click the entry and select toggle so it reads ‘false’. You can close that tab and now, when you open a new child tab, Firefox will respond as it used to. Of course, if you get sick of trawling to the end of your tabs for new pages then simply open the config again and toggle it back.

And… if you’re still using that ramshackle stack of bugs commonly known as Internet Explorer, then please (insert stream of insults veiled as a recommendation to switch to another browser, here).

Originally, I wanted the images I used in posts to blend smoothly with the background. GIFs give a simple level of transparency but it’s an on/off deal – hardly what I was looking for. PNGs are the other option but when the format first appeared they were barely supported and even when they became more widespread, a few dopey hold-outs still handled them badly. So I created images with the background colour blended into them. Looked good, nice small file… but an absolute pain in the chuff to re-do any time you moved to a theme with a different background colour.

Hopefully, these days, browsers have come a little further and the chance of encountering some backward, hill-billy software that can’t handle a simple PNG image correctly should be pretty slim. By converting images on the site over time to PNGs, I at least remove that stumbling block for when I do have some time for a proper shuffle.

The images will be bigger, unfortunately, but that’s okay, right? You’re all on beefy bandwidth connections, yeah? No? Oh well, sucks to be you.

I am of course talking about the mighty Stinker. Now, I’ve already managed to obtain this pet (as detailed here) but was quite amused to find the bods at Blizzard have given this critter a little extra oomph in the personality department. Quite clearly inspired by the legendary skunk philanderer Pepé Le Pew, it seems our little Stinker has a thing for the ladies. And by ‘ladies’, I mean cats. Specifically, the Bombay Cat and the Black Tabby Cat.

Whenever Stinker spots either of these felines, he falls instantly in love, chasing his prey around the area until he is finally scorned and his heart breaks. All together now… awwwww.

Don’t worry though, old Stinker has the memory of a goldfish and will again be pursuing the unobtainable within seconds.

The Proto-Drake Whelp comes from the Cracked Egg, which comes from owning a Mysterious Egg for the alloted 7 days – after which, it transforms and the roulette of what you get can begin. The Mysterious Egg can be bought from Geen, the Oracles Quartermaster once you have Revered reputation with them (and 3 gold to spare). You’ll find this race of Gorlocs in their village at Rainspeaker Canopy, in Sholazar Basin, Northrend. Yep, you’ll need to be tootling around in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for this reward.

Now, building reputation with these beasties requires you to have finished the Oracles quest line, ending with ‘A Hero’s Burden‘. This quest has you taking down an elite mob, Artruis the Heartless (so maybe bring friends) but during the fight, you’ll be attacked by a Gorloc and a Wolvar (the Frenzyhart Tribe being the other warring faction in the Basin – by this point you’ll have met them already). Who you kill decides which faction’s daily quests you can take. If you’re going for the Oracles rewards, you’ll want to beat the puppy to a pulp. Complete the quest chain and you’ll be honoured with the Oracles but hated by the Frenzyhearts. Meh. Never liked those slave-driving morons much anyway.

Right, now just do the daily quests in the Basin to earn that Revered standing and you can purchase an Mysterious Egg. Stick it in the bank for a week and forget about it. When you come back, crack that sucker open and then cry because, chances are, you’ll just get some Aged Yolk for all your effort. Don’t worry, you can buy another egg but that means another seven days. Yay!

If you happen to get lucky, you’ll receive one of four possible vanity pets. In order of how common they apparently are, you could get either a Tickbird Hatchling, a White Tickbird Hatchling, a Cobra Hatching or our friend up there, the Proto-Drake Whelp. If you’re really, really lucky (2% drop rate according to Wowhead), you could wind up with the Reins of the Green Proto-Drake, a flying mount!

No. I haven’t got that yet. *mutter* *grumble* Note – you can get the same pet even if you’ve already learnt that one. Great for flogging on the auction house, not so great if you’re impatient for some other reward.

So there you have it. How to get your very own Proto-Drake Whelp. It’s not a hard process and not particularly expensive either, just time consuming. Yes, I’ll probably be swimming in Aged Yolks before I ever get the flying mount but I’ve got my mind set on it.

