Reflections From The Pond

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When you screenshot something in WoW the shot gets saved in your Screenshot Folder, and it gets an auto-generated name.

The name will have the prefix WoWScrnShot followed by the date it was taken and a six-digit number, possibly denoting the exact time of the shooting.

In your Screenshot Folder, all your screenshots will be handily placed in order, so you can easily find them when you want to go back and reminisce about the good old days, right?

Wrong.

Well, right in so far that they are placed in order, but wrong wrong wrong in that you can easily find them, because you can’t!

You see, the date stamp of the screenshot is not the convenient year-month-day-variety every sane person uses, but some ancient month-day-year variety. This means that your last shots will not be last in the file list but squished in somewhere at the residing place of the current month. You browse shots from January 2009 when you suddenly find yourself looking at Festergut kill shots from a week ago, and then you are back in February 2009. Aargh!

My folder currently have 460 shots from the last year and it is a pain to look through to find a particular one because of this inane filing system. How hard can it be to make sure images are saved in a logical, chronological order? Wake up and smell the 10’s please!

Oh, and you think 460 shots are a lot? It would have been at least 2000 more but last time my laptop kicked the bucket the workshop decided that formatting the hard drive would help resurrect it and promptly wiped all my screenies :-(

Do you ever get the feeling when you open your closet door and look at all your clothes stuffed in there that you have nothing to wear? Or when you are out shopping that you find nothing at all you would like to wear – a whole bloody city full of nothing but bloody clothes boutiques and there is not one bloody piece of garb that you find interesting enough to buy?

Happens to me a lot. My clothes – the ones I do manage to buy – are nice, good-looking and comfortable, yet when I stand there in my dressing room in my underwear looking at them I often find nothing in there I really want to put on, and I generally hate going shopping. Total outfit paralysis.

Usually ends up with me grabbing something I know I will find comfortable wearing, which explains why I am always dressed the same and the hot little dresses I for some reason keeps buying usually languishes away at the back of the closet.

It’s like that for me in WoW as well sometimes.

My shammy has her bags crammed full of shiny gear and yet she usually wears the same stuff. She has a lot of jewellery but same thing applies here, she usually wears the same necklace and rings.

She is now standing before the Triumphant Vendor with some brand new Crusade Trophys burning in her purse and she has total outfit paralysis.

I was going to replace her helm and shoulders since they are ilvl 232, but Elitist Jerks with their Best in Slot list seems to find that the Elemental helm and shoulders of the t9 are actually much better for a resto shaman than the resto ones, while looking a bit further ahead it seems the Resto head and shoulders of the t10 is the ones to go for and EJ suggest wearing the tunic and the gloves of the t9.

So what should I get? I don’t want to spend a lot of gems and enchants on gear I will replace real soon, and I don’t want to miss out on the t9 2-set bonus. And I don’t want to spend too much dkp on buying the t9 tokens now that the t10 marks are in stock. So t9 ilvl 245 helm and shoulders? Tunic and gloves? I already have very nive ilvl 245 tunic and gloves  (althought not tier stuff) and which gear will actually last me the longest if I should lose the set bonus?

And – most importantly – will I look fat in it?

Ze warlock has similar problems.

She has gathered up a nice bunch of Triumph emblems but there is actually nothing in the shop she wants to wear. Or rather, she is very attached to her current gear since it is things that has dropped for her in raids with her friends and it has a lot of sentimental value to her. Nothing like winning a roll and picking up a lovely silk dress from the innards of a dead mob to form a real bond with your gear.

Also, the fact that the Iceshear mantle and Raiments of the Corrupted looks absolutely hawt on a dark-haired green-eyed gnome while the t9 looks, well, let’s just say that sloping shoulders starting at your ears does not look good on anyone, this fact does not make her very inclined to buy them.

The t9 set bonus, the increased damage of her pets, is very alluring though since she is a real warlock and a real warlock uses pets, so I guess she will eventually overcome her dithering and buy the legs and gloves.

Anyways, who said it was easy to gear up with this new badge system?!?

When it is only slightly epic? Not-quite-epic? Epic light?

I’ve always thought epic was, you know, epic. I hear that word and my head fills with images of grandeur and awesomeness, of fantastic tales of love and terror and marvellous adventures affecting a whole world. Epicness, simple as that.

In WoW and according to Blizzard, Epic denotes a certain level of item rarity.

You can find poor items all over, common ones too, uncommon items are (surprise!) slightly less common than common ones, rare items are rare, epic items are rarer and legendary items are rarest of them all.

After having played this game for some three years I am still rooted in the belief that epic actually is epic, that once I get an epic item I need never look further, I can sit back and relax and treasure my own, my beloved, my preciousss rings with matching preciousss jewellery and assssorted garments.

I guess my never getting past tier 4 raiding in TBC can partially explain this, I never actually got the chance to regularly replace my epic items because the ones I wore were the absolute top of the line for me, the best that I could attain. Sure, I had my share of badge gear as well but most of what I was wearing actually dropped for me from some boss or other and I had wrested it from a still-warm dead body after having made a lucky roll. In a very Tam-like way.

Enter WotLK.

I actually wore most of my sssweet and preciousss things until level 80. I still wear some of them, my durids tank rings for example, her well-earned Violet Signet and her Shermanar Great-Ring, both from Karazhan.

Now that is epic to me. Those things were so good, so awesome, so grand and wonderful that I did not need to replace them during all my Northrend adventures while levelling, and yet they were only from the first tier of raiding in TBC.

I could totally live with the fact that the Northrend level 80 epics would be even more grand and awesome than my level 70 epics and that I had to replace my well-worn gear when I hit 80 and started adventuring with the big boys and girls. I mean, it’s a whole whopping ten levels difference.

But then I realised that the level 80 epics I started accruing during my Naxx10 runs and through various crafting friends and reputation aquiantances, they were not really epics at all. They were slightly less than epic, apparently.

Even Blizzard themselves say so as the Naxx10 gear and similar does not count as epics in the (infamous) Epic achievement. Apparently, the real epic gear is being handed out in Naxx25 or in raiding instances a tad more respectable than Naxx10.

It seems that although all epics are epic, some epics are more epic than others.