Fountain Goldfish – Proposed Pet*

My main is an unabashed pet collector, and my other toons need to be able to catch their own pets in a reasonable amount of time (say… by mid 40s?) for me to even want to bother with them for very long.** That’s the thing for me about pet collecting – while I really do adore my Pandaren pet (that little bow is darling!), especially as he was a gift, my favorite pets are the whelplings that took ages and diligence to capture. *** If a pet can be farmed, my boomchicken will farm it. Of all the farmables, she’s only missing a scant few, two of which are in raid zones, & it always feels a little cheezy to ask a bunch of people if they’ll join a raid with you for pets, y’know?

So anyway! Goldfish.

Our Small Person and I were talking yesterday while I was logged into Fishing Mage and trying to pull fish up from the fountain in Dalaran, when he noticed that Fishing Mage’s bags were stuffed with goldfish. Twelve stacks and a few stragglers, to be specific.

“Roll over that, Mom,” he said. I rolled over them to show the tool tip. “Aww… They don’t do anything.”

“Well, you can eat them,” I suggested.

“Yeh, but they don’t have any mana. They’re not worth eating.”

I laughed. “They are if you’re hungry, I guess… Or if you don’t use mana.”

I went back to fishing and waiting in the queue for a dungeon. I don’t mind the goldfish, but you know, he’s right – I can’t even give them away, even if they do regen a ton of health at a sitting. People prefer magecakes.

I catch a few coins, and Our Small Person pipes up, “Is there a toy store in Dalaran?”

“Yup.”

“They should sell fishbowls.”

Oh. My. God. He’s brilliant. (Well, not that I didn’t know that already, tbh, but still!)

They should sell fishbowls. They should totally sell fishbowls at the pets store. Fishbowls on little wagons that you could pull along behind you, and that you’d only be able to summon if you had a goldfish in your bags – like the Winter Reindeer that you have to have a snowball to summon.

And I imagine my toon someplace lush and green, riding along on a mount, with a string running behind her to a fishbowl wagon which bounces along behind her on its little wheels, splashing here and there, and my heart fills with warm joy.  Standing animation could include an occasional goldfish that jumps up from the bowl and then falls back in. We dreamed on, my Small Person and I – he’s a clever eleven year old, to be certain! – and went to bed with fishie dreams last night.

There are all kinds of odds and ends that I think they should add in – for example, it broke my heart when they closed the Dalaran Aquarium. You’ve never heard of the Dalaran Aquarium? That’s because they nerfed it up – used to be you could take the chum buckets from the Argent Tournament quest for shark meat, and chum the waters of the Dalaran fountain, and make sharks appear! Ta-DA Dalaran Aquarium!**** They should unfix that. Also, if you make enough Fish Feasts, it really should proc a side of tartar sauce.

But, you know, these are just ideas.

***

*Proposed by our household, not by the developers, to be clear.
**Fishing Mage was skirting a fine line before she managed to capture a Sprite Darter. I liked mageing, but didn’t like being petless on my mage. Which is to say, Fishing Mage spent an entire level doing nothing but killing sprite darters in hopes of an egg.
The only pet that isn’t farmable that I kinda pine for is the Dragon Kite (and the Tuskarr Kite is cute too). But I have no interest at all in buying stacks of trading cards in hopes of a fancy kite. Or in spending what the people on eBay would like to sell it to someone for.
***My favoritest pet for the longest time was the wolpertinger, because it matched my boomchicken when she was Alli side (antlers for everyone!)
****Yes, that was me.