I used to hate, no abhor, fishing in WoW and to be honest it’s starting to swing back that way again.
I grew to enjoy it for a few reasons.
- It was slightly more productive than doing laps of Dalaran.
- There were achievements, lots of achievements, most of which could be scored while doing relatively productive fishing.
- I could plop myself somewhere while waiting for LFD or BGs to pop. No risk of missing queues and little movement required.
- While the activity itself had only moderate rewards as in achievements, it was the resource that could be quickly converted into a useful feast for the raid or BG (yes I popped a fish feast in most BGs – why not?)
My joy for fishing has dwindled a lot. The achievements, two of then, are pointless and unless I spend my time fishing in pools which are few and far between (or phased /sigh). I can’t even cook up the latest fish feast (for another 4,000 fish).
So as that kinda-joy dwindled I was tricked by otherwise sensible bloggers such as Miss Mediocre (who in every other sense writes great stuff) to try Archeology.
I know I am going to offend a lot of people with this next statement, but Archeology is as bad as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Tine series (may he rest in peace).
Don’t get me wrong, for the longest time I was a huge fan, I even joined a Robert Jordan MUD for a while. Working in a bookshop I was constantly calling the Australian distributor to find out when the next one was due.
But that series shares some similarities with Archeology.
It was boring as dog shit to begin with.
My mate actually gave me the 1st few to read. I remember calling him about 100 pages in to tell him how mind numbingly boring the book was. He told me to wait until 1/2 way through the 1st book and then it would take off.
He was right and just like Archeology where the first hundred points were frustratingly boring. So much so that Squidly stopped at about 50 and Gnome only continued to his relative ease of getting around with teleports.
But then it took off and I was hooked. A pet here a mount there, Archeology was awesome!
Unfortunately Blizzard announced my guilty little pleasure with Achievement spam.
I honestly didn’t want anyone to know, but my secret was out. I know I am not alone in feeling dirty either, Tree Hugger Dave came clean with a whisper before being outed by Blizzard.
So for a while, Archeology was like the Wheel of Time series, exciting, fresh, random. Some days it was all fossils, others all Dwarf, but the variety and the little (completely freaking worthless) rewards kept me excited.
Excited enough to ignore other aspects of my playtime life. In the same way I couldn’t put down a Robert Jordan novel until it was completed, even if that meant reading 24 hours straight, I found I was ignoring raids, instances, BGs and Arenas to get that next fossil fix.
Then, like the Robert Jordan books, I started to feel it was same shit, different day.
The love scenes were agonizingly bad. The “Rand will know how to talk to a girl” bullshit seemed to fill one in 10 pages. I would cringe as I picked up each new book and read the same words uttered by different characters over and over and over and over…
Likewise with Archeology, it soon became “same common, different digsite”. It wasn’t worth flying across half the world to dig for 3 minutes for NOTHING!
Let’s not even mention how many times chasing a “red” fragment, I would fly to and fro along the same path until I was sent in a completely different direction… not funny!
Just as I would wait with great impatience for the next novel as the release date blew out (I know in hindsight this may seem like bad taste, but around book seven I started to say to my friends “Bloody Robert Jordan will probably die before he finishes this f’n series” – like I say, poor choice of words in hindsight), Archeology rewards started to become rarer and rarer, not worth the effort and quite simply disappointing when they came.
Not just the rewards, but the digsites that could provide the rewards. Over a week and a half of digging I discovered 2 Dwarf and 1 Night Elf digsite, while turning over tens, hundreds it felt like, of fossil and troll digsites.
All for pointless commons I had already completed so many times before.
The true market value of Archeology
So I have given up on Archeology and as I do I find the one value in the profession, as I did with the Robert Jordan books.
I sold the books, I got money in my pocket and I turned that into better entertainment.
Hordeside looks better than Allianceside
Likewise I have sold my keystones, 500 gold per Tol’vir keystone… Screw keeping them, let someone else suffer Archeology nightmares, I’m buying something fun!
