One Shots: A nuclear explosion of friendship

I'm always so very proud of you readers when you take me up on one of my weekly screenshot challenges, like a proud papa who sees his child take those first few steps to the computer, sit down, and engage in a 40-man raid. So big props today to reader Rhime, who captured an impressive-looking spell effect from Final Fantasy XIV.

"My in-game character on the left center is Kavu," Rhime wrote. "Our free company had a photo night, and I managed to capture a lot of shots of our mucking about on the beach near Costa del Sol. This shot depicts a friend and me posing in combat stance with a couple spells running (fire on the ground and the shiny blue star between us). I hope you like it!"

I do indeed! We've got a great collection of player-submitted game photos for you to see today, so let's not waste any more time hanging out in this paragraph.

Reader Hollowborn is one of the brave souls who has been fighting back Scarlet Briar's latest doomsday device in Guild Wars 2. "Here's a nice shot of me after cutting the Marionette's chains," Hollowborn wrote.

What he didn't show you is that two seconds later, gravity exerted itself, physics demanded retribution, and Hollowburn was crushed like a soda can under the weight of a thousand tons of falling metal. Who knew those were support chains?

Let's head back to City of Heroes for a mo, shall we? SuperBrad sent in, well, about a couple of dozen pictures of his former heroes lying dead in the street. I'll let him explain.

"I call this the face-plant collection," SuperBrad explained. "I started taking screenshots every time I would die in the game (when I would remember). Nothing like coming out of a submarine into the bright warm sunshine... and falling flat on your face dead."

Our final picture of the day comes from Tyler, who probably wishes that he were dead in City of Heroes instead of alive in the scarier parts of The Secret World.

"Here is my Dragon character in Blue Mountain after defeating one of the bosses during the Guardians of Gaia event," Tyler said. "I've never played a game that managed to make nights so authentically spooky as this game, and there's something extra unnerving about the nights in Blue Mountain. That place just sends a chill down my spine."

I'll draw inspiration from that last picture for our weekly screenshot challenge! Your challenge is to send in a picture of a place in your MMO that unnerves you and makes you not want to spend a minute there longer than necessary. Face your fears -- and take a snapshot of them!

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!