wow Weirder Chat Images Return: Korean Party and a Lot of Fish

[Starym 2,539]

 

So it seems Blizzard haven't quite fixed the spamming images in the in-game chat issue we talked about earlier, and the images themselves are getting a LOT weirder. We've already seen the gnome couple and Blizzard GM images, but the weirdest of this new batch is one particularly specific image that's popped up, as spotted by TheGluttonousKotick, seemingly of some kind of party (some assumed it was a WoW-themed wedding). The reason it sticks out from the rest is that pasting these in the chat should only be possible from images that are already in the game files and, well why would this one be in the files:

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After some reddit detective work, it would seem that the above image was taken from the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, Korea. Now, as to how exactly it could be in the actually game files, Cottontael has a theory:

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I assume 06 there means 2006. Blizzard, of course, does have offices in Seoul (I believe) given their long history of Starcraft eSports. Likely an office team member there or something. This would have been back when wow development was still young and their work that of art rather than management, so stuff like this isn't that uncommon in games from the late 90s to mid aughts.

If that's actually the case it's very interesting and has us wondering what other images might be dug up! We've also seen a lot of potentially fake ones show up, as some players just changed the images on their local install and then can basically show any image they want in their game (but they don't show up to anyone else). It's possible that's what was going on with the above party image, but considering the details surrounding that one, we're gonna say that's not what happened and the image IS actually in the game files.

In the "business as usual" section, there's a whole lot more images popping up, and although these aren't as unexpected as the above one, they're still ... fishy.

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We also found out these can actually be spammed as raid warnings, so things might get interesting there as well. Also, egg icons seem to be all the rage on some servers, with orc faces and prairie dogs also making their appearances. 

While this is certainly unintended and somewhat annoying, it's actually nice to have some weird events like this pop up every now and then!

Header image source.

[Eld 1]

That image is indeed in the game files, as it would have to be. The file name is photos3.blp and it is in the directory interface/glues/credits/ along with several other blizzcon pictures. You can use the excellent website wow.tools to check out the file here: https://wow.tools/files/#search=photos&page=1&sort=0&desc=asc or browse this github repo of WoW texture files: https://github.com/Gethe/wow-ui-textures