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10,000 games of fishing... |
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I just played my 10,000th game of fishing on Gaia. I think this is a special occasion and deserves some reflection. It's also way past time I updated my journal. smile
My Fishing Career commenced just after the Christmas event in 2004. I'd heard about the new fishing game, and that there was a glitch. That was the glitch that allowed people to catch rare fish, but didn't save the buckets containing them.
When I first heard about fishing I knew I wanted to catch a 'rare' fish. But I didn't want it to be glitched, and I didn't want it to not save when I caught it. So I waited. When I heard that the 'glitch' had been fixed I started fishing, on the 29th of December.
That was my first mistake, and the worst of my luck. I couldn't know then that my best chance of ever catching a rare fish had slipped by.
While fishing I soon discovered the 'Top Fisher's' scoreboard, and saw my own name rising through the list. I made it to 2nd place, and then on the 3rd of January the scoreboard was reset. Another day, and I would have won the gold trophy. That's my second example of bad luck at fishing, but worse is to come.
I was happy with my Shiny Silver Bass trophy, but I felt that gold had been almost in reach, so I decided to try to win that one next. I figured that as long as I was waiting (and hoping) for my chance to reel in a rare fish, that I might just as well compete for a trophy while I was there. I even began to think seriously about questing to win one of every trophy, putting on hold my quest for an Angelic Sash (instead spending almost all my gold on bait).
In January I tried for and won the Gold Striper, then in February began fishing at Gambino, and there I won the Gold Tuna. I had won two golds in two attempts, and I decided to set my sights on Durem gold for my next trophy attempt. But, I decided to take a month's break from fishing in March, for personal reasons. My boyfriend was visiting me from overseas and I didn't have time to fish. I decided my next attempt at a trophy would be in April.
Before April the overall system of point scoring favoured Durem fishers. It wasn't necessary to fish at either Bass'ken or Gambino, and of the 4 trophies awarded so far, only 1 had gone to the 1st place at Gambino, the rest had all been won by the Gold Trophy winner at Durem. In April that changed. My third example of bad (terrible) luck in fishing, the month that I went for the Gold Durem trophy was the first month when an Overall trophy didn't come with the Durem Gold like a free set of steak knives.
And I came up against Elendilon. After 3 days I knew I could not win gold against him. Not just because he was fast, but because he fished 24 hours a day, every day, without stopping. I had two choices ahead of me. The first was to lose ignominiously after only three days of competition, the second was to continue on bravely and heroically in the face of certain defeat. I adopted the motto of 'Never give up, never surrender' (thank you to 'Galaxy Quest' for the phrase) and determined to fish as hard as I could and as much as I could. Before April I had found it relatively easy to win. But I had to ask myself, did I have what it took to lose? I did not want to see a repeat of February, where the abandonment of Durem by other top fishers allowed Anjelous to threaten gold and silver place holders at the other lakes, since he did not have to fish at all at Durem to retain the gold there. I was determined to ensure that Elendilon would not get a free run and be able to pwn Overall, Gold Durem and whatever else in one month.
As hard as it is to believe, my determination that if I had to lose I was going to do my best, as much as I'd tried to do my best to win, resulted in my snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. I won the Gold Durem trophy, and broke the record number of points at Durem, reaching over 1 million points, a record that still stands. I also became the first fisher to win a Gold Trophy at every lake.
While pursuing my new quest of trophy hunting I hadn't forgotten that my ultimate hope and desire was to catch a rare fish so that I could commence a quest for a rare fish helm. I wanted at least one rare to start off my mask. But it soon became apparent to everyone fishing in the early months of last year that something was not quite right about rare fish any more. It seemed that there were none at all being caught.
There were rare fish in the market, and every so often some n00b would claim to have caught a rare, but most rare fish were tracked down to having been caught during the time of the 'glitch', and the n00bs never seemed to be able to find the 'print screen' button on their keyboards, or do a decent enough photoshop job to fool anyone.
Many people felt that the rares had gone from being far too many during the glitch to being far too few afterwards. Even as far back as January many people were questioning what was happening. Threads were regularly posted asking about rarity, but there were no answers, only more questions. Two petitions were created, and a slew of posts and threads continued, and in February several top fishers agitated in the Q & F forum for answers. Finally an admin posted stating that 'nothing was wrong with the fishing game' and informed that there was a 20% chance of having a rare fish in 1000 games. (i.e 1 in 5000 games, or 0.02% per game.)
