Screenshots of life.
In the spirit of Spring I did some cleaning in game this week. My friends list updated, my ignore list ignored and last night I cleaned up my World of Warcraft screenshots folder. (While you are playing the game, at any time you may push the [print screen] button on your keyboard and a picture of your screen is automatically saved in a folder in your World of Warcraft folder. This folder is titled “screenshots”.)
I had pictures of pillows on a bed in an inn in Dalaran, flowers on a ledge, ceiling detail, the picture at the top of this blog (Ulduar) and many, many shots of my character flying off into the sunset. /laugh.
Just as some of my screenshots took some time and thought to get them to come out “just right” it also took some thought before I deleted them. My character’s life is just like rl (real life) in that there are things that happen that will never happen again for her. The day she turned 80, the day she got 11,000 damage per second in a 5-man raid, the day someone whispered something really nice to her. (In World of Warcraft, people can whisper to you and it shows up on your screen in the chat box.)
I had screenshots of heartfelt conversations with other characters that were telling me how they felt about this or that in the guild, or how they dealt with something in their real life. I kept the majority of those. I had some screen shots showing a couple of acquaintances telling me how stupid I was in my rps. I deleted those. I don’t need the reminder of the bad times. I kept those screen shots initially as a defense if anyone else tried to grief me about the same subject. They are gone now, as are the tears and hard feelings.
Thinking of all this makes me wish someone were taking “screenshots” of me as I sit at my computer laughing at silly chat or being totally immersed in a dungeon. Reminders of how much fun I’ve had with this newfangled kind of game. I know there will come a day when I am no longer able to raid with my friends and will only be able to slowly make my way around Azeroth picking flowers, standing on my corner in Stormwind or Orgrimar looking wistfully around for someone who will stop long enough to role play just a bit about nothing much -- the weather or the prices in the auction house.
Being an older person gives a different perspective of what it takes to be able to raid. My fingers hurt sometimes. They don’t move as quickly as they used to – All the fish oil in the world won’t make my hands young again. My eyes lose the cursor more often. I wipe my glasses and get a larger monitor, but I still wish I could make my cursor a vivid hue of color so I can find it again. I wish I could reach up and touch my monitor with my finger and have the cursor center to my touch. That would be very good. I would target the enemy with my finger - /point /say “Okay you oogly damned scourge, time to pull up yur panties and get serious.”
Please don’t tell me to get a life. I have a life. This IS what I want to do right now. Playing this game isn’t any worse than sitting for hours watching soap operas or other non-interactive shows on the television. I choose my entertainment to be World of Warcraft. I at least get to have a part in the drama. It is very entertaining. It uses more of my senses than television. It tugs my heart like a good movie, it makes my heart race like an action film.
Cleaning out my screenshots file was necessary, to make room for memories of new in-game experiences. AND I AM READY!
Showing posts with label screenshot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label screenshot. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Get Screenshot or It Didn't Happen
Get Screenshot or it didn’t happen.
Really. Sometimes things happen in-game that are amazing. It might be a feat you’ve accomplished or something absolutely funny that someone said. If you want to brag a bit or remember what someone said . . . STOP and push the Print Screen Button. Mine is right there on top of my keyboard. These screen shots will automatically be saved in your World of Warcraft screenshots folder. (Mine are.)
There is a guildmate named Sophrosune – She has created an Illuminati member album of some funny screen shots of conversations in her chat window. It is funny stuff. When I look at those I laugh. Her album encourages me to use my screenshot button more!
Two things happened to me and I DID NOT GET MY SCREENSHOT…I was too excited, sigh, so basically they might as well have not happened.
1. I’ve been having more and more fun with the LFD (Looking for Dungeon) tool in the game. At first it was scary and sad but once I got over the “but they’re not peeps that I know” and the fear of being kicked out of the group – I actually started seeing the funny stuff and having amazing things pop up.
I am a shadow priest and have been struggling to get good DPS (damage per second) in fights. Typical for me in 5-man right now is around 2000 to 3000 dps. Well, I went in with a pug the other day to one of the Uptgard dungeons. The tank (Tanks are the characters whose job it is to stand toe to toe with the enemy and dish out a pounding and take the pounding because they have the armor and the skills to do so – thus they are called tanks) said, “Do not hit anything until I stop moving.”
In other words he wanted us to follow him into the room full of bad guys and not cast any spells, or use a knife or do any type of damage, because he wanted all the bad guys in the area to concentrate on him and leave the rest of us alone. That is so he could gather them all up and we could then help him take them down all at once -- sometimes this makes for a faster run (fight).