Oh, and if you do get everything and become Exalted with the Oracles, don’t forget to switch back to the Frenzyheart Tribe faction, complete their daily quests and become Exalted with them so that you can earn the Mercenary of Sholazar achievement!

Of course, I have little-to-no faith in my skills with CSS, hence the comments about not coughing. It’s a rickety set of stairs, the outer shell of Skoardy.com, and give it too much of a hammering and it’s likely to fall apart. But, it looked okay and everything was where it should be… or so I thought.

In comes Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with it’s size 9 clod-hoppers and its own unique take on what things should look like. Normally, I use Firefox as my default browser. It’s small, fast and best of all, with the right add-ons, you’ll never need to see another advert again. It looked fine on that. I even tried the site with Google’s Chrome – the new kid of the block that’s also small/fast. Also, looked fine. And with IE? Yeah…um, well, it was borked on IE.

I don’t usually like booting IE up. These days it seems there’s always some kind of new exploit being reported and death from within for anyone foolish enough to take it for a spin on the intahwebs. Eventually, I worked up the nerve to have a look. Things were misplaced, oddly positioned and some bizarre gaps were appearing. One by one, I managed correct the flaws, writing in more specific code so that even IE couldn’t get creative with my instructions. Everything was fixed, except for some gaps in the sidebar. I know IE users take up the market share of web tourists (seriously guys, switch to a new browser already!) so I wanted to fix it but nothing I tried could get rid.

So every few days I’d get a new idea and try it out with the hope that it’d fix the problem without breaking the site for other browsers. Every time, same result. Nada.

Tonight, however, the new fix worked and everything fell into place. Better still, it’s something that other browsers appear to care little about. Of course, this is just with version 7 of IE. If it’s broken on older versions, screw you. Upgrade… or better still, switch to a new browser already!

So ever since that day, I’ve kept an eye out for new vanity pets. An auction purchase here, a quick quest or two there and a few trips to previously overlooked vendors, slowly adding to my collection until Sunday night when I hit the magic number – 50 and gained the achievement ‘Shop Smart, Shop Pet…Smart‘. Moments later, a letter from Breanni, the NPC pet-store owner in Dalaran, arrived commending me on my pet care and asking me to look after… Stinker, the vanity pet skunk.

So here I am with my collection of 51 vanity pets and of course I felt the urge to brag share the news of my accomplishment. It’s not such a tough feat all told – especially considering there are apparently over a hundred pets in game. But I’m still pleased. In fact, I thought I’d share with you my favourite ten pets… listed after the ‘jump’.

Here are my top-ten vanity pets from the ones I’ve collected, in reverse order (natch), with a few pointers on how to obtain them if you’re interested…

10. White Kitten

There are quite a few different cat pets in the game, most of them available (Alliance only), from the vendor Donni Anthania (Crazy Cat Lady) in Elwynn Forest. Any Horde with a hankering for cat will either have to scour the neutral Auction Houses or make do with the Siamese Cat sold by Dealer Rashaad in Netherstorm or (for the more happy-go-lucky/tight-fisted amongst you) dropped by Cookie in the Deadmines instance.

All of which still won’t get you a White Kitten. Again, Alliance only, this pet comes from a wandering vendor in Stormwind City called Lil Timmy. This roaming NPC is fairly special in that he only spawns once every three hours, does a lap of the area around Cathedral Square and the Trade District, and he only carries one cat at a time. You might be lucky enough to encounter Timmy but then find someone else has ‘picked him clean’. Don’t worry, chances are the person who got there before you has just run off to the Auction House to gouge you silly on the cost. The 60 silver kitten has been seen going for even as much as 1000+ gold.

Me, I was running past Cathedral Square one day and thought “I wonder if…”. I didn’t get to finish that thought though as I ran straight into Timmy rounding the corner and snapped up the kitten he was hawking.

9. Pengu

If you’re busy raising Kalu’ak reputation for that snazzy new fishing rod, once you reach Exalted, don’t forget to also grab the Nurtured Penguin Egg so that you can befriend this cute fella. Okay, so the bright red eyes do tend to make him look just a touch… well… ‘evil’, but that’s just part of his charm.

