All of the cute things featured in the Midnight Deep Dive

Last week we got an extensive preview of the upcoming Midnight expansion across the board, and that included many fleeting glimpses of cuteness. While a majority were companion pets that I would like to add to my collection, there were a variety of different forms of adorable things that we’ll be able to seek out in the next chapter of World of Warcraft.

We start strong with a baby hawkstrider chick. We’ll be dealing with the aftermath of this hatchling after it “goes wild”, which sounds like a series of quests where we’ll be chasing down this fiery feathered friend while cleaning up after their antics.

As a Blood Elf main, I would already do absolutely anything to add this chick to my pet collection. The glowing golden eyes are a fantastic finishing touch for those of us who are eager to see how the story of the Sunwell plays out in Midnight.

There were multiple subspecies of a new bird model with a curved bill and curiously insect-like wings. A yellow light-based one could be seen in Eversong Woods, and a green-and-purple version featured in the overview of Harandar. I would say that they fall on the lower end of the cute-meter with their slightly dumpy appearance and overly spiky head, but I’ll reserve final judgment until I can see them in action. Perhaps they are the adorably clumsy pollinators of the native plants of the new Midnight zones.

These weird little leafy rhinos made a very quick appearance in the Harandar preview, trundling along a riverbank. They seem like they would make perfect companions for Haranir Beast Mastery Hunters, but I would certainly add one of each color to my pet collection. Unless those bright spots on the tails are additional eyes, in which case they are disqualified from the Midnight cute Olympics.

This strangle little fellow from Harandar seems to be part frog, part dragon, and part flower. I’m not sure how cute a creature can be if it doesn’t have any eyes at all, and if this one turned its head and look at me to reveal beady little peepers then it would score high on the adorable scale. An eyeless graboid face, though, would probably result in an instant revocation of its cute certification.

Included in the deep dive was a look at all of the Druid forms that the new Haranir allied race can take on. The travel form is a decently cute little weasel creature, and the stub-nosed underbited bat flight form made me smile. The major headline here is that we were promised a pangolin form, and we are getting a long-tailed slightly-quill-adorned bear.

We have already seen a large, beautifully-scaled pangolin model in test footage, so we’ll just have to wait and see if there is some way to tank the new dungeons as a weird cute scaly anteater, or if we have pangolin at home with this furry wannabe. Stay tuned to Blizzard Watch for the latest on this important developing story.

I really like the little aerial jellyfish that we see in Voidstorm and Harandar. I’m a big fan of questing while being accompanied by a pet that floats alongside me. I’m going to give the cute advantage to the purple-and-blue subspecies, because the green one’s adorable little antennae are more than cancelled out by the fact that you can see through straight its head — and that gives me the collywobbles.

During the Zul’Aman section we see that the Amani trolls are often accompanied by lynx pets. In isolation, the potential for more kitty companions would rate lower than usual right now since we just got a plethora of cute feline companions while questing with the Hallowfall Arathi, who also have an affinity for these tailless furballs.

The reason that I’ve popped Amani lynxes onto this list is that they appear to have the ability to dance. In a shot of several trolls showing off their impressive choreography, a lynx can be seen in the background tapping its paw and swaying its head. If even just a very small number of Hunter or companion pets have this sort of animation added into the game, it opens up some really exciting and cute possibilities.

We’ll finish on a bonus cute entity that was revealed in the Developer Q&A that came just after the Midnight deep dive. Behold: Fi’lo, the Loa of Children. Even if “all powerful capybara” wasn’t atop your must-have list for the next expansion, we will all hopefully get to assist this well-dressed snooter with some quest lines revolving around the kids of Azeroth.