Weird Screenshot Artifacts

[Sendatsu]

Hello everyone. I searched Google and the forum and I couldn't find an explanation for this but please tell me if you already know the answer or if it's a repost.

I used the druid blink bug today to reach the north end of the world and I took this wonderful screenshot:

https://i.imgur.com/dPTB1.png

Yes, the sea ends and then there's nothing. Many of you have probably seen this while trying to reach the GM island.

Everything looked fine until I noticed that something was weird about the image. Even though the horizon had no texture (i.e. it was a single color), I was seeing image artifacts (like compression loss/noise).

At first I thought this was random due to the .JPG format WoW uses but then I decided to open the image and flood it with a paint-bucket. This is the result:

https://i.imgur.com/9ZX7e.png

Image artifacts usually spread throughout the image, they don't just focus in the middle. Apart from that, these specifics artifacts seemed to be forming patterns!

If you take a closer look (even though the bucket really messed with the image) you can see that there are 3 specific patterns repeating again and again.

https://i.imgur.com/7AHJw.png

Let's call them P1 P2 P3.

There are three rows of patterns:

P1 P2 P3 P1 P2 P3
........P1 P2 P3........
P1 P2 P3 P1 P2 P3

I switched my graphics to ultra, took more screenshots; they were still there. I switched to low. Still there. I disabled my add-ons. Still...

I even thought I might have been hacked by a trojan or a virus! That's when I decided to see what other peoples' screenshots look like.

I went into a forum post here (http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...and-druid.html ([5.0.4] Skeletons near GM Island (Druid))), downloaded the user's screenshot and flooded it randomly. This is the result.

https://i.imgur.com/HJKcO.png

At least I wasn't crazy! But still this doesn't necessarily mean that something shady was going on.

I logged into another character and tried to find a space without many textures and I took another screenshot. My other character of the same realm had the patterns again but this time they were a bit different. P3, the third one (the one that keeps splitting up) was identical in both characters, but the other two were not.

I may be acting paranoid or I may be reinventing the wheel and someone has already answered this, but, do you think it's possible this could be a watermark inserted by Blizzard (or someone else?) to monitor our screenshots?

P1 & P2 being our character name or current area/guild name, and the persistent P3 being our realm name/continent?

Any other ideas/suggestions? Have you seen this before? Can you please take a few minutes and check your screenshots too? Just to make sure I'm not crazy :P

Thank you!


PS: I checked a few of my older screenshots and I couldn't find any patterns, but maybe it was because of all the textures. I'll keep looking.

[Sendatsu]

10 hours later, 64 views and no response. Does this mean no one else found patterns in their screenshots?

[Saronite]

It is just the bleu stuff from the endgame invisible wall.
they ''removed'' it or made the texture more less visible.
But the ''artifacts'' you see is just the bleu wavepattern

[Sendatsu]

It is just the bleu stuff from the endgame invisible wall.
they ''removed'' it or made the texture more less visible.
But the ''artifacts'' you see is just the bleu wavepattern

Thank you for your idea Saronite, I indeed noticed that the "blue walls" are now truly invisible, but the pattern I mentioned is not that.

For example, I walked into a cave, zoomed into a black wall and took this screenshot:

https://i.imgur.com/puSM4.jpg

I then sharpened it in IrfanView, and I found this:

https://i.imgur.com/rBuci.jpg

This happens to all JPG screenshots between qualities 1-9, when there is enough room between the colors for the patterns to fit.

For example, in a truly colorful image like this:

https://i.imgur.com/1SBQL.jpg

I couldn't make out any obvious patterns with the naked eye:

https://i.imgur.com/WIVad.jpg

We have started a really long, and sometimes distasteful, conversation about this issue here: http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...reenshots.html