This pet is only available with the WotLK expansion as it comes as a reputation reward that you can purchase once you’ve earned Exhalted status with the Kalu’ak. So do the quests and then hunker down for a few days worth of dailies. Being a rep reward, you can get it from either of the Kalu’ak quartermasters – Sairuk at Moa’ki Harbor in the Dragonblight or Tanaika at Kamagua village in the Howling Fjord.

I didn’t even realise there was a pet until I was just browsing through the quartermaster’s stock after buying my… uh… snazzy new fishing rod.

8. Cockroach

If you’re looking for a pet that’s just a little different from the usual tabby, dragonhawk or snake, you can’t really go wrong with a disgusting insect.

As with the Siamese Cat, this one can be bought from our friendly, neighbourhood swirling mass of bandages and magic, the Netherstorm vendor of exotic creatures, Dealer Rashaad. But, if you haven’t reached levels 58+ or purchased The Burning Crusade expansion (and you happen to be Horde), worry not because Jeremiah Payson, lurking in Undercity will happily sell you one.

7. Baby Blizzard Bear

I’m afraid that if you haven’t already got this one, you’re pretty much out of luck as it’s not available any more. You see, this cute little bundle was given out free to all players who logged on during Blizzard’s 4th anniversary of WoW.

Logging in during the anniversary, you’d find this guy waiting in your mailbox. I’m guessing he didn’t enjoy it too much either. look at that scowl! Yeah, you know he’s going to rip your throat when he grows up, you mark my words.

6. Smolderweb Hatchling

This creepy-crawly is one of the two vanity pets available from questing in the lower Blackrock Spire instance (the other one being the great little Worg Pup).

The quest (‘En-Ay-Es-Tee-Why‘) starts with a little goblin called Kibler in the Burning Steppes. He wants you to collect 15 spider eggs from the instance and for that, he’ll give you a Smolderweb Hatchling. The other quest (‘Kibler’s Exotic Pets‘) for the Worg Pup also starts with him so be sure to pick them both up at the same time.

5. Sprite Darter Hatchling

I’m afraid this one is strictly Alliance only, as it’s a bind-on-pickup reward from a quest.

(Update: Since patch 3.1, Horde players are now able to get this pet by slaughtering waves of Sprite Darters and getting a Sprite Darter Egg as a fairly low chance random drop).

It’s also a bit of a run around and comes at the end of a series of quests starting with ‘Freedom for All Creatures‘ from Kindal Moonweaver in Feralas. After you do her bidding, you end up going to Darnassus. Instead of wandering off on your merry way, make a point to return to Kindal in Feralas for the Darter quest proper. Then it’s off to the Thousand Needles and finally, the Hinterlands.

4. Tranquil Mechanical Yeti

Our only kit-form pet for this list, the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti is a pet crafted by the engineering profession from a schematic taught by Umi Rumplesnicker in Winterspring, but only once the engineer in question has completed Umi’s ‘Are We There, Yeti?‘ questline.

So if you’re an engineer, at least level 55, have at least 250 engineering skill and have completed the quests, Umi will offer to teach you how to build these mini-menaces. After that,  it’s a mere Cured Rugged Hide, 4 x Thorium Widget, 2 x Globe of Water, 2 x Truesilver Transformer and a Gold Power Core, and away you go.

3. Speedy

As with quite a few of the vanity pets available, this one comes from a seasonal event – specifically Children’s Week.

Running a week (duh!) from the beginning of May, you get the opportunity to drag a poor orphan all over Azeroth, seeing the sights, meeting important people and stuffing them full of ice-cream.

Once your orphan is contented, you can finally get rid of the brat and claim your sweet reward, either Speedy here, Mr. Wiggles the piglet or Whiskers the rat. You can get all three but only one a year so it’s a bit of a long-term plan.

2. Winter’s Little Helper

How barmy is it to be a tiny Gnome and then be followed around by even tinier Gnome… in a revealing Winter Veil outfit? Almost as mad as wearing a snowman disguise while stood next to your Tiny Snowman.