Now I laugh at the cries of anguish from my mates while they chase fragments.
Sure I could chase them too, but I would prefer to grasp tightly to little sanity that remains.
Gnomer and Out!
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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2011/04/11/the-one-thing-worse-than-fishing/
You should read the new WoT books by Brandon Sanderson. He’s doing an amazing job finishing the series.
I was wondering if there was any improvement under his authorship… but you see, I think the magic has gone for me now.
It would be like leveling Squidly in Archeology if they announced more epics which are easier to get, I don’t think I would go through the pain to level to get the chance at the pleasure.
That was one of the biggest problems I had with the series. As it became more and more convoluted, I had to reread the series just to understand what had happened before… I don’t know if I could do that again.
Then again… I was out fishing for hours the other day… anything is possible.
I’m at 120 into the Archy grind, and bored as hell. The only driver for me is the BoA gear that you can get. Given how rare they are, I’m guessing I could be better off just drinking into oblivion every night, rather than flying around Azeroth.
A side bonus is that I execute every npc I see along the way and could be becoming infamous for wrecking the leveling experience of others. If the NPCs have killed me in the past, then I BloodBoil on the run through. It leaves a nice path to get out quickly.
drink yourself to oblivion, or reroll lock.. Ohh you have one of those, reroll mage
I tried to make it more interesting by one-shotting everything… but then I realized the pleasure was in one-shotting things, not running around with a stupid relic misdirection tool.
Though I was hooked at first, Archaeology really was the final nail in my WoW casket. Once I’d found every rare in the Eastern Kingdoms except the Troll’s Destroyer of Worlds, it changed from a nice relaxing pass time to a kind of horrible repetitive torture…
There really should be a warning when learning the profession, “Caution, may cause you to abandon your account!”
Now I spend all my time searching for artifacts in Rift, lol.
Oh oh oh.. yes.. the more I dug, the more I hate WoW… it took a good week of no Archeology to recover.
Maybe we are digging to deep and unearthing some Lovecratfian mind melting insanity.
If you are hating WoW AND doing Archeology, it probably isn’t WoW that’s the problem, it’s most likely Archeology
LOL, awesome analogy! I chased Jordan’s carrot over the course of 6 books until I threw in the towel – something which only few other fantasy series have achieved with me as a reader. I cannot share any of the WoT-hype out there, there are so SO many better authors and series where you don’t feel like little content is being stretched on purpose so the series will never end.
Anyway, archeology was a little bit like that for me too, and just when I gave up in disgust (also, stopped wow entirely), the fickle goddess of RNG decided to toss 2 epics at me – too little too late (for reference you can find my “lady rng hates me”-blogpost on my page)!
Sad to hear you have stopped your writing and your WoW, but very happy to see you are still about.
Looks like a few of these digsites are cursed and have claimed a few adventurers where bosses couldn’t.
I have found the secret to making Archaeology fun again. Start doing it on another toon. THAT toon doesn’t have the mount, pets, toys … bonus for doing it on a non-max-level toon, you get XP for it as well.
I *should* keep doing it on my main (who has the Vial of the Sands) because I still need Tyrande’s Stupid Doll and Zin’rokh but … bleh.
LIEZ, there is no secret, you have been seduces by the lure of commons and a really easy pet and mount.
I wanted the vial until I realized the creation of the mount was going to be an additional torture.
ha – i’ve been spending a lot of time doing archeology in recent weeks, and i actually rather enjoy it. i’m at 425 right now. i have a couple items, and the raptor pet, but i really want the mount (which i call the Chickensaur, which makes more sense if you hear it).
i find it a nice thing to do (combined with fishing, which may be doubly insane to you) while waiting for queues or guild runs, or if there’s otherwise nothing important going on. i make it a bit of a mini-game by trying to not aggro or having to kill anything — sneak in, get the goods, get out.
i admit it’s frustrating as hell when it sends you on a red signal all the way across the area, and then BACK again (ARGH!!), or makes you travel in 3 or 5 step increments in almost a perfect triangle to find the item. but i dunno, i guess i’m weird for liking it. it’s a perfect way to work on guild fishing achievements at the same time.
