Samwise Didier, Warcraft icon
by Mike Schramm 
Mar 16th 2007 at 10:46AM
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.
Filed under: Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Blizzard, Screenshots
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Todd Mar 16th 2007 11:19AM
Hah hah, that grinning Samwise... that's great.
Torrent Mar 16th 2007 12:42PM
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?
yodaforsale Mar 16th 2007 11:28AM
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.
Talitha Mar 16th 2007 1:26PM
I guess now he should change the name of his band to Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftan now.
Zuuler Mar 16th 2007 12:07PM
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.
multikast Mar 16th 2007 12:19PM
Samwise? I thought that name only existed in LOTR!
Todd Mar 16th 2007 12:21PM
@Multikast
Maybe his parents were LOTR freaks.
Roguerhunter Mar 16th 2007 12:48PM
Actually hes gona be an Elite Boss in the new up coming patch!!!!
Mat Mar 16th 2007 1:00PM
According to his profile he likes Tom Leykis. Ugh.