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Scrapbooking Azeroth: Screenshots Before the Cataclysm
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Post by
Gnoktish
reply if you want me to take pictures of alliance, horde, and unaccessible areas if you'd like. i want to see old world for 1 more time before everything is changed for ever
Post by
148723
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
s20mike
Not much of a contribution, but I'd just like to say I think this is a fantastic idea, and it's very selfless and kind of you to take the time to not only do this, but to share your efforts and hard work with the community.
After the Cataclysm announcement, a lot of people spoke about something like this, but nobody seemed to take it the the next level of actually going ahead and doing it. I personally half managed about 8 zones, maybe 5 - 10 screenies per zone, with quirky or out of the way points of interest being my main focus, but I had no realization of the true size of the task.
Oddly enough, I kept wishing for flying mounts in Azeroth to make the job easier...
Anyway! Maximum Kudos to you Lassirra, and best of luck with your grand task. I look forward to watching it develop, and I hope the rest of the community will shower you with the praise you deserve :)
Post by
pizzamike64
I truly love your idea and your work so far. My family has been in Azeroth for years now, and we have seen most corners of the world. Like you, I have usually played alliance, but I have taken my hordies around the world as well. I have perused your screenshots already, and 2 things pop up: Can you put captions to go along with your shots? Some places I don't remember the names for. And I also noticed you did not really get into the actual level 1 starting zone Northshire valley like you did in Coldridge. If you did, maybe I missed it.
If you need help gathering shots, would you take submissions from others? Tell us the requirements for good ones and we could help you.
Thanks again and keep up the good work/
Post by
Inekadam
i'd love mulgore gallery.thanks a lot if you ever do it :D
Post by
dumac
isn't wetlands also changed with that grim batol businness?
This is perhaps a good reminder, if you wanna get the dragonlings from wetlands i suggest farming it now:)
Post by
MasakiKudo
I love this idea, it will be nice to see the old Azeroth whence Cata comes out.
Post by
Lassirra
Can you put captions to go along with your shots? Some places I don't remember the names for.
This was something I had wanted to do from the start, but realized very early on would be very difficult to do. Reason being, I have no way to tag the actual image files as I'm moving through the zone like "This is some kooky NPC out in the middle of nowhere in zone X", and stopping to annotate on a scrap of paper like "Screenshot 1: (coords)" as I take each screenshot so I can go back and figure it all out later would make an already relatively time consuming process take twice as long.
Some zones I'm very familiar with and could possibly figure out from memory, other zones I only have a passing familiarity with and since I tend to look for rather obscure locations, would make going back and trying to figure out where each shot was taken after the fact very difficult.
In the end, I decided against tagging each image specifically in the interest of saving time. As it stands, just running through each zone collecting the screenshots takes me about an hour depending on the size of the zone. Then another hour to upload and create the gallery. Then another hour to an hour and a half to write up the actual post for each zone. Then about half an hour to an hour to create the zone's wallpaper. All said, each zone takes me about four hours to complete the work for. Knowing that, you can see why there are a couple minor places where I attempt to cut corners and shave off some work time.
Once I've actually finished the project and have galleries for every zone, I'll probably attempt to go back and tag the images, but right now my major priority is to simply
get all the galleries up
. That in itself is eating up quite a bit of time at the moment, and since getting the images is my #1 priority, that's what I've been focusing on the most.
As an update, I was actually feeling a bit under the weather yesterday (allergies), so I only got one gallery posted (the Barrens), but I should be able to catch up today and tomorrow. After this post, I'll actually be headed in game to do just that, so I'll post another update when I've got a couple more galleries up.
Thanks again, everyone! Your support and enjoyment of the project means a lot to me, and makes the time I spend working on it totally worth it. :)
Post by
whichwitch
As an obssessive compulsive Rare Hunter, I'll do what I can to get you rare screenies (before killing them, of course). If this thread had come into play about 2 weeks ago, I would have had all the Teldrassil rares for you.
If they aggro on me from behind (as they LOVE to do to me for some reason) I may end up being in the screenshot, but I'll do my best to get a clean shot.
Post by
Lassirra
Just a quick update:
I've added four galleries today for a grand total of 560 images in 12 galleries. The new galleries are:
Arathi Highlands
Duskwood
Ashenvale
Winterspring
I'll probably add even more later tonight, but in case I don't I wanted to give folks a quick update on my progress.
