One Shots: Pandas rising
Pandas aren't just for Azeroth, kiddos. Your favorite cuddly bears that can rip off your face even as you're saying, "Aww, who's a good little teddy?" have infiltrated many MMOs and risen to the top of the food chain as apex predators. Here is unfortunate victim Paul about to be eaten. His final words are as follows:
"This is my highest-level character, a Beastlord called Kaesk who has recently just dinged level 85," Paul writes. "This means that I can now fly, hence the wings, and it also means even more opportunities to get distracted. While it looks like the Hue Mein pandas are sizing me up for the cooking pot, they are actually dancing -- and they know how to shake their booty, it seems. I just wasn't expecting to find pandas in EverQuest II, let alone dancing ones, so it made me giggle."
You giggle bravely into the belly of the beast there, Paul. We admire your laughter in the face of doom. And speaking of doom, what other light-hearted pictures await us in this week's One Shots?
Reader William can't help but burst into celebration at the splendor of Final Fantasy XIV's reboot: "I took this picture last week and forgot to submit it, d'oh! The transition of 1.0 characters into A Realm Reborn was so flawless that I had to take a celebratory picture. I ran all around and settled on a small area in the South Shroud. It's good to be home again!"
Hope that the movers didn't break your stuff in the transition! Time travel and coding overhauls can bang up the furniture something fierce, I've been told.
While The Secret World isn't big on giving you choices during missions, there are a few moments in the big storyline when you must make crucial decisions. Because they can actually trigger the apocalypse in the real world if even one player goes the wrong way, we've been watching developments from this game in mortal terror ever since it went live.
"I chose humanity over insanity," reader Funkyus said. "I hope I made the right choice."
Oh man, so do we. So do we.
Ding ding ding! That's the special bell to let us know it's time for our Guild Wars 2 screenshot of the week! We've seen readers try to one-up each other with beautiful in-game images -- will new contestant Seann rise to the occasion? We'll let you decide!
"Here we have Mildoze hunting down that wasclely wabbit in Caledon Forest," Seann writes.
Shh, Seann. We're judging you. We need quiet to analyze the beautymetrics of this screenshot.
From now on, I'll be starting a screenshot challenge in this last paragraph. This week's challenge is to send in a picture of you... dead. No, not you you. Your virtual you! Your character! So pile up the corpses -- and the funnier the death, the better! Everyone has a good death story, I bet.
Want to be featured in a future edition of One Shots? Send your favorite MMO screenshots to oneshots@massively.com, and don't forget to include your name, the name of the game, and a description of the scene. Large, colorful, UI-free shots that tell a story and really show off the game make for the best images. Look ma, we brought back One Shots!
