Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A Secret World of Warcraft Wallpaper—Stormwind: Human Stronghold

I don't know about anyone else, but I am a big fan of Blizzard wallpapers.  I collect them like some people collect the WoW trading cards.  Currently I use Windows 7's built-in desktop slideshow function to randomly alternate my wallpaper choice on a regular basis, and even back before I had an OS capable of doing such a thing natively I used to utilize 3rd party software to enable such a feat.

Back in the days of WarCraft 3, when WoW was barely more than a public announcement, Blizzard started releasing information, screenshots, movies, and you guessed it: wallpapers in a slow drizzle.  In those days, I obsessively checked Blizzard.com for any hint of new content—I was hooked on WoW before I even got a chance to play it.  I'd download the available media look through it time and time again.  I couldn't wait to find out more information about my favorite Azerothian Kingdom (back then it itself was known as Azeroth, although it's since been retconned into the Kingdom of Stormwind), and one day Blizzard released what was quite nearly the Holy Grail of Stormwind wallpapers—a map of the city.

You can bet I downloaded that sucker.  Hell, I downloaded it in every resolution they had available because the very thought of having to view such an awesome thing in a non-native resolution was scoff-worthy.  Months went by: the MMO was eventually released, it's original site fading into obscurity (and eventually deletion).  Several hard drive formats and a new computer later, I found myself browsing through the WoW wallpaper archives to re-download them all.  But one was missing.  My beloved map of Stormwind City was gone from the archives, and remains missing from the official wallpaper pages to this day.  Feel free to look at the World of Warcraft Wallpapers 2 page yourself—you'll find no map of Stormwind wallpaper there.  In truth, the map is craftily hidden, waiting for someone with sufficient drive to stumble upon it.  The clues are there, they just need to be followed.  Can you find them?

So where (and what) the heck is "wallpaper11"?  I'm sure you've guessed it by now.  It's the Map of Stormwind City wallpaper!  Hooray!  =)


Now the only question that remains is why is the map hidden so?  Is it a mistake?  Was the wallpaper intentionally removed?  Did someone at Blizzard just decide to hide it as an easter egg for little lion guards to find?  The world may never know.  =P

1 comment:

  1. Ooh, maybe they tucked it away to replace it with a new and updated map that includes the recently expanded harbor! We can only hope...

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