Fishing (and other skills) for recipes

On days when the beta servers are alive and well, I spend a total of 15-20 minutes on my live WoW account. I check the AH for some items I'm camping, and I complete the daily cooking and fishing quests (and maybe one or two other daily quests if there are quick ones nearby). Some of you who don't have beta keys may be horrified that I'd even consider spending time on such mundane tasks when I could be exploring new and exciting corners of Northrend, and you would have a point. Still, I find it vaguely relaxing, and it's nice to know that SOMETHING I'm doing with my gaming time these days is on a server that will still be up and running in 2-3 months.

These particular dailies are easy, and get me ever so slightly closer to a number of achievements; the cooking daily is the source of the [Recipe: Delicious Chocolate Cake] (which awards a Portal-themed achievement in Wrath), the fishing quest has rewarded me with a variety of fishing goodies (I'm still in the market for the [Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat] and the mini-pets) and, more importantly, the skill points to allow me to train to grand master in the expansion, while the cold hard cash pays for expensive achievement items like the [Cenarion War Hippogryph] or the ["Gigantique" Bag]. Some of those are rare drops that I may or may not obtain, while others allow for slow progress towards a long-term goal.

So, I find the new profession dailies that are popping up in Northrend pretty interesting. Jewelcrafters have a set of daily quests in Dalaran that award tokens towards the purchase of recipes from a vendor in town. This is especially significant for JC because you need access to a fair number of recipes just to cover your own personal gemming needs. Blizzard's crafting designer suggested on Blizzcast that this system is going to cover other professions as well. Overall, steady progress towards a fixed goal is a bit more fun than constantly missing out on a 1% drop. In addition, greater access to important recipes helps everyone who ISN'T a Jewelcrafter find someone who can cut gems for them.

It will be interesting to see what the broader effects on the economy will be (some of the less desirable cuts may become VERY rare as people get the more popular ones first). Overall, though, this looks like a win, and something that will continue to make even a brief visit to Azeroth worthwhile for a long time to come.