Fishing!

So, I've been trying to top up fishing skills on my priest when I have some free time. As anyone who has done this at the higher levels will tell you, this takes quite a bit of time. If I'm doing this in an area where there is a lot of chat going on in general, or there happens to be a number of guildies on to chat with it's not too bad, but a lot of the time it's really quiet (the only exception being fishing in a major city, and ready trade chat, but one can only tolerate morons combining the word "anal" with randomly hot-linked in-game abilities for so long).

This has gotten me wondering what Blizzard will do about fishing in the future. There have been a few rumors fluttering around that changes are in store for the profession, but I have yet to see anything official. It wouldn't surprise me to see an overhaul to the way in which fishing is done, at least at the higher levels. If things continue the way they have been, a few expansions from now players will be casting hundreds of times just to go up one level, and that would just be silly.

It would be nice to see something done that brought players' focus back into the game while fishing. Half of the time I'm fishing in windowed mode, reading the news, and listening to music. When I hear the splashing sound of my line getting a bite, I switch back to my WoW window, and reel in whatever I've caught. If there was a way to work at getting fish, that kept me focused, and was fun, I'd rather like that. Final Fantasy XI's fishing system isn't too bad. Maybe that's something that Blizzard could look at. Who knows? As it stands, though, I can't see the current fishing system staying in use for much longer.