Fishing etiquette
The weekly fishing tournament is taking place this afternoon in Stranglethorn Vale, and I'll probably be in attendance, hoping desperately to catch the last rare fish I need. I'm often intrigued by the etiquette that comes into play in different parts of the game where people are thrust into close contact with one another, and the fishing contest is one of the more interesting examples. For instance, in my experience, most other players will leave you alone if you're fishing from a school, such as the Highland Mixed Schools in Terokkar Forest. I've often seen fellow crawdad seekers flying low overhead, but they have always moved to the next spot once they noticed my presence. On the other hand, the weekly contest seems to be a no-holds-barred match, with people fishing wherever they can, whether or not you claimed the spot first. Personally, I try to avoid fishing in the same school as other people as much as possible, even during the contest. How about you?
The other intriguing dilemma for me involves twinks. If you weren't aware, the Lucky Fishing Hat is a quest reward and thus has no level requirement to wear. This alone makes it desirable by twinks in the lower brackets, since there are few other readily available hats at that level. What makes it especially attractive to them, is the nice amount of stamina it has. Because of these factors, there are always several level 19 characters running around the beaches of Stranglethorn on Sunday afternoons, dodging pirates and raptors, trying to catch the rare fish that will award them the hat or boots. Usually they bring along a higher level to escort them around, but sometimes they're trying to go solo.
For me, it's always funny to watch the little guys running from countless pirates as they seemingly aggro the entire zone just by stepping out of Booty Bay, but I can imagine it must be aggravating for them. The other day I was asked by such a player who was in an all twink guild (and therefore didn't have any higher level guildmates to escort him around) if I would protect him while he fished. I politely turned him down. What do you think? Should I have offered to help him out? As far as I know he wasn't offering any sort of compensation. What would you have done?
