Kaelaiden was mining around Outland, he posts on the forums, when suddenly, in an Adamantite node, this thing on the right pops up. Instead of the normal Adamantite icon, there's some weird guy's face grinning like a fool.If you've been around Warcraft a while, you might recognize it. The icon itself is basically WoW's default icon-- whenever there's a spell or an item that doesn't have an icon associated with it, that guy's face gets put in its place. Usually, it's the icon for spells that players never actually cast themselves, such as quest spells or special item abilities. In this case, it's likely that Kael's client software harmlessly glitched and showed the wrong icon.
But who's face is it, exactly? That icon is actually a man who's created a lot of iconic artwork himself-- it's Samwise Didier, Blizzard's longtime art director. He's tons and tons of artwork for Warcraft throughout the years-- a look at his art gallery reveals lots of amazing work from all over Azeroth. He's even done a little voicework, in both WoW and WCIII. He has a thing for pandas-- he actually created the Pandaren-- and there's lots of "SD" and "Sam" in-jokes throughout the games he's worked on.
Oh, and he's also the frontman of Level 60 Elite Tauren Chieftain, the band of Blizzard employees that played at Blizzcon (that explains Drysc's mysterious "L60ETC rocks!" comment in the thread Kael posted). Basically, he's a WoW icon in every sense of the word.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-16-2007 @ 11:19AM
Todd said...
Hah hah, that grinning Samwise... that's great.
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3-16-2007 @ 11:28AM
yodaforsale said...
I was in botanica, and my friend sharded a piece of equipment from a boss and gave the shard to me, and it was the icon of warrior ability 'defiance' until i logged out like 5 minutes later and logged back in and it was fine, bothered the hell out of me.
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3-16-2007 @ 12:07PM
Zuuler said...
I always see this guys face on thottbot. I find him to be annoying, but at least now I know who he is and how his face relates to warcraft.
BTW I think his face also shows up when you watch the WCIII credits, in the bottom left corner of the screen where they usually show characters talking animations.
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3-16-2007 @ 12:19PM
multikast said...
Samwise? I thought that name only existed in LOTR!
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3-16-2007 @ 12:21PM
Todd said...
@Multikast
Maybe his parents were LOTR freaks.
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3-16-2007 @ 12:42PM
Torrent said...
The AV medals are a collar with an SD on them. We always thought they looked like Scooby Doo dog collars. Could they be Samwise Didier collars?
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3-16-2007 @ 12:48PM
Roguerhunter said...
Actually hes gona be an Elite Boss in the new up coming patch!!!!
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3-16-2007 @ 1:00PM
Mat said...
According to his profile he likes Tom Leykis. Ugh.
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3-16-2007 @ 1:26PM
Talitha said...
I guess now he should change the name of his band to Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftan now.
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