There are many things that a player can do in World of Warcraft. One of the things you can do is go fishing. It seems to me that very few players would identify fishing as one of their favorite things to do in Azeroth. Many people find it really boring! Personally, I find fishing in WoW to be relaxing. This is especially true if I am fishing on a day when my allergies were bad enough to require me to take prescription allergy medication.
The arrival of patch 5.0.4 brought a (somewhat) interesting change to fishing. You no longer need to actually have a fishing pole in your possession in order to fish. Click the little icon that shows a worm on a hook, and a simplistic fishing pole will magically appear.
It took me a while to realize that this change had occurred. Like many of you, who have been playing WoW since “Vanilla”, I’d gotten used to the idea that I couldn’t fish without a fishing pole. I always had one in my bag, and would automatically go equip it before I tried to fish. So, that’s what I did. Back in my day… we needed a fishing pole to fish with!
It wasn’t until “Pirate Day” that I accidentally realized that I no longer needed to equip a fishing pole in order to fish. One of my alts, a Dwarven Priest named Bradenna, was done hanging out with the pirates and needed something else to do that might help her level.
She never had a fishing pole, but I didn’t remember. I clicked the fishing icon, and she started fishing – despite not having a pole. Instead, she was holding her staff in the manner that one would hold a fishing pole. There was a bobber I could click on, but no fishing line connecting it to the non-existent pole. I figure this was a glitch, and have not seen it happen after that day. Instead, my toons are using a twig that they found at the side of the lake as a pole.
There are advantages to not needing a fishing pole anymore. Few things were more annoying than being in a situation where you wanted to do some fishing, but had no fishing pole to equip. You couldn’t fish without it! This meant heading for your bank to get the pole and then going all the way back to where you wanted to fish at. In the days before flying mounts, this was very time consuming!
The alternative was to constantly carry your fishing pole with you, and let it take up bag space. This posed another problem when your bags filled up while you were out killing stuff. Not needing a fishing pole gives you one more empty bag slot that you can fill with something more valuable.
How many of you have forgotten to equip your weapon and/or shield after you got done fishing? That next mob of monsters you ran into seemed a lot more difficult than you expected them to be. Oh, right… it’s because you are bopping them head with your fishing pole, instead of stabbing them with an actual weapon! This new change means that there will be fewer people running around a battleground, blissfully unaware that their weapon is actually a fishing pole that they forgot about.