As part of the Feast of Winter Veil celebration, Greatfather Winter leaves a ‘Gaily Wrapped Present‘ under the tree for all the good little (level 20+) boys and girls. Within, you’ll either find the forementioned mini snowman, Winter’s Little Helper (Ms Gnome), Father Winter’s Helper (Mr Gnome) or a tiny Winter Reindeer.

All these pets require a Snowball as a reagent to summon them so keep that in mind.

1. Egbert

How could it be any other? Egbert is surely the coolest pet in the game!

Much like Speedy, mentioned at number 3, Egbert is a reward from a Children’s Week questline, though instead of kidnapping an orphan in Azeroth, this one you take from Shattrath City.

It’s the Burning Crusade version of the original quest and likewise, it has three top pets on offer. Pick from either Egbert the hawkstrider hatchling, Peanut the baby elekk or Sleepy Willy, the… uh… well, um… thing.

It’d be great to see another Children’s Week quest pop up in Wrath Of The Lich King with another three new pets but I have to say, I don’t recall seeing another orphanage anywhere in Northrend so I’m not too hopeful.

Well, that’s it for my top ten run down. Whoooo! That’s a fair old article. So glad I decided against detailing all 50! Anyhoo, if you are at all serious about collecting pets in the game, instead of just cribbing off of my second-rate whitterings, you should definitely visit WarcraftPets.com. Remember I mentioned my skunk, Stinker, was sent by an NPC called Breanni? Well, that’s who runs the site – Blizzard named the NPC after the owner’s WoW character. You don’t get that for running a half-baked website so you know it’s got the goods.

Also, be sure to reference Wowhead.com and WowWiki.com so that you’re up to speed when you go hunting for those hard-to-find pets. Me, I’ll see you at 100!

Wrath of the Lich King is great fun. I’ve really been enjoying it. Of course, people are devouring the new content at a lightning speed and if that’s your thing, go at it. For everyone else, I’d recommend taking things at your own pace. Enjoy the sights, take in the lore and for God’s sake, read the damn quest instructions, you morons! Sorry… sorry. One of the returning plagues from the launch of The Burning Crusade (heck, even the start of World of Warcraft itself) is the dumbasses who think yelling out to everyone else in the area to give them a point-by-point breakdown of every step a quest entails is somehow quicker than simply reading four or so lines of text.

Still, before long you find yourself in the next area and well away from those knuckle-dragging bozos. People seem to be handling the change of scenery in WotLK a lot better than TBC and feel quite at home in the Dun Morogh-esque snowy landscapes it provides. The gap between end-game TBC player items and WotLK new greens seems to be less drastic than the first expansion, quietening some of the masses this time round though there are murmurs that Blizzard might have gone too far in the opposite direction – that people rarely find the quest rewards a worthwhile upgrade to anything they already had. What can I say – you can’t please everyone.

New game mechanics in the form of vehicles have been the occasional questing highlight while playing through the expansion and a new slew of recipes are sure to keep me and my alts busy (and financially secure) for a long time to come. I can’t say I’m too enthralled with the new Death Knight class. Some people are having a whale of a time, to be sure (and others are crying that they’re too over-powered), but for me the late 50s and very early 60s are a real drag for my alts so having a class dropped right at the foot of that particular mountain just doesn’t inspire. Maybe a month or two down the road I’ll have an itch for something different but in what roughly amounts to three levels of DK starter quests, I can’t muster the energy to put aside my main and embrace the traitorous DK lifestyle.

So WotLK is lovely and I’m looking forward to getting as much blood from this particular stone as I can, as is MMORPG tradition but looking ahead, I really think Blizzard have to step up their game and try to adhere to their statement of providing something close to one expansion a year. Two years is too long to wait, if you ask me. I have to wonder if the majority of WoW’s playerbase would wait another two years for the next one.

And of course, I can’t end an article mentioning drunken adults on a playground springy without linking to this webcomic from Cascade Failure.

