Ah, the eternal question: “What’s the best pet?” that so many hunters tend to ask, hoping for a very specific, magical answer for the one in-game beast that they should tame to meet all of their needs. Usually it starts off like the video does: “which pet is the best for raiding?” …which usually really translates to “which pet is the best to have with me at all times?”

This is probably the best treatment of the question I think I’ve ever seen. Well done.

I admit I’m a bit biased here because my main is a hunter, and I also admit that I’m biased because I haven’t gotten into the Cataclysm beta yet, but this video preview from Frostheim (originally posted at his WoW.com hunter column) had me all but salivating for the changes we’ll see coming in Cataclysm.

The changes to the stable interface and some of the new animals you can tame are great, I really dig the new pet “stay” command (especially since I’m known for pet sniping in PVP), but above all else? Flying in Ironforge, kids. It’s so on.

Over at io9 (and a couple of other sources, namely Next Nature, which first reported the story, to my knowledge) I’ve caught wind of an amazing story about a 12-year old boy who used skills he picked up in World of Warcraft to save his sister from a moose that was attacking them.

We so often hear stories of people being killed and video games getting the blame instead of the actual person who committed the crime or their mindset that I think it’s more than worthwhile to highlight a story where some of the tricks that a child picked up in a video game wound up saving his — and his sister’s — life.

Here’s the scoop:

Hans and his sister got into trouble after they had trespassed the territory of the moose during a walk in the forest near their home. When the moose attacked them, Hans knew the first thing he had to do was ‘taunt’ and provoke the animal so that it would leave his sister alone and she could run to safety. ‘Taunting’ is a move one uses in World of Warcraft to get monsters off of the less-well-armored team members.

Once Hans was a target, he remembered another skill he had picked up at level 30 in ‘World of Warcraft’ – he feigned death. The moose lost interest in the inanimate boy and wandered off into the woods. When he was safely alone Hans ran back home to share his tale of video game-inspired survival.

Absolutely incredible. I’ve never been more proud to play a hunter. Now granted, it could have backfired and the child could have died, but from a wilderness and survival perspective? The kid did exactly what you’re supposed to do. This kid wins at life, and is a hero – I just hope he gets word of how far and wide his popularity has spread.

One of the best things about playing a hunter is the fact that when you really know what you’re doing, you can be really really good at PVP. Admittedly, I don’t claim to really know what I’m doing, but I do have fun when I choose to hit the battlegrounds and open fire on players of the other faction.

In this video, Funkin, a hunter with a hankerin’ for PVP, heads into Wintergrasp while it’s under enemy faction control and decides to have a little fun with the people hanging out inside and some of the PVP-enabled NPCs. Admittedly, the damage he manages to put out is impressive on its own, but the way he manages to time his shots and take down other players is what really makes the video fun.

Oh, and the music, of course! Who doesn’t love Chromeo’s Fancy Footwork?

Of all the classes and characters I have, the only class I have more than one of is the hunter. My main is a hunter, and while my first character wasn’t a hunter, I quickly gravitated to the class and wound up playing one up through 60 during vanilla. When my friends and I changed servers during Burning Crusade, I was hesitant to transfer the hunter I had put so much energy and effort into, so what did I do? Roll a new hunter on the new server to see whether or not I wanted to stay there.

That hunter quickly became my main, and I even wound up transferring my other hunter (along with a number of other characters) to the new server. Whenever I log in, I default to my hunter, even though I would love to spend a little more time with some of my lower-level alts who desperately need some time and attention, and would change up some of my gameplay and give me some variation in the game. Still, I love the hunter class, and I love playing a hunter. Why? It’s simple – the hunter is probably one of the most dynamic, most accessible at entry but challenging at the end classes in the game.

People go on and on about how hunters are easy to level and every piece of gear is “hunter gear,” and while I think the former is true and the latter is on purpose, they’re both very positive things. The hunter is probably one of the classes in the game that’s the easiest to play through and the easiest with which to experience the game, and the easiest entry-level classes to play. At the same time, the hunter is probably one of the most challenging classes at the end of the game to play really really well.

The fact that everything is “hunter loot” is a double-edged sword – it opens the door to hunters being able to wear just about any weapon, debate whether their own mail is better than leather designed for rogues, and so on – but that’s the beauty of it – you may be able to wear anything, but that doesn’t mean that everything is good for you. It’s very easy to trip yourself up wearing something that looks good but kills you in a different way. The hunter, especially at end-game and in raiding, is one of the most cerebral classes, where talent builds, glyphs, enchants, and gems all make the difference between being a good hunter and a great hunter; doing good DPS and doing amazing DPS.

It’s those challenges, combined with the ability to really soar through the game at lower levels and make tangible improvements, makes the hunter probably the most attractive class in the game for me. The hunter “experience,” as in leveling the class, experiencing the game through the eyes of the hunter, is probably some of the most well defined experiences in the game, and not nearly as disjointed as some of the other classes where you just don’t feel like the way the class plays through the game ties well into the way Azeroth is evolving.

That being said, there’s something to being essentially a ranger with a pet; playing two objects at once – being able to send in your pet and do damage from far away, and being uniquely able to solo encounters and battles that other classes simply can’t do alone.

The hunter is one of the few classes in the game where it’s easy to play, takes some thought to be good, and takes a lot of thought to be great. The difference between the low-end hunters (the so-called “huntards”) and the high-end hunters who are proud of their skills and abilities (and make no mistake, I know plenty of high-end hunters with great gear and great raiding experience but still only a half-idea of how to play their classes, meaning they’ve gone through the motions of being great, but they just fail at thinking so they’re stuck at the back of the pack) is huge – moreso than just about any other class.

Plus? The hunter class is just sexy. I mean really, come on. Admit it.

So what’s your favorite class? Which class do you just love, no matter which class is your main? Shout it out in the comments!