Arbitrary snapshot of history

Those charming fellows with the British accents over at Killed in a Smiling Accident tagged me to post the sixth picture in my screen grabs folder.

I was hoping for an interesting and stimulating trip down memory lane as I worked my way to the sixth image in my World of Warcraft image folder, fully expecting not being able to stop just there and instead running through the hundreds of images I have collected. I started taking grabs right from the start of the game, almost documenting my progress by logging every significant kill or role-playing event, being happy with the key bound to the screen grab function.

Unfortunately, it seems that my World of Warcraft screenshot archive has been obliterated during a reinstallation at some point, for whatever reason. I have no image from when Melmoth made his hunter's pet jump backwards in to lava in Ragefire Chasm in the beta, or of dancing in front of PvP-flagged Horde in the Barrens when getting my Succubus, or the first glorious victory over Morbent Fel. They are all gone, if not forgotten. Even if the early magic of a new game is lost there is still plenty that continues to inspire me to capture the moment and I have a new folder with a few dozen images already. Working down from the top I present the sixth image.

That is Faust, my warlock and very first character, sitting on his Netherwing Drake swift flying mount in Shadowmoon Valley getting a good look at a rare elite mob spawn. I was wondering if really good DPS would make up for not having a tank or healer. A mage friend and I endeavoured to find out. Sadly, there is no following image of our burnt and broken corpses being laughed over by a barely scratched rare elite mob spawn.

Despite losing my early screen grabs from the game I remember that World of Warcraft is actually the second game in which I took extensive screen grabs, the first being Unreal Tournament 2004. Although not an MMORPG it was still an on-line, multi-player experience for me. More to the point, all my screen grabs have survived whatever circumstances lost the World of Warcraft ones—perhaps because the UT2k4 grabs are stored under ~/Application Support/ and not outside of the user data area like World of Warcraft's were—and are still sitting on my drive, allowing me to find a true point in my gaming history.

To save posting a boring image of a melting power core I have counted multiple grabs of the same moment but from slightly different angles as a single grab. Counting from the top I find a gem, bringing back lots of memories.

Zoso found a badger model for UT2k4, which we both ended up using almost exclusively. There is something about a badger in a tank, or wielding a rocket launcher, that tickles me considerably. Despite not seeing my own model, except when killed, I greatly enjoyed running around Onslaught or Deathmatch arenas as a badger, even provoking some amused chatter on occasions from others in the fight.

It looks like we have loaded an Onslaught map additional to the game's default maps and are trying it out, perhaps on a personal server. Even though I think we are all on the same team it appears that Melmoth has launched a missile at me and Zoso's badger is aiming quite accurately at my groin. I probably fired first, though.

To contine the meme I shall tag Kinless, Kirith Kodachi, Saresa (if she ever gets her internet connection back), Kename Fin and Runycat, all interesting and spirited bloggers.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: badger, faust, fps, meme, mmorpg, unreal tournament, world of warcraft