I've been leveling up fishing lately (hit 373 last night, along with 375 cooking, thanks to El's great guide), and I've actually found it pretty fun. It's a little too boring to do it without something going on in the background (last night it was the Cubs game, as depressing as that was), but it's kind of fun just to throw a line into some random water or pool and see what comes out. That said, the rewards could use a little tuning -- while events like the STV Fishing Tourney are fun (I've done it twice now and haven't won it yet) and offer some nice items, fishing itself even at the highest levels just isn't as rewarding as, say, running dailies or Heroics. The only reason to run it all the way up is really just to say you did -- while there's a promise of a Mr. Pinchy somewhere out there, there's no real fishing endgame in the way that there is for the rest of the game.

Which makes Qann's suggestion intriguing -- he says that high level fishers should have access to certain areas via boat that offer them tougher fishing challenges, and better rewards for it. A boat could shuttle you out to a remote island or location, where only certain fish could be caught or found. And we don't even really need a boat -- just more events like the STV Extravaganza (where certain fish that appear in special pools can be turned in directly for items) would be great. And why is it that the best items obtained through fishing are apparently scrolls? Why can't we fish for Badges, or even have a fishmarket, where fish can be exchanged for gems, crafting materials or other rewards?

Even Blizzard admits that there's a lot of work to be done for fishing, but it doesn't seem too hard -- if they're giving out epics for holidays, fishermen and women who make it up to 375 should deserve some good loot for their hard work as well, whether it's through Deep Sea fishing, keys that will unlock special chests, or just a vendor that will take all of those Barbed Gill Trout off your hands and give you something worthwhile in return.

Well so much for the honor wipe. As you can already see from the comments on that post, players have all kinds of opinions about this -- some believe that Blizzard should have gone through with the wipe, giving everyone a clean slate as the expansion started. Some players disagree, saying that honor is honor -- if you earned it, you should keep it. Some players are unhappy that the prices for level 80 items are going to be raised as part of the non-wipe, leaving new players in the dust. And even other players are just angry because they listened to Blizzard, and already spent the honor they thought they were losing anyway.

So the question this morning isn't how you feel about the Honor non-wipe, since odds are you've already expressed that. But it is: where do we go from here? Are you going to step up Honor farming in the hopes of picking up new, expensive items right away at level 80? Or are you just done with the system completely, and planning to worry about what's available at level 80 when you get there?

You should keep in mind that for all of the gnashing of teeth, we still don't know for sure how rewards will worth in Wrath -- Tigole has even said that tuning is still happening, and so any tweaks Blizzard may make might actually turn out to make the whole thing easier on everyone. But now that you know the Honor isn't going anywhere, what's your plan before the expansion?

Shellyw has a good question on the forums: what quests do you always skip? Blizzard is pretty good about the rewards system -- even if a quest is a pain to get through, they'll usually make the reward worth it. But there are quite a few quests in the game that just don't have anything you want, and just aren't worth the time putting into them.

Green Hills of Stranglethorn is mentioned early on in the thread, and I couldn't agree more -- any of those collecting quests I usually just give up on, as it's usually easier to just sell the pages off inside that zone to someone who is actually doing the quest. I often skip a lot of group quests as well, especially while leveling. While the rewards for those are usually very good (and they're often the end of long chains, which means both XP and items that come from them are great), it's often tough to find a group, so they usually sit in my quest log until grey and then get abandoned.

And occasionally, especially when I need space in my quest log for newer quests, I just plain skip anything that doesn't give an item that I need. If there's a choice of quest rewards, and none of them fit my class or spec, I'll just abandon the quest entirely to replace it with a quest that works better for me. What quests do you find skippable? How do you do triage on quests when your log fills up?

I was somewhat puzzled when the first pieces of PvP gear started showing up in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta. The traditional 5-piece set of helm, shoulders, chest, legs, and gloves (as well as the weapons) were of blue or rare quality while the non-set pieces normally obtained through Honor -- bracers, belt, and boots -- were purples or epic. The blue items were tagged 'LK Arena 1' items and the purples were tagged 'LK Honor' items, which were easy enough to decipher.

However, MMO Champion uncovered an epic quality 2-handed mace tagged 'LK Arena 2', which is a rather curious item considering the game files already have LK Arena 1 2h Mace. What does it mean? At this point, not much. A lot can change from now until Wrath finally goes live, but if we were to put some weight into the item nomenclature, it might indicate that Blizzard plans to tier Arena gear similar to how they plan to create two separate tiers for 10- and 25-man dungeon items.

Just in case you wanted to know what the deal was with Arena ratings as we all headed to level 80, let Bornakk clarify for you -- while level 70 rated fights will still count, levels 71-79 are back to skirmishes, and rated fights can only happen again at level 80. And while Bornakk doesn't mention season timing at all (does Blizzard ever, beforehand?), our guess would be that they'll hold off on announcing any new PvP items until a good number of people have had a chance to level up to 80 and get situated in the brackets -- of course, depending on how fast people level up, that could be pretty quick.

