Comments on: 3.3 Fishing

By: James

James — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:10:08 +0000

OMG this is very disapointing :( why have they done this :O I can’t belive it :/ so really anyone could fish up the turtle mount without even having fished anywhere before :O thats just silly! I went through hours of gameplay to up fishing! Spent days going round lil zones fishing and grinding… and now… oh anyone can fish any pools :D HUUURAY wtf !

One of the whole fun parts of the fishing was the leveling! You go through all different zones discover new parts of the game… and they just want people to have everything straight away… do nothing and get everything!

Great message to the world Blizzard :/ kids are going to love this!

Very unhappy about this… very poor

By: el

el — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:04:13 +0000

You're not missing anything. Fishing gear and skill now has very limited use. Skill 1 is all you ever need to fish pools. You will always catch a fish from a pool, regardless of skill. There are some fish that can only be caught from open water. A few achievements. And one very important detail: Fishing pools wasn't popular. Before this change, pool fishing accounted for less than 1/5 of catches. Anglers here see things differently. But in practice, pool fishing was the exception. The question to ask is, why have fishing skill? Many complain that it was never skill anyway - just a grind to raise a number to 450; a test of patience. And for "hardcore anglers", the real accomplishments are catches like Pinchy or the Sea Turtle, or a win at Booty Bay. Often those could feel more like leveling to 4500, not 450.

By: Brynthe

Brynthe — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:30:36 +0000

Wait, so with this change to fishing, anyone can successfully fish anywhere.. I now don’t understand the point in leveling fishing or having any +fishing gear anymore then.

Am I missing something? Forgive the confusion if this has been explained in detail somewhere, I’ve been away from the game for a bit.

When it says you won’t catch junk, does that mean you won’t catch anything? Or does it really mean, if you cast your line, you’re pulling back a fish, regardless of skill?

If so, this is a terrible change as it removes the need to level skill at all. Might as well just remove the skill and just let people have poles to fish when and where they want.

By: el

el — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:19:03 +0000

At fishing skill 1 you will always catch fish from any pool, anywhere. Including Northrend.

By: spiros

spiros — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:13:20 +0000

i cannot understand, If you are level 1 in fishing can you fish at pools and catch a fish in northerd. Succesfully?? Is that right? I cannot believe. Plz post your answers

By: el

el — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:45:16 +0000

mj – Thanks for the suggestion. Some drop down menus will appear in the next week or 3. The menus have also increased in size slightly (unfortunately any larger breaks the current design on small screens – 10% of visitors still view on 1024 pixel-wide screens).

By: mj

mj — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:39:45 +0000

Hi El,
Just felt compelled to tell you what a wonderful guide this is (apologies if this is not the right place to post this). Yesterday I had the question “how does fishing work?”, and usually when I have a Wow question of that nature I stumble through 5 well-intentioned guides and sort of cobble together the answer that I’m looking for. You guide answered every question I had (and the ones I didn’t know I had) effortlessly. It’s arguably the best Wow guide on any topic out there due to it’s superb instructional design. The only constructive feedback I have to offer is the toolbar navigation is weak (it’s built for advanced users, small text with keyboard shortcuts). To make it newbie friendly (and newbies are constantly looking for guides) it could instead have giant drop down buttons i.e. a “start” dropdown with the options of “why fish”, “your first catch” etc. For real, great job, and thank you.

By: el

el — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:31:43 +0000

Mark – there was a change to the skill-up formula a few patches ago, which I assume is what you are seeing at about 285 skill (a skill point every 5 or 6). However, if that pattern continues after 300, that’s new.

By: Mark Dugas

Mark Dugas — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:30:03 +0000

Skill ups are now faster as well. I was waiting for the boat back to Howling Fjord so I cast my line while waiting. At 285 skill I should of been getting a skill up every 9 or so casts. I was consistently getting it on my fifth

By: Blaen

Blaen — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:46:51 +0000

Following 3.3 I can (unfortunately) confirm that the change to pools/schools has been implemented and even a level 1 fisherman can now successfully fish from any pool in the game.

I still feel very strongly that this is quite possibly the worst move Blizzard could have made with regard to fishing. The only redemption I see would be if fishing in Cataclysm is overhauled in such a way as to make open water fishing the preferred source of fish rather than pools as now.