Pipre <Deadly Salty>, 1 year ago:Yeah, only 52 drops per year, and many people try to win at least twice.
#3 should be two different reasons though since the fishing tourney and Mr. Pinchy are only related because they both require fishing skill.
Well, that and the fishing tourney gear helps, but is not required, to catch el Senor Pinchy.
I fish because i love collecting rare and unusal items and mini-pets to brag about to my guildies :)
I fish to relax after a long raid and have a chat with my friends.
I fish because of the food buffs some of the consumables give, my guild loves me for them, I'm the Guild Fisherman.
Im 100% into Twinking so fishing just happens with the STV Fishing Contest. I can honestly say that it has definately grown on me though. It is pretty relaxing and now love to do it.
Getting Mr. Pinchy is next on my list of things to fish.
When my boyfriend at the time and I got together, WoW had just finished the beta and released. I wasn't a gamer and wasn't interested in playing WoW. But one day, my bf asked me if I would level up his fishing. So he parked me in Darnassus with a fishing pole and I fished there for 4 hours. I was hooked.
He got me my own account even though I asked him not to. I'm fond of saying that my relationship with WoW lasted longer than that relationship. I have two BT/MH raider characters as a pally tank and a shadow priest which is time-consuming and demanding.
But I still try to sneak away to fish because
1. I can handle guild officer stuff and chat without killing a group in an instance.
2. I enjoy gathering cooking materials
3. I enjoy the surprise element of a catch.
4. It's not about GCDs or how much haste rating you have. Its simplicity is something that most people write off as boring. It's a meditation of my "surroundings", a time and place where all your focus is on the bobber and the basic joy of a catch.
5. Unlike RL fishing, WoW fishing is not at all demanding; it's free of extraneous factors like timing of the tides, stabbing hooks in fingers, and tangled lines.
6. If you miss a bob, there are very little consequences, unlike raiding :)
I've been playing WoW for 3 years now and I started fishing about 6 months in, I firstly started because it was relaxing and i wanted to max out everything possible on my skills page (which i have accomplished) but after the expansion i was the only person in the guild who had the max fishing skill so a couple people in my guild hired me to fish for them, it worked out nicely at 15g a stack for what ever they wanted, i was able to save up the 5000g for my epic flyer and now i farm primal waters over the elemental plateau.
When I first started wow, fishing was the only secondary skill I didn't level, because in my ignorance, I thought it was a mini-game that required quick reflexes.
The lure of a magical crawdad pet was what finally convinced me to take up fishing.
I wish I had leveled it from the beginning, as it's a great source of hunter pet food, and an easy way to level cooking.
I fished throughout my 60s to save up for a flying mount, and then to start saving for an epic flyer.
I love the new fishing hat from the fishing daily!
One of these days, I will win the fishing contest--not for the pole (don't really need the extra +15), but for the trinket!
pinktoque <Angler>, 12 months ago:I also want to quote emma's post because it's worded so well:
"fishing is this neat little corner of the game that doesn't require the help of others and which not many people choose to pursue. "
I fish because it's fun and relaxing. It helps burn out from raids and I love the rare items that you can get such as Mr. Pinchy (working on #2 for my other char) or the Giant Sewer Rat. It's also a big money maker... if you fish the right things and level cooking along with it, you've got some much-sought-after goodies for the AH (or yourself and guildmates.)
I am absolutely obsessed with the fishing achievements in-game (thank you, Blizz!) and am working hard on my Salty title. I still need to win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza... I just haven't remembered in time or tried yet. I hope to win that someday! The excitement of getting into Ironforge as a Horde member to try for Ironjaw is also exciting.
I just really love fishing and always have! I've always been maxed on my fishing on all of my characters ever. That includes three level 70s and a 64 and 62. My main has gotten to 450 and soon I'll work on my other alts.
Fishing is my favourite! :) Thank you for this site -- it's such a great resource.
Al <Angler>, 12 months ago:It's fun.
It's relaxing.
It's financially rewarding.
It's something I can do in my pj's while drinking coffee (off hand) and smokin a cigarette (between catches)
... and when I have a day off from work, I can do an early morning fishing trip while listening to Imus on WABC's website.
I fish IRL.
Yoco <Salty>, 12 months ago:Originally, long ago, I picked up fishing to support cooking and alchemy. At that time 'gold' was not a valid reason to fish, there wasn't much valuable stuff to be gotten from fishing (and 'pools' didn't exist yet).
