I have A.D.D. I have no medical evidence to back this up. Nonetheless, I’m confident that it’s true. My RL friend Matt once told me that a shiny object could distract me from speaking to a supermodel.
I’ve had very clear goals for my top two WoW toons recently: make a ton of gold selling Darkmoon Cards of the North on Predatore and level Devv to 80. After dropping 5000G on Predatore’s Epic Flight, he’s back up to 2600G. Devv is halfway through level 74 and she’s done nearly all of the quests in Grizzly Hills. She just might move into Zul’Drak early. So far, so good, right? Wrong.
Yesterday, I took a quick peek at Predatore’s skills to see how high his First Aid was. I noticed that his cooking was at 4/75 and he had never even learned fishing. I think you can see where I’m going with this.
I played WoW for approximately four hours yesterday. Nearly all of that time was spent fishing, cooking, and traveling. At the end of the day, Predatore’s Fishing was at 176/225 and his Cooking was at 225/225. He has all of the items necessary to complete his Artisan Cooking quest. A quick journey to Tanaris will open things up to 300 when I get home tonight.
As if leveling Cooking and Fishing wasn’t enough proof of my A.D.D., I actually got distracted during my distraction. I decided to travel to Orgrimmar to try to get The Fishing Diplomat achievement. With no means of going invisible, I’d hoped to take out the guards, haul ass to my fishing spot, and hope for the best. I never made it past the front gates.
I spent about 35 minutes dueling Horde toons, flagging, un-flagging, making corpse runs, and watching duels. By the time I left Orgrimmar, I nearly forgot why I was there to begin with. I finally hearthed back to Dalaran and took a port to Ironforge so I could fly to my next fishin’ hole: Arathi Highlands.
When I got to Arathi, I was pretty focused on catching 40 to 60 Mithril Head Trout. I caught about 12 of them when I saw the yellow message “Refuge Point is under attack.” Oh, Hell no!
Needless to say, I high-tailed it to Refuge Point, killed the level 41 Tauren Druid, then corpse-camped him twice. I probably would have done it more, but after the second time, he had the good sense to wait five minutes to rez.
Defending Refuge Point reminded me of my time spent leveling Devv through Arathi Highlands. I had one quest left to turn in before I was done in the zone. When I got back to Refuge Point, some level 70 Horde toons had slaughtered all of the NPC’s. I had to sit and wait a few minutes before the questgiver came back. When he did, he was promptly killed again.
A combination of that memory and my three recent kills put the taste of blood in my mouth. That was all the motivation I needed to gallop off to Hammerfall and slaughter everyone. A level 40 Blood Elf Mage was approaching one of the NPC’s as I killed him. I can only assume that he was trying to turn in a quest. It must have really pissed him off because it prompted him to flag and attack me… a level 80 Death Knight. Bad choice. I killed the misguided Mage a total of four times.
My Fishing would probably be closer to 225, but it’s just so damn easy to get distracted. At least with Cooking, you stand in front of a fire and cook everything you have in your inventory. It’s quick, painless, and easy to level. Before logging, I got the Catch 250 Fish achievement. I don’t care what people say. Having the patience to watch the little bobber bounce 250 times in one day is an achievement. I’ll take a “gratz” for that one.
So, Predatore still has 2600G and Devv is still level 74. After an entire day off of gameplay, I’ve made no “real” progress. I think my best bet is to get both professions all the way to 450 right now so I don’t get tempted to step away from my goals again in the near future. I really want to get Devv to 80, then get both her and Predatore geared up. I’m confident that I can stay focu… hey, that guy looks like Newman from Seinfeld!
Ten Days in Azeroth 