Today’s post is a Blog Azeroth Shared Topic for July 26-31. Nuniel, from the very art-filled and aptly-named blog “The Rambling Draenei Death Knight”, asked us to share a screenshot, fan art, or handmade drawing, and then tell us about it and how it makes us feel. Since I love art and pictures, I’m going to do, not one, but TWO posts on this subject — with multiple pictures in each post! (That’s allowed, right? I could hardly pick just one image to talk about — I couldn’t make up my mind! Which reminds me – this is an image heavy post!) Later this week there will be a post focusing on user-made art, but today’s post will be about screenshots.
Screenshots. Lots of people take them. I know I do; I’ve even ‘graduated’ from manually taking most of them to letting the addon Achievement Screenshotter take pictures for me. And let me tell you, there are a lot of reasons I take screenshots.
The majority of them nowadays come from Achievement Screenshotter. So obviously, I get a lot of screenshots of my achievements (which include my usually messy UI!) It was fun to flip through and see all the ones I have gotten in the past.
It only took her until level 80 to get this achievement! Poor DKs.
I see this one a lot. No comment as to why. >.>
Getting achievements while dead in BGs is more common than you'd think.
Achievement Screenshotter also conveniently takes pictures when you ding!
Ding!
I have tons of screenshots of my toons dinging now. Sometimes they are in quick succession when they are going from 1-5 in a single play session, but quite a few of them are toons dinging from turning in quests, and more commonly, while in the middle of a dungeon (but I won’t bore you with any more of those. XD )
In addition to both the ‘dings’ and the achievements, Achievement Screenshotter can also grab the battleground info. I eventually turned that off, because I participate in quite a few battlegrounds where I lose horribly the score is uninteresting, so I figure I can save the space on my computer for screenshots that don’t show such crushing disappointment aren’t so boring.
But here's one that's interesting, since the Horde won. Check it - I even capped the flag to win. Hooray!
But not all of the screenshots I have are taken with the addon. I do still use the good ol’ fashioned ‘print screen’ key to take them. And after going through just one of my screenshot folders (the one on my main computer — I’m leaving the other computers out of this post), it’s occurred to me that I take screenshots of a lot of random stuff.
I mean, check out these chats I saved:
You've probably seen this before, but it still makes me giggle.
I have used a quiz addon to keep some of our raids occupied during downtime. Please note which player gave the correct answer first, and that Lightness, bless his heart, is a paladin. Quizzes are so much fun!
Another quiz question, another silly answer by Lightness. To his credit, he IS Canadian. (And an awesome healer!)
Usually I don’t screenshot chats, so I bet I thought these were extra funny (I hope you find them amusing too, actually!) I’ve started using WoWScribe to log chats (for RP purposes), so in some cases I won’t have to take screens of chats anymore. But it’s only useful if you start logging before the funny happens. XD
Of course, some screenshots were more congratulatory. Like when the raid would pose for a boss kill:
We won, hooray! Now if only we could pose better after a kill... 
That's better.
I was surprised at how few of those boss kill screenshots I had. I distinctly remember lining up for some when we killed Moroes and Netherspite, way back in the day when we ran Karazhan all the time. Since it was so long ago, I probably took those screenshots on my old computer. Hopefully their in my backup folder on my current computer (Remember folks — when you move between computers, make sure you always grab the screenshot folders from you games! They’re easy to forget, and you may miss those screenshots you took!)
Of course, there are other reasons we took group shots. Like after we took out the Alliance Leaders — FOR THE HORDE!!!
After trouncing of the Alliance cities, we obviously we had to go pose on our bears in front of their inn, right?
This particular bear run was set up by Dreykala. She set up weekly runs for months (maybe even more frequent than that), with an almost 100% success rate. And if they did fail on one, she always made sure to follow up so everyone could get a bear. It got to the point that people wouldn’t go on a For The Horde run unless she was leading it. And then she would sing a song in vent after the raid. It was pretty cool, even if you had to stay up ridiculously late. Eventually, server trade chat troll Hemoomoo raised gold (through trade chat and word of mouth) to buy Dreykala a motorcycle. That was pretty cool.
Of course, not all the screenshots I take have massive groups in them. Some of them can actually be rather silly situations:
Love is in the air! Horde and Alliance (and Undead Ghouls) all sitting together and having a good time.
"I stand on the divide between good... and evil. Or something like that."
(Incidentally, it was a little tricky to get up there. I think it happened while I was gathering herbs. A few screenshots later in my folder, Mourninglory is standing at the patch that has three different terrain lines. I guess this will end up being a rare sight in Cataclysm!)