Gold is certainly a factor now. That changed when the repeatable quests to gain argent dawn reputation came (for the original Naxxramas), as well as the AQ opening event - some fish, notable stonescale eels, plated armor fish and lightning eels, suddenly became quite valuable. In TBC the buff foods you could cook from outland fish became quite popular, making fishing truly profitable. When a patch changed the cooking level-up profile to make high-end azerothian fish necessary for leveling cooking, those fish became very valuable quickly as well.
Currently I fish for three reasons. It is relaxing. It supports leveling other skills (on various characters): cooking and alchemy. And it can bring in some cash - currently not as strongly as some other activities, but I guess that will change when raiding is picking up again on my realm.
What I like about fishing is that it offers something that don't require you to adapt to raid times or finding tanks or anyone else. It's just all about what you want and when you want it. It also provides something that neither PVE or PVP fans can get -- it's an own category. For example I see countless of people running around with Hand of Adal or Guardian of Cenarius titles, but compared to my Salty title they're nothing. So far I'm the only one with it, which makes it special I think.
Also, fishing provides with exploring. That's my number one interest in games: to explore. Fishing makes you travel everywhere and fish every water. Be it small ponds here and there or the sea itself. Overall I think WOTLK and the achievement system added so much to fishing, and I love it.
The only thing I miss is some achievement for catching one of every fish in the game. It could reward you with like a lexicon of fish or something. That would be cool.
I started fishing just because I could, as a secondary profession it was ‘free’, no choices to make, bar one, you either take it, or you don’t. For me it was an easy choice to give it a go and see what it was like. I’d heard it was boring and not worth the time, but I’d also seen fish selling on the AH for the kinda money It took me all week earn.
I was only around level 10 when I started fishing, but after a bit of uneventful levelling in Silvermoon I was off to Ghostlands, here I fished up my first useful items, some health potions and some Oily Blackmouth. From this point on I was hooked, making money and finding useful items, great! It was also a relaxing break/change from grinding mobs for quests.
Playing hours not conducive to raiding, fishing turned in to a fun challenge for me, adding some long-term goals, other than reaching level 70 of course. Catching alchemy fish was a very easy way to pay for my first mount and fishing in general made a large contribution towards my epic.
Fishing has also lead me to my other wow hobbies, pet collecting and cooking. In the early days I was always wondering what was the ‘best’ thing I could ever catch? Then, when I found this site I saw what it was. As soon as I read about it my new goal in wow was not to reach level 70, it was get to level 70 so I could get that rarest of pets, companion of the dedicated fisherman, the Magical Crawdad!
For me there have been loads of reasons to fish, pets, cooking, buff foods, rare catches, paying the bills, but to answer the question, I guess the main one is ‘because I enjoy it’. I rarely fish for more than 20 minutes at a time, I tend to fish on a whim, if I pass an nice looking stretch of water I stop and cast my line for a while. I still always believe the next cast could be that special catch I’ve been waiting weeks for; it’s a simple pursuit, but it some how keeps me hooked.
I'm a hunter and didn't want to pay for pet food. I intentionally have stayed away from pets that do not eat fish (which prevents me from being able to pick up both the best tanking and dps pet). Even with the new changes to pet happines I still tend to run with them.
Now that it's not that hard to get pet food (and probably for longer than I care to admit) it's been about fueling the personal epeen. By suplimenting cooking, it's been a big reason that I've gotten cooking over 430. There's no cooking recipes to learn past 425, but I'm still trying to max it out if only to max it out. I'm still in BB every weekend, even though I know I have a better shot at getting ganked 6.9 times than winning the pole. Why? Cause I want to be able to fish up everything in the game without using consumeables and if I win, and get the boots and fishing line, using the hat fromt the daily I can get up to 575 fishing.
It's the same reason I had just about every possible weapon skill (other than thrown) maxed out before Wrath was launched. I want everything maxed.
Hmm reasons:
Mini-pets and acheivements -now-.
But originally it was due to being a completionist for solo stuff (I regretted that once they made quests reward gold at max level, all that ungained gold...) (This was back in 2005)
Another reason was to make nightfin soup for raiding back in the day.
Now I'm tired of raiding and I really just go for pets, mounts, acheivements, duoing stuff. Fishing works well with this. :P Also worked with doing it as I did other things I -had to- do IRL, like icky forms, made them less agitating.
I started fishing because my main character is a troll on a roleplaying server, and Darkspear troll culture in the game makes much of fishing [Sen'jin, Shadowprey, et ceter et cetera]. I continue fishing becuase (a) it is actually fun to see what I get, as fishing has some ... unusual drops, (b) it has a strong element of exploration to it, and exploration is fun as well, (c) it is a good "conversation starter" amongst characters on a RP server, (d) it continues to give a cultural "theme" to troll characters, (e) it fuels my alchemy....
