red cow rise: [Shared Topic] Rats and Turtles and Pinchy, oh my!

31 March 2012

[Shared Topic] Rats and Turtles and Pinchy, oh my!

I'm slipping in just under the wire for this week's Blog Azeroth shared topic, suggested by Stringtheory of Perish Twice, who asks:

Fishing is an odd sort of minigame in WoW and people I’ve talked to either love it or hate it. So what’s your take on the most grindy of sports?

There's a lot to like about this topic; for one, the title is evocative of The Wizard of Oz, which was my favorite child movie. Finding the perfect ruby slippers has been one of my lifelong goals. Then there's the fact that it's about fishing, meaning fish, which reminds me of my fishing jig. (Yeah, I sing Strong Bad songs when I'm fishing. I also give pep talks to my eggs when boiling. Are you really surprised?)

Catch this, nerds!

In meatspace, I have zero interest in fishing. When I was a kid my dad used to walk me and my brother down to the nearby pond and try to teach us to fish. Mostly, he would fish while T and I threw bread crumbs at the alligators that came to investigate our activities. ("Ok, so you hold the pole like this and wait for the fish to bite!" "DAD!! I hit that one right in the nostril!") We never caught any fish.

WoW fishing is mostly a means to an end. The end of course being achievements, or more importantly, loot. I love my fishing pets! I get just as excited about them as I do any other rare or highly coveted drop. Fishing with a goal, be it to catch a rare fish or stock up on cooking mats, is the only way I can get myself to fish for any extended period of time. It can be nice to crank up a podcast or my sweet karaoke playlist and while away the time, but fishing is a slightly more annoying sort of grind in my opinion. When you are camping something, you can basically set up shop, turn up all the sounds, and walk away from the computer. When you are grinding something, you have to move around either looting or killing, so you are always doing something. Fishing is the worst kind of wait, where you have to actually pay attention, but aren't always doing something. Mostly you're watching the bobber and waiting for it to move, and hoping that your stupid ears pick up the sound before the cast ends. Then there's the maddening dance to get your bobber to land in the stupid pool! You'd think they would have worked out some sort of targeting system that makes your cast gravitate towards the pool, rather than cast about willy nilly like you've got all the time in the world to cast 5, 6, 7 times until you finally land the pool. Akabeko has maxed fishing and a sweet fishing-buff pole; why can't she hit the damn pool on the first try? DO I NEED TO BE HITCAPPED FOR THIS?!

Ok rant's done, time for silly photos.