The red signals are a big hint… they are in reality stop signs!
Obey the stop signs!
I can’t believe you made it to 425 without the mount… they really have you by the big balls of fire.
I tried to mix it up with fishing, but I found they weren’t even compatible.
Haha, I couldn’t agree more on both counts. I made it to max archaeology on one character and I swore to myself I’d never do that again. I’m the first to admit that I started skimming parts of WoT around book 5, especially the political parts, but you jumped ship too soon. The last two books have been freakin amazing! I can’t wait for the final book. They were smart to choose Brandon Sanderson to finish it up off of Robert Jordan’s notes.
Sounds like I might have to check out these new books… the question is, what gives while I read them… blogging or WoW… if I stop WoW will that in turn stop me blogging?
Are the books that good?
R. Jordan’s Wheel of Time is the same story told 12 times, new book = new cover artwork and little else. I’m just embarrassed it took me 3 books to realize(accept?) it, ah well what can you expect from an WoW player pressing the same buttons to kill the same (if re-colored) monsters over & over again . . .
touche!
I like the idea behind Archy, but it just seems poorly implemented.
I really hate that you already know what you will discover.. it’s just kind of backwards to me.
They should make it where you can specialize in 1 type of archeology, and be able to get a small increase in the number of fragments plus be able to “spawn” 1-3 digsites per day in that type.
I was also disappointed the 1st time I realised I already knew what I was going to get… as if I needed more dis-motivation…
Yes, if I could spawn less fossil and Troll digsites and more of, well anything is better than that crap, but specializing would be great (until I got the epic, then I would be spitting and cursing again)
It’s a bit of a case of don’t dig won’t dig for me. Oh sure if I’m passing through the Troll homelands I might stop to pick up a voodoo doll or so. And of course I desperately want the DPS caster staff buried somewhere in a Dwarven treasure trove. But archaeology bores the hell out of me after about two digsites at a go.
As much as I dream about being the troll Indiana Jones of WoW (that Harrison Jones is a hack) the truth is you need to keep digging up pots as a ‘I’ll do it if I pass one’ hobby rather than hunting across the length of a continent for your next fossil fix.
Ofc if they gave me a whip, a cool leather jacket and a custom brown fedora then maybe I might change my mind.
I have tried the “I’ll only do them if they are on the way somewhere” trick.
They are rarely on the way to somewhere I want to go.
They are the ones that end up with 3 sets of red signals, which take 3-4 digs each, and I dig the item where I started from.
Easier to pretend they never introduced the profession and like WoT, the problem is if they do “fix” it, I am already soured from the experience.
From what it sounded like to me, you were sticking to Eastern Kingdoms. If you really want Night Elf just go to Kalimdor. I swear every site out there is Night Elf.
But I still haven’t gotten my trinket >.>
I tend to find Arch relaxing. I have it maxed out on my druid and am leveling to 80 with it on my rogue (I refuse to level in Northrend again). I like to use it to catch up on my reader. I play in window mode so it is easy to have a window open with a blog and have my toon auto fly to the next dig site.
I’m a Mage… I’ll go anywhere, but while I had a pile of elf digsites leading to 525, they have dried up too.
I got to 525 using that technique of doing something else… but at the end of each flight was a digsite and frustration.
It’s all good. I was going to give up smoking this year, instead I will give up Archeology… I think it’s worse for my health in the long run.
[...] fabulous article from Gnomeaggedon compares Archaeology in WoW to the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. A hugely entertaining read and absolutely spot on, striking a lot of cords with [...]
I appear to be the only person who is stuck with more dwarf sites than they know what to do with. I should almost level Arch again just to hope for better luck in finding troll sites. When it takes 30 minutes (or more) for one solve something is wrong.. Come on 4.1!