Since the patch went live, I’ve quickly racked up the achievements related to various daily quests, a bunch of the event themed achievements (this last week or so being ‘Hallow’s End‘, WoW’s Halloween-esque celebration of the Forsaken breaking free of the Lich King) and the rather easy fishing and cooking achievements. Being an all-rounder pays off as one of the cooking profession quests (‘The Cake Is Not A Lie‘ – a cute reference to Valve’s excellent game, Portal) requires you to prepare a Delicious Chocolate Cake, the recipe for which is a random drop reward from a Fishing daily quest in Outland.

The new ability to track low-level quests on the mini-map means that my pre-TBC character now has ‘exalted’ reputation with all the old Azerothian home factions and sports the impressive sounding Ambassador title displayed in front of his name. Post-TBC chars pretty much get free rep for sneezing so it was a little more work than new characters would be expected to do but I wanted the title and sailing through level 10-20 quests while you’re a level 70 character isn’t exactly what you’d call brain surgery.

The achievement I’m happiest with is the one called ‘Leading the Cavalry‘ and requires the player to obtain 50 unique mounts (ground based or flying). It really should be called ‘How much gold can you spare?’ as it’s basically an exercise in purchasing power, visiting various vendors and snapping up their entire range of mounts. Of course, one of the first things you need to do is make sure you can purchase other race’s mounts – which is where being exalted with their faction pays off.

Long story short, I’m now riding about on a huge albino drake… behold!

To fill out the impressive effect, my character is also sporting the latest in Hallow’s End couture… the ninja costume courtesy of trick of treating an inn keeper.

One of the things that I was rather looking forward to and something I’d talked about in the past, was the achievements. Well, a few weeks (months?) ago they announced that they were rolling some things previously assumed to be part of WotLK forward (such as pet revamps/class revamps, vanity pet/mount interface shuffle and the incription profession). Well, in the Tue/Wed 3.0.2 patch last week, they all arrived along with the new achievements feature.

Achievements boil the game down to it’s most basic of tick-box orientated gameplay. Visited all the areas in Durotar? Well done, you earn some points. Beaten seven shades of shinola out of Edwin VanCleef? More points for you! These are just some of the easy-peasy achievements. They also combine into sets so your Durotar wanderings add to your overall Explorer achievement for East Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Outland and Northrend. Your dungeon boss killing spree counts towards your various ‘Dungeonmaster‘ achievements. Some of these achievements will even earn you some lightweight rewards like titles, tabards and vanity pets. There’s tougher achievements in the mix, some that require long-term commitments and some that acknowledge bouts of luck such as rare kills/drops. All in all, that’s one helluva list (750 achievements… currently) of boxes to tick.

Me, I’m going all OCD on the easy ones. I’ve decided that the rest are going to have to be happy accidents if I get them or I’ll end up driving myself batty like the dopes on the forums. I have to admit, it’s kinda nice going about your business, playing the game as usual then seeing the whoosh of an achievement occur. Even reviewing your ‘progress’ on some of the others tempts you into focusing your gameplay a little more.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to infiltrate an enemy faction city and spend countless hours trying to catch a rare fish, all the while getting my ass handed to me by players trying to earn that bizarre “kill-then-/hug-emote-the-corpse” achievement…

No Christmas cash-in on the cards, it seems, as the (global, no less) release date stands at the 20th Feb 2009. As well as hitting the real-world shelves, it’ll also be arriving at online outlets in the shape of a digital download – although I can’t imagine it being a petite chunk of bandwidth you’d need to expend for a title like this. I guess those with internet connections from the stoneage should stick to their local highstreet if they want a Sims fix.

Along with the regular, run-of-the-mill version being sold that day, those of you with money to burn will be able to get your mitts on a Collector’s Edition release. What does the extra moolah buy you? A Plumbob USB Drive with matching Green Carabiner, in-game Italian-style sports car, a tips and hints guide (which I assume will be page after page of hot tips on what to do if your Sims have a tendency to urinate in every room of the house except the bathroom) and Plumbob stickers. Hmm, no artbook or soundtracks? Meh.

In case you’re wondering what the hell a Plumbob is, it’s the little green diamond thing you’ll have stared at for hours on end if you even dare call yourself a The Sims fan. Anyway, all the facts and a healthy dose of ’sales pitch’ can be found in this press release.