So besides the stealth nerf to mages in patch 4.0.3, we also had another change come into being for a "known bug" that made a lot of Frost Mages pretty excited after patch 4.0.1.  Yesterday I log into my mage and go about doing my dailies and killing elementals to run the special invasion bosses, and I notice my water elemental's name is gone and has reverted to "Water Elemental" again.  Immediately, I looked up the command for the rename and I get an error that tells me I cannot rename my pet.  I'm distraught.

So immediately I scour the patch notes for any comment and see nothing.  I try right clicking.  I ask my mage friends, who are just as stunned and disappointed as I am.  I even went so far as to put in a ticket and petition to a GM to find out what was going on.  Due to a high volume of petitions, I didn't get my answer till today and I was told that the ability to name your water elemental in 4.0.1 was a "known bug" and was fixed in the patch this Tuesday. 

I can tell you I'm more disappointed than angry.  Naming your water elemental gives you a little spark of uniqueness in a world where that is rare.  The number of Frost Mages that popped up after the changes was astounding and I'd like to think that each one put forth a good bit of effort and thought to name their pet, since you were unable to change it once it was done.  I won't say that I thought for hours about the name I chose, but it was special and unique to me and my water elemental had a little bit more personality because of it.

I think what bothers me the most is why Blizzard went out of their way to fix this, when there are a number of other bugs that need addressing.  I'm not complaining that we got a little nerf (all our spec bonuses are down from the 25% they were before to 10% for fire and 15% for Frost and Arcane).  After the patch hit, we needed it frankly.  Mages shot up into the realm of ridiculous DPS, taking over the charts and leaving a lot of other classes in the dust.  But this just seems so unnecessary.  Does it really take up that much data room for a water elemental to have a unique name assigned to it?  It seems to me that any other pet class with a permapet has a pet with a name instead of a generic identifier.  Though warlocks and Unholy DKs don't get to pick the name directly, there's still a little unique flavor there.  And if it's such a bad thing to have to juggle, why do hunters get to name 20 unique pets?

Sure when our water elementals were not permapets, it made sense not to let us name them.  I get that.  It was a temporary summoned creature.  But now we get one from level 1 all the way up to cap.  So why not just let us name it?  Those of us who RP get a chance to tell a story with the name, something that's indicative to the elemental's personality.  We bond with it after 85 levels, so why wouldn't it have a unique moniker?

Rather than whining, bitching, and yelling, I'm asking, Blizzard.  Please give us our Water Elemental names back.  To my readers, consider this an open letter to Blizzard, a petition for a little twist of individuality in a sometimes dull world.  If you agree with what I've written here, please follow up with a comment and a /signed.  Feel free to put your character name and server if you like.  Even if this gets us nowhere, we can at least say we tried.