He gathered them up and stopped running. The rest of us began our fight. When it was over, someone in the group typed “Wow! Shadow priest what did you do?” I looked and saw that I had done 12,000 dps!! I was very excited, but I only said – AOE FTW!
(“Area of Effect for the win” – There are spells that can be cast that affect more than one target at a time and the damage done is applied to them all – for instance a hunter might rain a sky full of arrows down on them, a mage might rain fireballs or ice from the sky on the enemy and so on. That is called Area of Effect or AOE.)
I did NOT get a screen shot of that. I wish I had. I don’t usually brag, but that actually was a very exciting thing to happen for me.
2. Another time, I had a run with a 5-man group and one of the characters was named Robinwilliams. I didn’t think anything of it. Within a few minutes of the end of the run someone in guild chat mentioned that Robin Williams plays WOW. What a coincidence. Of course I said that I had just run with someone with the character name Robinwilliams (which could be anyone but who knows, right?) Because of the timing of the conversation and my run, it seemed a bit fishy I’m sure – but cross my heart … it happened. Again NO SCREENSHOT as the run was over a minute before I saw the guild chat.
Well, I now have a habit of getting screen shots at the beginning of each dungeon showing where I am and whom I am with.
And who knows? I might have brushed avatar shoulders with the famous Robin Williams. Maybe.
So remember -- Get Screenshot or it didn’t happen.
Really. Sometimes things happen in-game that are amazing. It might be a feat you’ve accomplished or something absolutely funny that someone said. If you want to brag a bit or remember what someone said . . . STOP and push the Print Screen Button. Mine is right there on top of my keyboard. These screen shots will automatically be saved in your World of Warcraft screenshots folder. (Mine are.)
There is a guildmate named Sophrosune – She has created an Illuminati member album of some funny screen shots of conversations in her chat window. It is funny stuff. When I look at those I laugh. Her album encourages me to use my screenshot button more!
Two things happened to me and I DID NOT GET MY SCREENSHOT…I was too excited, sigh, so basically they might as well have not happened.
1. I’ve been having more and more fun with the LFD (Looking for Dungeon) tool in the game. At first it was scary and sad but once I got over the “but they’re not peeps that I know” and the fear of being kicked out of the group – I actually started seeing the funny stuff and having amazing things pop up.
I am a shadow priest and have been struggling to get good DPS (damage per second) in fights. Typical for me in 5-man right now is around 2000 to 3000 dps. Well, I went in with a pug the other day to one of the Uptgard dungeons. The tank (Tanks are the characters whose job it is to stand toe to toe with the enemy and dish out a pounding and take the pounding because they have the armor and the skills to do so – thus they are called tanks) said, “Do not hit anything until I stop moving.”
In other words he wanted us to follow him into the room full of bad guys and not cast any spells, or use a knife or do any type of damage, because he wanted all the bad guys in the area to concentrate on him and leave the rest of us alone. That is so he could gather them all up and we could then help him take them down all at once -- sometimes this makes for a faster run (fight).
He gathered them up and stopped running. The rest of us began our fight. When it was over, someone in the group typed “Wow! Shadow priest what did you do?” I looked and saw that I had done 12,000 dps!! I was very excited, but I only said – AOE FTW!
(“Area of Effect for the win” – There are spells that can be cast that affect more than one target at a time and the damage done is applied to them all – for instance a hunter might rain a sky full of arrows down on them, a mage might rain fireballs or ice from the sky on the enemy and so on. That is called Area of Effect or AOE.)
I did NOT get a screen shot of that. I wish I had. I don’t usually brag, but that actually was a very exciting thing to happen for me.
2. Another time, I had a run with a 5-man group and one of the characters was named Robinwilliams. I didn’t think anything of it. Within a few minutes of the end of the run someone in guild chat mentioned that Robin Williams plays WOW. What a coincidence. Of course I said that I had just run with someone with the character name Robinwilliams (which could be anyone but who knows, right?) Because of the timing of the conversation and my run, it seemed a bit fishy I’m sure – but cross my heart … it happened. Again NO SCREENSHOT as the run was over a minute before I saw the guild chat.
Well, I now have a habit of getting screen shots at the beginning of each dungeon showing where I am and whom I am with.
And who knows? I might have brushed avatar shoulders with the famous Robin Williams. Maybe.
So remember -- Get Screenshot or it didn’t happen.
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