IntPiPoMo: Too Many Shots of the Moon
I always take a lot of screenshots, but I had to laugh at myself when I went through my folder and realized how much I was obsessed with the sky and moon those first few days.
Posts tagged ‘screenshots’
IntPiPoMo 2014: So It Begins
Blogging has not been something I’ve had a lot of time to do this past year, so when I saw a reminder on Twitter that IntPiPoMo had started I was torn. On one hand, it’s something I’ve participated in for several years now and something I enjoy doing. On the other hand, I already struggle to make the time to blog, I’ve played less than normal this year, and I have taken less screenshots than normal in game. After thinking about it a few minutes, I realized I couldn’t let it pass me by without joining the fun. Especially since in less than 2 weeks there will be screenshots from a new expansion to share!
I know I won’t be posting every day, but I will get my 50 screenshots in this month (and I usually do more) so let’s get things started with an introduction to IntPiPoMo for anyone who isn’t familiar with the event. It stands for International Picture Posting Month and was created as an equivalent of the very popular National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). IntPiPoMo isn’t specific to WoW blogs or themes, it can be any photo or image from any activity you love or game you play. You can learn more about how the WoW bloggers got started & sign up to participate by visiting Admiring Azeroth’s post “IntPiPoMo Is Back”.
I’ll start off with a few fun things that happened for me from early this year:
I revisited archaeology and finally got the Vial of the Sands
While doing so much digging, I managed to also find the bug mount
I had a little fun under the sea
Business Time celebrated their 5th anniversary & held an ugly transmog contest. This won me 5th place. You can’t even imagine the other winners. Lol.
I got my legendary cloak (first ever legendary for me)
Okay, that’s all I have time for now. More to come later this week.
The One Where The Goat Disapproves
Between Wildstar betas and general life busyness, I haven’t been playing as much WoW lately as I’ve wanted to. I still have a whole list of things I want to get done on Elfi and other toons before WoD and while we certainly aren’t getting WoD anytime soon, I’m never going to get my list done at the rate I’ve been going lately. Then there’s the fact that the when I was logged in this weekend, I decided to randomly work on something that wasn’t on my list. I don’t even understand me.
Actually, I do understand me. I’m addicted to finding dark soil. I’ve talked about this before. So even though Morissa only exists to farm ore and make gems for Elfi, I decided she needed to finally become best friends with the Tillers. I popped down to the Darkmoon Faire for my xp buff and spent a few hours happily digging up ruby shards and lovely apples.
Jogu the Drunk was the last one I finished up and once he and I were best friends I accidentally asked him if he wanted to stay at the pond on my farm. I knew it would be horribly rude to immediately change my mind, so I decided to let him go ahead and wander over and I’d tell him later he couldn’t stay. Apparently it’s a good thing I had already planned on asking him to leave because I soon discovered that Suess (my funicular goat mount I won from a contest) did not think too much of having this drunk dude wallowing around in our pond.
embiggen to see the goat’s look of disgust
The One Where I’ve Had A Bit Of Good Luck
The feeling of excitement from being able to attend Blizzcon may not wear off for a while, but things have returned to normal regardless. I’m back home, back to work, back to the Timeless Isle and working on using LFR to practice SoO in the hopes I might one day get a chance to go through there on flex.
The first step, however, was to actually finish the last stage of ToT which I had never completed. I really have no good excuse for that. It was combination of laziness, not having friends to queue up with, too busy standing idly in Stormwind chatting with my guildies, herbing.. you know, all the standard excuses. But I took care of the problem by queueing immediately and got that out of the way so I could head into SoO knowing I had done everything prior. I’m totally glad I decided to do it too because my Treasures of the Thunder King bag contained a Cracked Primal Egg and in 3 days I had myself a shiny new Red Primal Raptor mount. (Note: these things aren’t very red at all)
In between trying to actually earn valor on Elfi for the purpose of upgrading gear and finally being respectable and trying to get back into the habit of keeping up with my Tillers farm on all 3 of my level 90’s, I did manage to get some time in on the Timeless Isle and was super excited to have 2 pets drop for me this week. Hooray for good luck!
Still have a lot of pets and mounts on my wishlist but these are a fine start. Maybe my luck will stick with me a little longer. I’d love to get the Ruby Droplet so I don’t have to make my way up to Garnia anymore.
The One With The Fireflies
I am currently taking a class titled “Online Games: Literature, New Media and Narrative” where we’re comparing and contrasting how the various forms of media (books, film, games) tell a story. The class is centered around Lord Of The Rings not only because it is such a rich, epic story but also because it is a prime example of a story that has succeeded across multiple forms of media.
I won’t bore you with a lot of details about the class or my recent experiences as a first time player in the LotRO MMO, (though the game is beautiful and I am totally going to post some screenshots at the bottom of this entry) but I did want to share a bit about this week’s discussion question which Professor Clayton posted on our class forums. The question was basically asking us to describe our experiences exploring Middle Earth in-game and wanted our opinions on whether we enjoyed exploring and discovering the world slowly or if we preferred opening the maps, seeing all the locations and getting there as quickly as possible. I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.
Now I haven’t yet spent much time exploring things in LotRO because the new Timeless Isle here in WoW keeps calling to me, but I do know my answer to this question because it’s the same answer I would give regarding any game, including WoW. I AM AN EXPLORER. Do I take quick flight paths? Sure. Do I use my hearthstone a lot and use special items in game to transport me to places instantly (Shroud of Cooperation, I am looking at you)? Sure. But I also spend way more time than most people skipping along through the nooks and crannies of the zones just to see what I can see. I may not do a completely thorough exploration my first 2, 15 or 35 times through a zone – after all I’m on a mission to level, gear up, find herbs, battle pets, etc. But at some point, I’m going to waste hours and hours just looking in every cave, checking out every house and trying to jump up every mountain as high as it will let me.
Is that the most efficient use of my time? Hell no. I am terrible at doing dailies, profession cooldowns, dungeons and the like on a daily or sometimes even weekly basis. I’m aware I don’t always prioritize my game time correctly and I’m also aware these things are why I will never be ahead of the curve. It’s easy to see that here on this blog where you will find me posting a screenshot about an achievement I just got that everyone else had 6 weeks ago. Some of you may shake your head and wonder why I don’t wander off and play something else, something that moves a little slower or is simply a fluff game instead of the srs bzns that is WoW. Well to those people I say … if it weren’t for me derping around and wasting time, how would you ever know that in Paoquan Hollow, inside Master Bruised Paw’s house, you can find a jar of fireflies sitting on the table?
What is your view on how important exploration is to your gaming experience. Do you like maps that are empty until you discover a new area of the zone or would you prefer everything be visible to you in all zones right away? Once you do discover an entire zone map, do you ever come back at any time to look at things slower and notice more details or is it just a terrain you move through simply to get to where you are going? Does it help with immersion? Do you even care about immersion? Feel free to share your opinions in the comments OR better yet, write up your own post about whether or not exploration is a part of your game.
And now I will sneak in a few of the LotRO screenshots I have taken so far. I promise this will not be a habit (unless the people demand it).
#wowscreenshotaday 29 – Gold and #30 Found
Geesh, I kept up with this challenge really well until the last few days and then somehow I got things all behind. Anyway, this is the last of them and I actually found it more challenging than I expected so I really enjoyed it. Thanks goes to Tycertank from Toonacious for the challenge.
#29 – Gold
#30 – Found
Elfi's World 
Written
on 09/29/2013