Characters end up being the focus of many of my screenshots — it’s kinda hard to avoid that when the camera is usually centered on them. But the reason why I take the screenshot of my character differs, though. Sometimes it’s to show off some armor…
I love that shield. I think I still have it.
Check out my totally awesome gear. It's so rare, I doubt anyone else has ... wait a minute...
Or because I have a weird effect…
OH NO! I'M GREEN! Also for some reason my horse turned green too... check out those glowing hooves!
Pink now!? Enough with the color-changing already!
Can YOU find the Tauren in this picture?
Stop - hammer time!
Or just because I look cool…
"That's not the moon! That's my holy radiance you're looking at!" >.>
But my character usually isn’t the only thing on the screen. For example, I have screenshots of my hunter pets:
Mamisha and Moonshine.
Mamisha and Rexxa (her first 'real' pet)
(And I’m not even showing you the ones with just the pets. XD )
And I also take lots of pictures of my mounts, especially ones where I’m flying around.
My very own Cenarion War Hippogryph.
(On a side note, my keyboard is too big for me to reach from the ‘w’ key to the ‘print screen’ button with one hand, which is what is needed to take a screenshot of a mount ‘soaring’ from the side, as the mouse is holding the camera. I always forget about the arrow keys until it’s too late!)
Three, three red drakes! Ah ah ha...
Oh, I'm not doing much. Just guarding these eggs here.
But my favorite type of screenshots, out of all the ones I’ve shown from my extensive collection, are the ones that take the character out of the picture, and just admire the scenery. The World of Warcraft can be a beautiful place.
But these are only my favorite types of screenshots. Do you have a favorite type of screenshot? Do you take lots of screenshots, or only when you think it’s a ‘special’ moment? Let me know!
-Misha
Ooooh I want those addons!
I think my favourite screenshot is one of me, in Shadowform, after being feared into an unlit corner of the dungeon (UBRS)… the only lights really come from my gear.
I also have a few landscape screenshots that I keep coming back to. And I love some of my boss kill pictures. I can be quite bossy until everyone is facing the right way and standing in the right spot.
The addons? Mwah. (That was a kissing noise, complete with hand gesture). Achievement Screenshotter is very nice, and since it takes screenshots of not only Achievements, but dings, reputation (which I didn’t mention ’cause those are usually boring screenshots), and BG scores (plus Arena scores, I think), you don’t need to get separate addons to do all those things. And the UI can be on/off for all of those (except achievements).
Now you must show off your favorite! (I’m glad you can pick a favorite, unlike me!)
Katiea, from my guild, is the official ‘photographer’, so she’ll do the herding of everyone and then take the screenshot to put on the website. When she’s not around we get in trouble (or when someone says ‘Face me’ in vent and then everyone turns a different direction… XD)
I like these little journeys into someone’s character(s). I have heaps of those random chat screenies. Also, I’m fairly familiar with getting bg achieves whilst somewhat deceased.
Achievements while deceased in BGs -do- happen often. Kinda nice, that way.
My favorite BG achievement (which I did NOT get a screenshot of because I wasn’t running my addon at that time) was when I was in WSG on my horde druid. I had gotten the ally flag and was racing down-field to the horde base when halfway there… I got the achievement for getting an honorable kill. It was hilarious. XD
I like the way how you take screenshots of memorable times with your guild(s) and/or friends
It’s always nice to, in a future time, go back to check those screenshots and bring up old memories or jokes
*starts singing Cats* Meeeeeemmmmrieeees, all alone in the mooooooonliiiiiiiiight…
*ahem*
That’s why I always try to move screenshots up with me when I switch computers. They really do hold a lot of memories that my sieve-like mind would normally not remember. I know I lost a large batch of CoH screenshots once, and I still feel a little sad that I hadn’t backed them up.
I love the screenshots! There’s so many of them, all of them wonderful! The landscape ones are absolutely gorgeous!
And this doesn’t include the 1092389432 left on that computer, not to mention the 1982031928029437 on my other computers or in different folders! I really should upload them all somewhere where I can apply tags to them. Because searching through them by the month date is a little tedious. Most of the screenshots in the post are from Jan/Feb. XD (It’s funny, though – since it organizes by month, you’ll have screenshots skipping between years, so it’s like a snapshot of what you were doing last year at same time, more or less).
I do like the last screenshot, with the goblin statue. It looks pretty awesome. I also like the library one, just because I remember standing there for like 5 minutes trying to capture that lady make the book fly up. I didn’t even notice she did that until I had been standing there, crafting glyphs for awhile. It really is pretty cool. You should go check it out (it’s the scribe shop in Dalaran).