But he does say that there will be no more new level 70 rewards, so what's out there right now is what you get. What we still don't know is whether Arena points from level 70 will carry over into the level 80 bracket, or whether there will be a complete reset of all the ratings and totals for the new bracket. There are good arguments for both sides (some players want a fresh start, while others don't want their winnings so far to count for nothing), but so far we haven't heard anything official yet.

So there are still a few things for Blizzard to decide with the higher level Arena system, but they've got time -- it's unlikely that they'll make people rush to 80 just to get involved in the Arena. It seems that when these next ten levels of content come out, Blizzard will switch some focus back to PvE and battleground PvP rather than the Arena game.

Zarhym, provoked by a pretty lame whine about two new Arenas and only one new BG in the next expansion, is expounding a little bit more on what Blizzard wants to do with World PvP and Lake Wintergrasp in Northrend. Ever since the zone was first announced, Blizzard has said they want to have it be the pinnacle of their world PvP experience, fixing all kinds of problems, from getting players involved to level imbalance to actual PvP rewards.

And Zarhym says it's still on track to do al that -- he specifically mentions that they've designed the battleground zone to supposedly be impervious to problems with realm imbalance, "trivial at the endgame," or "forgettable because of a lack of incentive." So if you hold a lot of faith in what Blizzard's working on, that would mean Wintergrasp is meant for 70s, has functionality that doesn't necessarily require a lot of players on both sides (siege vehicles come to mind), and will have an extensive rewards system (we've heard before that it may be token-based and equivalent to the level of current Arena gear).

If Blizzard is doing everything they promise to with Wintergrasp, it should be a sight to see for sure. A world PvP event that adds the permanency of the Auchindouin rewards with the mechanics of Halaa and the epic feeling of the old Southshore/Tarren Mill world PvP battles? We can't wait.

I was away at E3 last week when the big news dropped about achievements coming to Wrath of the Lich King, but that doesn't mean I'm any less excited about them -- I am a huge fan of achievements on Xbox 360, not only because it's really fun to see what other people have and haven't done in game, but because they definitely extend my own gameplay. Despite the fact that the only reward on Xbox Live is meaningless gamer points, I often find myself going the extra distance in games just to earn those achievements, and considering that the achievements in WoW will actually offer tangible rewards like tabards, titles, and whatever else Blizzard can dream up, I'm all for them.

Of course, the biggest question players have asked so far is whether or not the achievements will be retroactive. The short answer is: yes. The longer answer is: most of them will be. Starting with Wrath, Blizzard is going to be tracking an astounding number of things about our characters, and obviously some of them haven't been tracked the whole time -- it'll be very hard to determine how many yetis, for example, that you've killed, and so something like that will likely not be retroactive. But it's easy to know, for example, whether you've turned in a quest or killed a raid boss, and so that stuff will almost assuredly be retroactive.

My guess is that Blizzard will tune some of the old world achievements to make them more easily checkable (i.e. instead of "Kill 1,000 Furbolgs," it'll be something like "Be Exalted with Timbermaw Hold" -- something they can very easily know about your character). In the future, we'll probably have a few more silly achievements (Blizzard is already working on implementing a few more in-depth stats). And the real question is how/if this will all be shown in the Armory -- if websites can determine guild progress just based on the gear characters are wearing, imagine what we'll be able to do with all of this achievement data.

Any poster that leads off talking about how Feralas is her favorite zone is a friend of mine. Cuppycake (great name there as well) has an excellent post up about questing in WoW (warning: some NSFW language). On the one hand, WoW quests are repetitive -- most of them are either "kill 10 rats" or "be my FedEx guy" -- and they don't tend to tie in to or have lasting effects on the broader story of the game (the current Shattered Sun story excepted).

But on the other hand, it's very fun (Cuppycake uses a different word than "very"). It's a bit hard to put my finger on it, but WoW quests (most of them, anyway) have that little extra something that makes for a very satisfying gaming experience. It's like getting a star in Super Mario Galaxy. A small fragment of lasting achievement is enough to make it feel worth doing to me -- as the post says, an objective is what I need. Give me something to work for and I'll do it, as long as it feels like I'm making progress, and it isn't too slow (I'm not the best at rep grinds).

Relmstein has a good post up about how Blizzard's world PvP has evolved over time, and what we might expect from Lake Wintergrasp, the PvP zone in Wrath of the Lich King. When world PvP began, it was very much an ad-hoc environment, which lead to a lot of 1v1 battles that eventually escalated when wandering guildies or alts showed up. As Relmstein says, the large majority of battles started with that stealthing noise (that used to inspire chills in the spines of those on PvP servers), and ended with an all-out brawl with no rewards but to get the other guys back.

Nowadays, world PvP is much more organized, in the sense that there are specific objectives and goals to go after. The original reward was a zonewide buff (in Silithus and the Plaguelands), but Blizzard eventually morphed this into something more permanent -- in Auchindoin, you fight for a buff that earns you tokens for rewards, and in Halaa, you fight to get the rewards themselves.

