Beru over at Falling Leaves set us a Make a Memory Challenge. I’ve been planning to jump in and do something similar for a while – I want to make sure I can look back and remember the zones of Azeroth “as they were”.

As a baby druid of only Level 30 or so, I remember swimming all the way up the coast of Eastern Kingdoms, and (cough) wall hacking my way up onto the top of the plaguelands. It was pretty boring really, just flat placeholder ground texture, with chunky, cubic mountains. But it was kinda cool, considering that in a few months, the coastline wouldn’t exist, and in fact it would be part of a new piece of the continent.


Do you remember what the map looked like, before the Blood Elves appeared? It was all rounded off and stuff. No more – now we take for granted that the northern peak of the continent is Elf Country, as if it’s always been like that.

Of course, it’s not like we lost anything important – just placeholder dirt. But in Cataclysm – it will be different. We’ll be losing towns and coastlines, new ones will crop up – it’s hard to even know exactly what to expect (other than from what we’ve seen in trailers and pictures). Have you seen the new picture of the Blasted Lands? It’s back to swampland – a la pre-portal; it looks pretty. Now, not every zone is going to be so dramatically changed, but who knows.

So I want to document what they all look like, now. Many people are doing the same thing, of course; this is no new idea. But I suppose we all need to do it in our own way. I want to make sure I record the places in a certain way, the way I want to remember them – rather than relying on someone else’s gallery. Plus, the photographer in me needs to them to be *just so*… so I’ve tasked myself with travelling around the world and documenting each zone and landmark, to file away for later.

No doubt some zones will be changed for the better, and some zones I’ll be sad for. I just want to be able to look back and remember the places I leveled in, once upon a time. And let’s face it, eventually, when I stop playing, or when the World of Warcraft doesn’t exist anymore, I’ll have a great gallery to look over fondly.

I was also inspired by Wow.com/mmo-champion the other day, showing some panoramas of Azeroth. I decided that would be the perfect way to preserve some of the broad landscapes that I love so much. So I’ll be taking some “normal” screenshots, but for landscapes that I want to preserve in one big piece, I’ll do a panorama also. The panoramas aren’t perfect, nowhere near as good as the mmo ones, since they’re my first efforts – but they’re a lot of fun to make! :)

I only wish we could fly in Azeroth already, so that it would be so much easier to document the zones. Ah well.

So, to kick off – here are a couple of images of Orgimmar (I took many, but will only post a couple each time). Click to enlarge.


Valley of Strength: (1914×988)


Sunset on Orgrimmar (panorama – 2200×300)



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