4981

Hey, I like my flying machine, my rocket boots, my wormhole generator, my mobile bank, my awesome goggles… ;)

4982

The difference, of course, being that those folks on Moonrunner aren’t having their arms twisted to do it. They are doing it willingly. Scary that.

4983

Oh come on. Grabbing a gathering + crafting profession (or even Enchanting/Tailoring) allows you to make nifty things and level your professions as you level.

No grinding or stressing out required.

4984

And as JM noted, anyone that does not have a maxed out Engineer, is missing out on some really fun stuff.

…oh and I like fishing…:/ But then I am a big believer in cooking buffs too. And achievement points.

4985

I got mine fishing in a pool in Deepholm two or 3 weeks after Cataclysm was released.

4986

It is pretty much exactly as bad. You have to pay a little more attention, but it is still boring. At least with fishing you can read a book at the same time. Plus with arch you have to fly around all the time to get to the next depot, which is super boring.

4987

No, you have it backwards - when fishing, it’s tedious but you have to pay attention or you miss the bob.

With Archy, you just set yourself to auto-fly to the next dig site, and then you can read/eat/watch TV or whatever while you fly. When you get there, you get your frags and move on to the next site. It’s a handy time-filler, and some of the rewards are actually really good. The caster trinket is awesome, for example, and there are raid-level epics available for several slots, including weapons.

4988

Flying around isn’t all that exciting but mostly passive. If you had to fly and stare at the screen waiting for your mount’s ears to twitch in order to get a fragment, then it’d be a fair contest.

As it is, the actual work involved in Archaeology is OK - it can be diverting trying to work out where stuff is likely to be once you’ve been to an area a few times - and the rewards blow fishing out of the water. Skeletal mounts? Epic weapons? Fun items to turn yourself into various things or summon little cutscenes?

4989

The ~10 unique rewards you’re capable of seeing (good fucking luck, though!) from Archaeology are all neat, yes. The problem is, Fishing has ~10 unique rewards as well, plus all the normal stuff you catch is actually worth something.

To break that down:

Archaeology: 1-5% chance to get something worth a damn per combine, requiring ~7 gathers for you to actually attempt a common combine. You get 3 gathers per site, so expect to fly to two or three sites OF THE SAME RACE, which are randomly generated and might not even be the same race you want. Absolutely 0 guarantee or way to get a rare. If you don’t get a rare, you get something that vendors for 25 silver a pop and get to start over.

Fishing: You’re guaranteed to get fish no matter where you are, which can be cooked to level cooking, get achievements, and later on be used in fantastic raid-wide buffs. You can seek out pools (and now track them!) for a chance at rarer stuff, which rocks a ~1% drop rate but remains hella cool, like the Sea Turtle or Mr. Pinchy. There are quests to earn guarenteed rewards, like the Kaluak fishing derby and the chance of a +5% XP BOA ring, or just a bag of prizes otherwise.

Fish are often valuable – Alchemists and Cooks often seek them out to powerlevel, Deviate Fish let you make Savory Deviate Delight (required by every BoA PVP twink or bored level 85), and fishing up eternals/volatiles/etc are always a steady source of money.

You can fish almost anywhere – every zone I can think of has water, or at least a pool, in it (maybe not Silithus)?

Fishing is (almost) instant. No stupid hot-and-cold minigame is necessary to gather a single fish.

You don’t require a 310 mount to Fish with any sort of efficiency, unlike Archaeology. Nor do you have to fly back to the other end of the continent every 10 minutes.

In conclusion, Fishing >>>>>> Archaeology. The only benefit Archaeology has over Fishing is the insane XP reward you get from collecting a find.

4990

Changing next patch; it’ll bring in significantly more gold.

I agree with you all; Fishing and Archaeology both suck.

Oh, by the way, yesterday marks the first time I’ve had seven straight smooth-as-silk Heroic randoms. And by randoms, I mean I queue as healer on my Druid alone.

Yesterday was Deadmines, always a fun time, but we cleared it in just under half an hour, picking up the Van Cleef Vindicator achievement for the other 4 people (I’d already gotten it).

