A Gift of a Fish ? clearcasting

(Clearing out my email and found this piece I had written and sent to myself back in October.)

As some of you may be aware, my mother plays WoW.

Growing up, I watched her devour Nintendo games with a feverish passion.

The entirety of the Zelda world was carefully mapped out, square by square, on a pad of grid paper. Every inch of every screen was bombed and flamed, the results meticulously noted.

Then she discovered strategy guides.

Castlevania was cleared.

Numerous princess were found to be in other castles.

Games I had never heard of and have long since been forgotten were conquered. I remember lots of side-scrolling RPGs that made little sense but the graphics (at the time) were magical.

In short, my mother was a gaming fiend.

As I grew older, I moved away and we spent less time talking.

Then I started playing a game called Rappelz. It was a free game (until you start getting into those damned microtransactions!) and something we could ?do? together.

I moved to WoW. And eventually got her an account so that she could follow.

Sometime between the Marios of my youth and entering Darnassus, my mother lost all game-sense she ever had.

So when I say that my mother plays WoW, she literally plays. She explores and gets lost and dies a lot. But she has fun.

I?ve nudged her here and there to correct some fairly obscene misconceptions (No, warlocks do not need to stack agility ?to run faster?) but have otherwise let her run amok on her own.

With the introduction of Mists of Panderia, she has been heartbroken that we couldn?t get her the expansion immediately.

I thought about it and the only thing she?s really missing is the capability to roll a monk.

Pet battles are already in.

Creating a panda is in.

Level 85+ content would matter ? if she had a character above 62. She still hasn?t been to Outland, let alone Northrend or any of the Cata zones.

I?ve been dragging my Horde DK through Pandaland (so much easier in plate with self-healing than on a mage, even with an ilevel difference of some 50 points) and completed the quest that rewards Fishy.

Now I have 2 Fishies.

Fishy is awesome and all, but I bet everyone and their mother (except mine) will have a whole school of Fishies by the time we?re done leveling alts.

So I had the bright idea to gift Fishy to my mother.

I even went the extra step of leveling it up to 4 so she would have a bit of a boost.

Get her to log on.

We don?t have many characters on the same servers anymore since I?ve moved around a bit.

Gave her Fishy.

You are not high enough level to learn this pet.

Wow, so you can?t even learn the pet to summon as a companion if it?s trained. I think this could have been better thought out.

Drag her to the pet trainer.

Except her only toon on this server is level 1.

Can?t learn pets until level 10.

I relearn level 4 Fishy and we log on to a different server.

I?ve got a level 20 bank alt that can cage Fishy.

She gets on her level 55 warlock (all in level 40-ish gear? with attack power? *cringe*) and take her to the pet trainer.

I have no gold resources left on this server. Her warlock doesn?t even have a single gold.

She hops around and finds a character with some gold.

Learns pet training.

Still can?t learn Fishy.

Drag her around Org leveling up a random pet and completing the introduction quests. She even captured a rare quality pet.

An hour later, she is the proud owner of a level 4 Fishy.

She had an absolute blast and is really looking forward to more pet battles.

Now if only I could get her to level 90 and she could learn to farm.

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Source: http://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/a-gift-of-a-fish/

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