Post by
ArgentSun
Keep updating the first post with new links, please.
And also I think you should focus a bit more on landscape, and a bit less on specific buildings/objects (e.g. zeppelin tower).
Post by
348656
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Coaldog
Great idea, I had something similiar planned, but I might as well add your site to my favorites, see the old world from there and take more personal pictures myself. Good job so far, I really like the Duskwood pictures!
Post by
Cross88
Your Aszhara pictures are breathtaking, although some of your other galleries could benefit from Argentsun's advice. Like your Tirisfal Glades screenies.
Also, it would be nice if you could take pictures of the zones during the day, instead of at night.
Post by
ArgentSun
Or both.
Post by
138638
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Cross88
Well, at night they all have muted colors towards the blue end of the spectrum. Full "sunlight" as it were would let the colors of each zone shine through. The Aszhara screenies wouldn't look as cool if they were all dark.
Post by
Lassirra
And also I think you should focus a bit more on landscape, and a bit less on specific buildings/objects (e.g. zeppelin tower).
The problem with that is in most cases, the foliage doesn't like to cooperate. Positioning myself so that I can get a nice panoramic shot usually requires finding a rock or other high place to use as a vantage point. More often than not, those places tend to be surrounded by trees and bushes which end up blocking the shot. Since a lot of the places I've been so far have been densely wooded areas, this is especially true.
Another aspect of this problem is that I'm constantly looking for shots that are unique or really visually appealing, and many landscape shots end up looking relatively "blah". So, it's not that I've been avoiding taking landscape shots, quite the contrary. Just in most cases they've been visually unimpressive. The
Azshara gallery
is actually a perfect example of my ideal: plenty of unique structures, but also a lot of nice, clean landscape shots. So, I've been making an effort to get as many landscape shots as I can (and every gallery does have some) without ending up with a lot of shots that just aren't all that interesting. It's a balancing act that, evidently, I'm not doing as well as I thought at.
Also, it would be nice if you could take pictures of the zones during the day, instead of at night.
I take screenshots as I have time. Because it's already a time-consuming project, it's difficult to log in, say "Oh, crap, it's night time" and just log back out without getting anything done. As I've mentioned previously, to finish
all
the work for one zone takes me roughly four hours. I try to get 2-3 galleries up per day and save the posts and wallpapers for the weekend, scheduling several posts in advance. Factor in a need to eat, sleep and actually get work for my real job done, that doesn't leave me a lot of time to say "the lighting here right now isn't ideal". That's not to say that I don't make an effort to get varied lighting (night/day). I do. Unfortunately, time doesn't always allow me to indulge in that as much as I'd like.
Additionally, a lot of the zones I've been to so far are just inherently dark zones. For example, I was in Teldrassil, Tirisfal and Darkshore when the sun (in-game) was high in the sky (looked roughly noon-ish), but the zones are just very dark by nature so you wouldn't be able to tell that it was noon by looking at the shots. Unfortunately, that's something I can do nothing about.
I have one question however is there a downloadable link or something to a certain gallery like I can DL all of barrens or teldrassil etc.
There are not currently any download links for the galleries themselves, and I hadn't planned on including any. That's actually part of the reason I've been doing desktop wallpapers for each zone that include several screenshots. There are download links for each wallpaper in the blog post for each zone. (And they're also available in the
wallpapers section
.)
Part of the reason I had not planned on including downloads for entire galleries is that, 12 zones in I'm already at 560 images. Including separate download links for whole galleries would double the amount of storage space used by the project and double the amount of data transfer the site deals with. While currently that's not an issue, get 1000+ people (to pick a relatively arbitrary number) viewing and downloading 47 zones' worth of galleries (which, at this rate, would be roughly 2,200 large image files) and you could start to run into problems. Not to mention, I'm also running a completely different (and vastly more popular, by comparison) site on the same server that also needs it's share of resources.
My ultimate reasoning was, the galleries aren't going anywhere. They'll remain on the site indefinitely. People can save single screenshots as they like, and bookmark the galleries they really enjoy to visit later.
Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! I'll try to do a better job of incorporating the things you've asked for. :)
Post by
9515
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Post by
399950
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