A couple of people die each run for whatever reason (pulled aggro, stood in Cloudbursts, failed at boss mechanics), but the past week has had not a single “fail” boss wipe, though we did intentionally wipe a couple of times to get achievements, and only a couple of people who needed to be kicked for being unwilling to play their class.

(As an example: I had a Hunter in Grim Batol who was pulling around 4k DPS. He died twice on the first boss after I explained it, because he didn’t move away when Blitzed. When I suggested he not get hit by it, he told me to stfu, that it was just a game, and called me a tryhard elitist crybaby. So we kicked him.)

I spend a good chunk of most pulls DPSing (Moonfire each mob! Throw a Wrath or two!) and the only CCs I call for are on casters, because they’re harder for a tank to keep under control. Kinda feels like Wrath again… I actually miss the first couple weeks of Heroics, when trash was srs bizness and bosses were a learning experience.

4991

You’re massively overstating the rarity of Archaeology items. I levelled it to 525 and did it for about a week after that and ended up with a mount, 2 epics (albeit of limited usefulness), a pet, and 3 or 4 “fun” items. The same seems to be true of my guildmates.

Your definition of “instant” is pretty different to mine, as well. The fishing mechanic is horrible.

4992

They are both quite awful, it is true, but I like fishing more because I can do it for a couple of minutes and make some “progress”, while with arch it takes a while to even get to a site.

They should really just replace fishing with some kind of Bejeweled minigame that would ensure that you are at the keyboard without insulting you with its total lack of complexity.

4993

I’ve probably chimed in with this opinion before: Fishing is 10x better than Arch and it’s still awful.

They’re both poorly though out grinds; the only difference is that archaeology requires some level of paying attention. I can fish while being all but afk and watch a movie / read the internet / etc etc.

4994

Ah, see, that’s what I can’t do. The fishing mechanic requires me to pay attention as it’s reaction-based (well, mostly).

Anyway.

So, um, how about those heroics?

4995

I feel really sorry for you. Not in a patronizing way, just… that must have been miserable.

0-525 here with roughly 25 extra combines trying to get Zinrokh. I failed to get it and haven’t looked back. Raiding is faster.

Based on how tedious and miserable Archaeology is, would it really be so gamebreaking to be able to trade in finds on currency to ‘buy’ something else?

I mean, if you already have the Raptor mount and get another one, would it be so wrong to be able to “donate” it to your faction’s museum for some kind of currency? Commons could give you 1 point each, Blues 25 and Purps 50. You could buy stuff with these points – anything from the other Archaeology stuff to simple vanity things/stuff to make getting the Archaeology achievements easier (like Professor). Or hell, Rep with a museum faction that has a vendor that sells this kind of stuff. It’d be another way to remove gold from the economy…

At least it’d be more like fishing then. One find is always worth something, be it the gold you hawk it for or the reward you get for donating. And sometimes you get badass rare stuff.

4996

If it was miserable, I wouldn’t have done it. I don’t dislike the mechanic and it makes for a soothing counterpoint to the stress of doing raids.

Based on how tedious and miserable Archaeology is, would it really be so gamebreaking to be able to trade in finds on currency to ‘buy’ something else?

At least it’d be more like fishing then. One find is always worth something, be it the gold you hawk it for or the reward you get for donating. And sometimes you get badass rare stuff.

Well, they’re making the drops worth more gold. So there’s that. And the uh badass rare stuff.

4997

When I fish I usually turn the sound on the PC way up and then just watch a movie on my laptop. That way I can just click when I hear the sound.

4998

Bloody failpugs. Why do I bother? Wiping 6+ times on anapret because the idiot DPS (one DK who is wearing healer plate shoulder) don’t move off the voidzones. When I point this out, I get licked and my lockout wasted. Average DPS for the group is 4k.

Kicked. Not licked.

4999

You can only get each blue & purple once. So you’ll never get the Raptor mount twice. (on the same character. If you’re insane enough to do archaeology on 2 characters, you could get it again on the second character.)

5000

Did my first heroic today. Throne of tides. The first time I do that dungeon on heroic is also the first time I don’t get instagibbed by those fucking dark fissures. How does that make sense?

Of course, I made up for it by dying three times to blight beasts before it was explained to me that I wasn’t supposed to be getting hit by them.