TLDR: TBC Hunters after weeks of preparation, coordination and commitment could tame a blue ghostly looking wolf. GTSG became one of the OG “clever use of game mechanics” that was hit with the ninja nerf bat weeks later. This was after the devs said it would “remain tamable”. If you want to see what it looked like head over to Petopia for all your hunter pet information needs.
For those of you who were not there. GTSG is the Grim Totem Spirit Guide that was summoned by the Grim Totem Shaman in the revamped Dusthallow Marsh zone. It looked like the wolves in Shadowfang Keep. For a short time it was marked as a beast and tamable. The spawn would vanish after 8 seconds. Tame beast was a 20 something second cast.
Industrious hunters decided to find a way to cut the cast time of tame beast down enough to tame this unique (more on this later) pet. In the end it required specing Marks to spam TSA, stacking haste gear, staking haste enchants, socketing haste gems, eating haste foods, getting a specific meta gem, finding a Priest to MC the NPC, getting a Shaman for BL, a Leather Worker for Drums and if you played on a PvP server as many friends as needed to secure the area. That was all before you had to coordinate the MC to time it with your meta gem proc off of TSA spam.
The original “challenge tame” that was added to WoW in later expansions.
As far as I am aware I was the first Ally hunter on Illidan to tame GTSG. It will forever be the greatest personal achievement in a game. It was also the most fun because it involved so many other people and so much risk. Many people in an MMO coming together to achieve something in game… what a concept.
I could pull up the original post but I am being lazy right now. Basically the devs said that while “unintended” the taming of a GTSG was a “clever use of game mechanics” and that they did not intend to remove it from the game.
Then comes the ninja nerf. Two weeks after that saying it would remain the GTSG was removed and replaced with an untamable version. A true slap in the face. The reasoning that was offered up after a legion of angry hunters hit the forums was that the wolf did not “fit the hunter pet style” because it was ghostly.
Many of us found it odd because throughout the lifespan of Vanilla there were multiple unique ghostly pets that hunters could tame. Most famously the Ghost Saber an invisible spirit or ghostly looking spotted white cheetah that was also a spawn. There were even see-through pets in the Outlands that hunters could tame. The Angered Arakkoa Protector comes to mind. It was also summoned by an NPC when it was near death. It was also blue, and it was also transparent. It was never made untamable because it did not “look like a pet a hunter would tame” in fact you can go tame it on live servers right now. The same is not true for GTSG. The same goes for all the other old school see-through pets. To add insult to injury years later a Rare Spawn Exotic pet was added to the game that used the exact same model as GTSG. Many more see-through pets have been added since.
I want the Classic TBC experience. I want to gather a team of friends to help me once again complete one of the most epic tames this game has ever (though unintended) allowed us to do. It was a higher challenge and more rewarding than any of the challenge tames that officially came later.
FYI it was like level 25 when tamed and I had to be level it up all the way to 70… no pet level matching back then. So that took a long time too. While I was not the first to tame I was for sure the first to level GTSG up all the way up.