Which leads Relmstein to suspect that Wintergrasp will have direct rewards of its own, almost equal to the gear you get from endgame dungeons and Arena PvP. He predicts that it will be token-based (not a bad idea, considering all the badge changes Blizzard has put in lately -- in fact, Blizzard might even cut a corner and have Wintergrasp reward players with WotLK's version of badges directly), and that it will be updated with each Arena season, to keep players fighting there. All good ideas -- Blizzard has definitely innovated (successfully or otherwise) in the area of World PvP rewards, and we'll look forward to Wrath to see what they come up with there.

Believe it or not, there is actually someone out there who wants Blizzard to bring back the old honor system. You remember: the system where you had to slave away for hours and hours (and hours) day after day (after day) in order to get anything epic -- especially the "Grand Marshal" or "High Warlord" epic weapons. Apparently, Pahs thinks that the time sink the old honor system required proved a deeper dedication on the part of the players who went for it. Nowadays, anybody -- even people with jobs(!) -- can just earn up their honor points and spend them like money, when, according to Pahs, such folks should be content to "talk to a few friends and maybe do a BG or two." He says, and I quote: "Why people with real life responsibility's want the same treatment as people who can input more time into the game is beyond me."

Yet a surprising number of posters in his thread agree with him, citing the number one problem with the current system: the appearance of AFKers in all the battlegrounds. Naturally, it offends our sense of justice that AFKers can get honor gear for free by having their characters sitting in the battlegrund leeching off of their teammates, while they themselves don't have to put in any effort at all. In the previous system, players would have had to actually kill the enemy and win in order to progress past rank 5 or so. Likewise, the old system's ranks and titles were fun -- people always like to be able to distinguish themselves from others, though whether for a genuine feeling of achievement or some kind of "Better than thou" badge, depends on the individual.

But going back to the old honor grind in order to get rid of AFKers would be ridiculous. As Tyren says, the newer system, with arenas and objective-based world PvP in addition to battlegrounds, is a vast improvement. It provides more access and variety to more players, and exchanges time for rewards at a far more reasonable pace. What we see in this case is a classic example of people reminiscing about the "good old days," which were never really that good to begin with, simply because frustrating problems have appeared along with the improvements. As much as we all may hate AFKers and other new problems, it's much better to go forward and find new ways to solve such problems than to go back to such an unbalanced system with far more serious flaws of its own.

There's a good little tip on the forums for anyone starting out a Horde alt (maybe to take advantage of the new leveling changes)-- do your 10-20 grind in Tranquilien. As long as you're thorough, you can pretty easily get exalted with Tranquilien (the rep flows freely), and there are some incredible rewards for doing so. Tranquilien Champion's Cloak is the best you can get, and +7 Stamina inside of level 20 is amazing.

Just shows how far Blizzard has come in rewarding up and coming players with the items they need to level faster. You've always been able to get rep from other starting areas, and these rewards have been around since Burning Crusade (so this is only news if you're just now starting another alt). But it's cool to look back on all these changes-- increased rep per quest, a new starting area, and better reputation rewards, and see how they all work together to give lowbie characters lots more fun stuff to play with.

We're now in Arena season 2, and in theory, those in the top 0.5% of their battlegroups should have received the 310% speed armored nether drakes as a reward for their prowess. However, there seem to have been some...issues with their distribution. According to this thread and the above picture (thanks for the tip, Robodex), the drakes have been making their way to well over the mandated 0.5% on the European realms. Whereas according to several threads in the US forums (still down), people that know they should have received their drakes are not getting them. Blizzard's looking into it:

We're currently in the process of investigating instances where the end-of-season rewards may not have been provided to teams that should have received them. As we're still in the process of collecting information and investigating we're unable to comment at this time on what exactly occurred, or if there was indeed an error in how the rewards were provided based on the stated criteria.

We'll provide more information as soon as we have a clear and final idea of what the issue is and how it will be addressed if necessary.

Do you have an armored nether drake? Are you supposed to?

Along with the Skettis Skyguard, there's another new faction to grind for in 2.1: Ogri'la. In my search for the elusive ogres, I was sent down to the Lower City by a quest giver in Shattrath's Terrace of Light; from there, the next step is to zip up to the Ring of Blood in Blade's Edge and talk to an ogre there. (Side note: the journey was hilarious, as epic flying mounts on the PTR are currently bugged to flutter their wings insanely fast when you fly forward.) I didn't follow through after that, because all the "real" quests to gain reputation with the Ogri'la ogres appear to be 5-man, and the thought of pugging with four other random PTRers was a little daunting.

Never fear, though, I did go over to Ogri'la to snap the above shot and check out the rewards, which you can see in the picture after the cut (not composited by me; my pic was much worse). The prices of all the gear are in Apexis Crystals and Apexis Shards, which I assume drop from whatever it is you have to kill to get Ogri'la rep. If it's anything like the Sporeggar, getting the required reputation level is much more difficult than getting the turn-in tokens. Oh, and there's a repair vendor there, which is always pleasant. Ogri'la is located in the west of Blade's Edge, between Forge Camp Terror and Forge Camp Wrath.