I'm sure there are other reasons as well.
Triseult <Salty>, 11 months ago:I picked up Fishing because I realized it was very useful to level Cooking... So my first reason for Fishing was to maximize my buffs in raids.
However, since then, Fishing has become my favorite profession. It looks impossibly simple, until you start digging into it and really enjoying its intricacies. And it works like no other profession.
My top reasons for Fishing :
1. Low-involvement activity I can do on off-periods (say, waiting for a group to form for a run)
2. Cool, rare rewards that are too "hard" for others to get (say, Mr. Pinchy)
3. Excellent source of top-grade buff foods (Glacial Salmon, for instance.)
4. It's different; most of my guild doesn't care for it, so it gives me something unique and quirky to do
5. The Achievements are both very hard to get and very fun
Right now, I'm focusing on getting my last 4 Gold coins, then will try to get the Giant Rat. I still have to win the STV Tournament, which I attempt religiously every week. Salty beckons... I'm actually concerned that once I have the rat and Salty, I'll be out of things to do. :(
I started fishing back near the game's first release, when very few people made time to do it. I soon discovered it was a great way to level cooking, so I took to fishing for my guild. Then, as an Alliance Druid, I found I was pretty proficient at farming the Big Iron Poles and started handing those around as well. Soon I seemed to be doing it to the exclusion of everything else, and I felt like I had found a niche.
I think the "kid at Christmas" feeling of pulling up a chest (even knowing in the later stages what it was likely to contain) really goaded me on, and my (Dis)Enchanter loved the greens from the higher level pre-TBC chests especially. Then the STV Fishing Competition ... I dodged RL commitments so as not to miss any of those!
I'm a bit saddened that fishing has become just another notch on the Achievement belt, as people who otherwise never would have thought twice about it are moaning about certain aspects of it. There was actually someone in the EU forums just yesterday who was proposing some bizarre channeling effect where you knew from the moment of casting whether you had a fish on the line, presumably to save him looking to see if he had landed his bobber inside or out of a node ...
I think someone in these forums also speculated that the rare fish achievement would likely be pulled as the Mask achievement was withdrawn from Hallows End. Hallows End was a limited-time event and fishing is forever ... I fish *because* it isn't an instant gratification thing, and it rewards the patient ;-)
Triseult <Salty>, 11 months ago:I agree with Leonie! For me, I picked up Fishing when the Achievements came out, and I became curious about them. I'd say a big part of my motivation still is Achievements, but I wouldn't change anything about Fishing Achievements as they stand now... Even though I have yet to win the STV Contest!
Thing with Fishing is, it's a quirky, vaguely "underground" thing in WoW. People either love it or despise it, and being good at it involves having a dogged determination to do something requiring very little brain power over an extended period of time.
I definitely don't want this to change. I'm working towards Salty, and I'd feel cheated if difficult Achievements were taken out of it.
Not too long after beginning to play (nearly four years ago), fishing was a nice way to slow my leveling (because my friends had less time to play) and to get money through making Free Action Potions - back when gold was hard to come by.
Once I got into raiding, it was a good way make money, get +healing buff food, and relax after raids.
Now that I have a family of my own, I am a more casual player. Fishing fits in well when I only have a little bit - or when my attention is divided between WoW and checking in on a sleeping baby.
Honestly, I started fishing heavily because of El's Anglin... I had loved to fish in my old game SWG and when I came to WOW I tried it for a bit. After exploring most of the land masses (and dying in each and every one of them, there should be an acheivment for World Travelling Corpse) I decided to give fishing a real try, so with a quick google, there it was El's Anglin, a very well written, researched and fun site that made me more into fishing. I now have set my goals on the Salty title, but to date I have not ONE of the achievements. But I will, oh I will......
Nothing better than my gnome flying off to those HIghland Mixed pools in his stinky copter and then just chilling out while casting the bait....
My first fisherman was back at WOW's release where I wanted to max all the professions I could. Man, I remember spending a week fishing 4-6 hours a day trying to get the artisan quest fish.... I loved to fish on slow days while playing other games or waching amovie.
This time around I decided I needed another cook for the Dalaran daily cooking quest and a supply of fish would be nice for those high end recipes so I used fishing to level cooking on my up and coming druid. I'm sure I'll level fishing up on my current main (warlock) pretty soon as well just because I had forgotten how relaxing it is. And boy, it is easy to level nowadays.
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