Many were satisfied with this response. Many said that 'rares were meant to be rare' and didn't have a problem with not catching one. But I still had doubts, especially when March continued without any sign of rare fish being caught. It might seem obvious, but the members at the top of the scoreboards in every month are the ones who play the most games of fishing. And statistically, the more games someone plays, the greater their chance of catching a rare fish becomes. It seemed clear to me, that out of every 5000 games played, there would be a considerably higher chance that someone who was in the top 10-25 would catch it, than a relative newbie fisher. Not a 100% chance naturally. But if it takes 1-2 days of fishing for 5000 games to be played by everyone on Gaia (this is a rough estimate, but I believe it to be close to the actual number) then I would expect that at least one top fisher should catch a rare fish in a week of fishing. And yet, for three entire months of fishing not one top fisher reported catching a rare fish. Not one verified report. Statistics don't lie. It was clear that the admins had not told the truth when they said that there was nothing wrong with fishing.
There were rumours that the admins had removed the rare fish from the fishing game because too many rares had been granted during the glitch. They wanted to make them rarer. This rumour was never confirmed. There were also rumours that one of the developers had either deliberately or accidentally removed the code that allowed rare fish from the fishing game. And had forgotten to put them back. This also was never confirmed.
But fishing was taken down in the middle of April for a period of time for an upgrade. And within days a rare was caught and verified. It seemed that rares were able to be caught. I don't think it was an accident that there was downtime before a rare was finally caught.
And now it is more than ever apparent that when rares are available and being spawned at the rate of 1 in 5000 games that rare fish are caught every 1 - 2 days, and often by fishers at or near the top ten.
I do feel disappointed that the administrators of Gaia felt okay about misleading everyone who fished during January - March 2005, not telling them that rares had been disabled (whether deliberately or accidentally) but instead claimed that nothing was wrong. I feel betrayed that I wasted nearly 5000 games of fishing with A bait, not knowing that whether I'd fished one game or 100,000 I couldn't have caught a single rare. And I feel that the admins should have apologised to us, not lied about it.
In May, although I hadn't seriously considered trying, I had something of a set back, I was ill and this prevented me from taking up the challenge of overall. I did win a Bronze Bass'ken trophy, becoming the first fisher to win a Gold, Silver and Bronze in one lake, and a Bronze Gambino trophy. In June I began fishing for the overall one day late. And despite being in front (on projected totals) for the entire month was unable to fish on the last day of the competition. Despite reaching 500,000 points I lost, coming second and only winning a Bronze Bass'ken trophy (my second) and a Bronze Durem trophy. I was very disappointed, feeling that my loss was not solely due to circumstance but was also motivated by another person having a grudge against me.
A lot of hurtful things were said about me behind my back at that time. I was personally attacked by some members of the Top Fisher's thread, my character was disparaged, and my competitor also made some comments that I found offensive and degrading. Added to my disappointment and disillusionment caused by not having caught a rare fish despite having played more than 5000 games left me feeling washed out and fed up.
I spent three months in another country, with my boyfriend, and I resumed my other quests, finally getting to a Devil Tail and buying back my gold Gambino trophy (which I'd previously sold in March to obtain a Sash.) It was perhaps the only luck I've ever had related to fishing, being able to buy it back at a time when I had just enough to offer for it. It had taken a lot of deliberation to decide to part with one of my prized trophies, having gotten it back I had no intention of ever selling one of my trophies again.
But my quest to complete my trophy collection suffered another set-back. On returning home after my three months in Holland I found my computer had died in my absence. I had next to no money, so couldn't repair it. For four months I was virtually offline, only having a few brief hours at most online every day. I was finally able to repair it in December, then I left home again, and realised I would have to make future trophy attempts with a reduced amount of time for fishing (since I now have to share computer time with my boyfriend.)
But I was fortunate to strike an easy month at Durem in February, and won the Silver Durem, and hopefully a Gold Junk. (if the trophies are ever released)
Then my next month resulted in finally a successful attempt at Overall. In another fishing record I suspect I'm the only fisher who has succeeded in winning an overall trophy after failing to win twice previously.
And that brings me up to date. I am fishing this month with 'D' grade bait, hoping to win just a Bronze junk trophy. And today I finally reached 10,000 games of fishing, without catching a single rare fish. Sadly, most of those games were played during a time when I believe there were no rares available or able to be caught. My trophy collection is almost complete. I need to fish one month at Gambino, hoping to obtain 2nd place and win the Silver Trout. And I need to fish one month and hope to obtain 2nd place in junking to win the Silver Boot.
It is possible that I might be fortunate and catch a rare fish during my Gambino run. If I don't, then I will try to compete for the silver junk while using D bait, to keep a faint chance of catching a rare. And after that, I'm going to kill Lanzer. (just kidding, I'm not a violent person. But I will be buying a Kill Lanzer outfit, and set of kitchen knives.)
And now, it's time for me to get back to fishing. I hope this journal entry isn't too boring. I know a lot of it is ancient history, I just never got time to make a record of it when fishing.
ciao,
chaos
 chaos butterfly · Tue Apr 11, 2006 @ 10:43am · 17 Comments |
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