I haven't fished in Retail since that time back in 2024 that I'd speculated whether you can level while fishing in the same manner that you can gain XP by gathering ore and herbs.* It had been a while, and my fishing experiment back then was limited to one of my old Horde bank toons and a visit to the pond just outside of Silvermoon**, so I figured why not go fishing at the pond near Goldshire?
If there's one thing I've discovered about fishing in Retail, it's that you have to pay attention to the mobs near you. You can't simply outlevel them and their aggro radius then shrinks to nothing; that'd be too easy. No, you have to find a spot where you know the mobs aren't going to be close enough to aggro you as if you were either at or slightly underleveled for the area.
Hence the pond outside of Goldshire.
If it were Classic, as soon as possible I'd be over at the creek near the logging camp for the peace and quiet, but some of the mobs there do wander close enough to the Alliance guards near the road that I'd have to pay attention rather than simply relax, so the outskirts of Goldshire it was.
Of course, that did come with some risks.
Such as dodging a bunch of Horde who'd decided to drop in and say hello...
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| I guess they wanted to have some fun too... |
And then once I arrived at my spot, I discovered that I hadn't trained fishing yet...
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| This is after I "trained" Classic Fishing. |
The old system still found in Classic WoW is really simple: line go up. Once you reach that maximum for an expansion, go train and you can make the line go up even more. This new system? It confuses me, and no amount of explanation can soothe the disquiet in my soul that says "nothing in this game matters except where they want you to be."
At this point, why don't they simply have a "Train Fishing" selection to train the skill itself, and eliminate the leveling process entirely? The cost in gold is absolutely minimal*** so why not do away with it entirely for the secondary skills in the same way they eliminated weapons training in Cataclysm, over 15 years ago?
But I digress.
Once I trained Classic Fishing, I then had to actually find the skill to add it to my bar.
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| It's not where it usually is in Classic. |
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| It's in its own separate selection button. Before anybody says that it makes sense this way, I'd like to point out that the option above this one is still called "Spellbook" even though those selections have absolutely nothing to do with spells at all. |
Okay, after having found the Fishing option and added it to my bar, I had to go back to the vendor and acquire a fishing pole, then return to my spot. Again, the Horde made it entertaining, because I was obviously not flagged for PvP**** but they did try to encourage me to do so by waggling in front of me. If I were truly a new player, that would have freaked me out in as much the same way as it did back in 2009 when an Alliance max toon found me while questing in Tirisfal Glades on the Stormscale PvP server and weaved around me to the point where I simply hearthed out of there. But now? Eh, no big deal. And besides, if I'd have given them a few rude gestures that might have encouraged them to follow me.
I finally arrived at the dock once more and began fishing.
The fighting got close enough that I even acquired a Moonkin buff...
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| Is this a global buff that is proximity related? I obviously wasn't grouped with anyone, so I did wonder. |
And once in a while an Alliance toon just popped up next to me, curious as to what I was doing, but since I never got a whisper or an emote I ignored them, and they went away.
Were it not for the ongoing PvP just next to me, I'd say that it was fairly quiet overall, and that suited me fine. I might level this toon a bit more just so I can go over to the dock in the far SW of Westfall (assuming it's still there) and fish there, because it's not only out of the way but also far enough from any mobs that they're not going to crash my party. At least I hope so.
*Spoiler alert: you can't. Fishing does not grant you experience in Retail.
**Saying you're visiting Silvermoon is now as complicated as visiting Dalaran. If I'd a dollar every time I saw somebody I knew on BNet playing Retail being in "Eversong Woods" or "Silvermoon" and thinking they were starting a new Blood Elf, I'd have paid off the mortgage on my house.
***See how my L12 toon without any amount of trying at all has almost 5 gold? If this were Classic, you'd be lucky if you had ONE gold by the time you went to Westfall.
****Or warbands or whatever they call it now; it'll always be PvP in my book, because it's pretty self-explanatory.
EtA: Corrected grammar.
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